Back from Cape Verde, doom and gloom. Can anyone summarise the match without me having to trawl through the whole thread.
I will have to take the blame. I took my son again... and he has still never seen us win. We played well. We deserved a lead. We got a lead. We shat ourselves. Hojbjerg took a tumble. We lost.
And i was one of the people who carried the shirt onto the pitch just before the match started, because I work for VM and got the answer right in the competition. Then it went down hill
I think we delude ourselves and think we have a good squad but we dont anymore. We are a selling club, so if we had any really good players left we would have sold them. Although i dont know if any offers were made, i really believe our squad are not that good. I know we sold Tadic before any one has a go
I think the latter is the bigger problem here. Whilst no Pellegrino, Hughes is not going to progress any PL team beyond the top 15. He is a pedestrian manager, likely not equipped to compete tactically with many of the current crop of progressive managers (let alone Sean Dyche and Claude Puel), and whilst he was possibly the best short-term choice when we hired him, his long-term contract award was easy, lazy, and short-termist. Sounds harsh, and not based on the games this season but more my view from the start. Don't imagine him to be too inspiring a character in the dressing room, and blaming the referee every game doesn't send the right signals imo.
I think there's a decent squad there, as ever, but our confidence is fragile, and losing in the manner we have been this year just sows seeds of doubt throughout the team. Likewise, opposition gain in confidence, knowing they can get something from us at any stage of a game, which makes it all the more likely they will. That is something a manager needs to sort out, and I don't feel Hughes necessarily has the complexity of technique required in the psychology management side of his job. Purely a hunch, but he just doesn't seem the type.
Actually there was that foul on Long on the edge of the area in the first half which the referee didn't see although it happened right in front of his nose.
We absolutely dominated possession in first half, and scored a well-deserved opener in the second, but let it go within four minutes. Nothing much to worry about most of the rest of the game, even when down to ten, until Harry Maguire rolled the ball into the net from distance in 90+2, nutmegging two Saints players and wrong-footing McCarthy in the process. Both goals down to slack defending really. Saints' final third play was as pedestrian as usual really - same plays out to Cedric on the right, mainly coming to nothing, and the odd bout of lovely (from Leicester's point of view) soft crosses on to Leicester defender's heads. Good possession play, and not much incisive attacking intent or clever thinking when in Leicester's half, bar Ryan/Nathan interplay. Lemina outstanding.
Another disappointing home result. On a weekend like this there are only two words that cheer me up. WEST HAM
To be fair I'm not sure he did blame the referee after today's game. And as for his appointment, can you imagine the backlash if the board had NOT appointed him, gone for someone else and then we'd been in this situation now? The amount of flak they'd have taken for not appointing the guy who just kept us up would be unthinkable.
Maybe they should quit worrying about fan backlash and just not put the team in this position to start with.
Started brightly, dominant throughout the first half; finally got the goal early in the 2nd that our performance deserved. **** knows what happened after that, I’m still in shock. Everything went wrong, basically. At no point did I expect us to lose that game, still can’t believe we did,
I haven’t seen the game, but I am wondering how Maya isn’t playing. Is he injured? I’d have thought he would fit well alongside Scooby Doo. One commanding and the other using pace to cover.