Why not change the player coming off? I'm happy for Long to come on and Boufal to come on but why does it always have to be for Gabbiadini and Redmond? Why not change formation? Why not play narrower? Why not get the ball forward more quickly? Why not play wider if that doesn't work with wide players hugging the touchline? You can use the same personnel in very different ways.
Anyone has the right to voice their concerns, but imo the criticism that Puel is getting is way over the top. Things are certainly not as desperate as some people are making out they are. There have been mitigating circumstances as to why our league campaign hasn't been as good as last season, mainly the amount of fixtures and injuries to key players. Give Puel a pre-season and a full squad and let's see what happens, I personally think that we will improve next season.
You'll be moaning if the **** ones stop going to games and buying shirts while the good ones sit in a half filled ground!!! Everybody in that ground is a supporter and is free to air their disapproval if they so wish just as you are voicing your disapproval of them as fans for not sitting quietly and biting their lips.
Air your disapproval if you want but players are human and they can feel if a crowd is not with them and getting on their back, it serves no purpose to moan if you want to see your team win imo.
Like you say Imps, you don't go to games and you don't hear the sheer vitriol that some of the players have to suffer during a game. You would think some of our players are the opposition if you heard the things that they are called during a match.
This is not specific to Saints. You don't have to go to Saints games to hear this. Football fans of every club around the world hear this at whatever club they are supporting. You make an important point that players are humans. Supporters are human too and humans do get frustrated, disappointed. Fans or players alike. Similar to Mr Redmond when something doesn;t go to plan and he then starts shouting at everybody around him or telling the ref how bad his decisions are. People do the same!!! They are still supporters. Every football club in the world has fans that see different things and we get the same arguments on every football forum. People moan because they care. If they didn't care they wouldn't moan because they didn't care. I wonder if a fans of a musician split into groups calling those who boo not fans when the musician does a really bad gig? And of course you will get some that do not notice how bad that gig was because they are caught up in the moment of seeing their favourite band/singer.
I think some have failed to grasp what the word supporter means....a person who supports. Do they think the players didn't want to win and aren't disappointed to lose? The only grounds for getting angry is if they don't try to the best of their ability. And if our players were brilliant all the time, they would be superstars and playing somewhere else. At our present level, we have good players who hopefully play well as a team and achieve over their weight. Question: Are the supporters getting worse?
Expectation levels of Saints supporters are unrealistic now, we can't compete with the mega rich top six or even Everton who could afford to triple the greedy ginger Dutchman's wages. We're not too far from being the best of the rest which, for a club of our size is a good achievement.
Nothing going on at the club on or off the pitch has made me doubt my decision at the start of this year to make this my last season as a ST holder. By rumours of ST renewals being 20% down on this time last year, I might not be alone.
The thing is, i think the way we are playing right now is not Puels style of play. As i think many people will agree, Puel's style is slow possession based football like we saw with the diamond at the start of the season. Now lets look at possession, in our current bad run of form vs the start of the season Last 5 matches from most recent: 47% vs Arsenal 35% 52 52 41 First 5 matches under Puel: 64% 57% 64% 43% (Arsenal) 54% He's not playing possession based football and is actually trying to counter in most of these games. I think he is a poor counter attacker and not something i like to see him do. Hell, i didn't like seeing Koeman do it and counter attacking was Koemans style, something he was very good at. We were creating a lot of chances in the first part of the season and not converting them, but i generally enjoyed the football (Personal opinion and i think not seeing any of the Europa games until after i knew the score may have helped this perception so didn't watch our second string play too much). In the winter he switched to that 433 formation which didn't work to try to play a bit faster but we stopped creating chances. Then we lost Austin. January came we brought in Gabbi and we started converting chances but we lost VVD and our defence collapsed , we were still creating chances with Gabbi until we lost him and since then we just seem to have bottomed out on confidence. The players don't seem to have belief they can score and neither do the fans. Since then Puel has tried various strategies to get us working but it has just not happened and he's got a hell of a job with the level of confidence players have right now. I don't think these strategies are the way he wants to play. Now personally when i look back at the season i see all the qualities there i want from Puel. I honestly believe that if we can bring in a couple of players to sure up the defence, get back to creating the chances Puel was at the start of the season before all our injuries, with Gabbi finishing them, then we will be playing very enjoyable football. With a full preseason and knowledge of his squad i really think thats a much smaller 'if' than bringing in a new manager. That's why i want Puel to stay and why i am excited for a second season under Puel. Edited for typos
You can generally get a ticket anyway. Last season there was the Europa to look forward to and hopes were high for the season, so hardly surprising sales are down.
As I cynically mentioned on the Echo site, our football has been so poor recently only 31,474 people bothered to turn up last night, you have to question the mentality of those who came thinking we would have improved?
You're wasting your breath CBK. There have already been plenty of posts saying that there will be a "real fan" happy to take your place.
Oh yes, of course. Only this morning there was a rabid mob of hardcore fans waiting for me outside my house, trying to mug me for my season ticket. I put up a good fight, but one of them threw a salmon infused brioche pastry at me, then scarpered into his waiting limo. Modern fans, eh?!
