Personally you’d have thought that Burnley were the home side when they switched to two up front. Had we had a mind to have made a similar switch it really would have opened the game up. I’m a little perplexed that MP2 felt the need to defend the situation rather than attack it, as the home side.
Bringing RK back would be a total disaster. Two wrongs do not make a right. We have a manager and for the time being we are stuck with him. If the board decide to dismiss MP 2 now, personally I think they should all go with him!!
This. Im not yet convinced by mp.but he is our manager and he deserves to be given a bit of time.the time he has had so far is not enough
Me too. However, bear in mind that our "fans" apparently persuaded Rupert Lowe not to reappoimt Glen Hoddle, and we all know how that turned out. The "fans" contributed to getting Puel sacked, and probably the exact same ones are now calling for Pellegrino's head.
Our failure to score under two managers who both set up the team to keep possession and have the opportunity to score suggests the problems lies with the team....not necessarily with any individual players but the balance of the players we are signing. It would certainly help if we had a Niemi in goal....but we haven't, so we have to score more goals. We don't have bad players....in fact, individually I can't think of a bad player in our main team and I don't believe any nonsense about them not caring and not trying. We haven't been thrashed by anyone....which suggests how different things would be if we could score with the one opportunity that other teams manage to score from. Look at Maya's terrific shot that forced a save from Burnley's keeper. Boufal's goal was one of the rare exceptions. Although you can't blame chance for everything, a bit going our way would be nice. Is it a case that we have been sussed and other teams know how to play us now we don't have game changers? Scared of the coming games against the bigger sides, but also interested about how we will do against sides that will open up. Let's start with Liverpool...who definitely haven't got a solid defence.
Anyone closer to the club know what is going on with Alex McCarthy? He hasn't tweeted anything Saints related since pre-season, I know he had that one EFL cup appearance but is he fit? Playing for the U23s? He still hasn't played for us in the league..
What are you talking about, if we were a fan run club we would get Ancelotti and give him 200m to spend
I think we need to get Boufal more central, as close to the opposition goal as possible. The guy is a natural finisher. Did anyone watch that sure challenge that Southampton put on their Facebook post? He makes the game look easy. He's our most natural. I think getting him closer to gabbiadini is the answer to our goal scoring woes.
http://readsouthampton.com/2017/11/05/wesley-hoedt-pulls-netherlands-squad/ May explain his replacement by Maya?
At the time, I was a bit annoyed last week with the MOTD2 comments about being "too nice" etc after brighton - I don't think they are entirely right, but I do agree that there is something underlying there about training/drilling that means we are so easy to predict. As many have already said, there is no plan B, we play the easy ball not making the gamble pass/run. We're playing like robots - the formation is fixed and we play the same way, regardless of the opposition, scoreline, time of the game etc. Much to the frustration of fans when you go a goal down and there is no perceived sense of urgency thereafter. Chance wise, it's like a computer is calculating our passing options and takes the safest option. It's the unpredictability that we're missing, an unexpected pass. Davo/JWP aren't going to do that (say in comparison to Schneiderlin, Lallana for example) I do think the double pivot system is working well in terms of turning the ball over, but with no effective "playmaker" (for want of a less cliche word) we end up playing to the wings and then into the box, which doesn't work when we don't have a big target man anymore. As said above - getting Boufal central would be much more effective, certainly mixes up the style a bit, making opposition think. We're not necessarily playing "bad" football, it's just soulless and lacking any sort of personality. Who is responsible is another matter!
We seem to be under instruction not to run at the defence and instead find a nice pass. Bertrand, Tadic and Redmond used to be prepared to take on defenders but not any more. Then Boufal has a go and proves it can work. Even when it doesn’t, it’s still more exciting than chess.
I wouldn't say we are playing badly, but we are playing very dull football and with the games coming up if we don't get many points, we could be in a rut come the new year and be fighting relegation if we can't work out how to score a few more goals.
