Match Day Thread Newcastle United v Saints Saturday 6th February 2021, 3pm BT Sport 1

My bad If he was but then we should have been pumping balls into the box - in those conditions we just need one lucky knockdown or a defender to misjudge the flight of the ball and we are in. 99 percent of the time I would be against hoofball but I can’t believe how much time we wasted playing the ball sideways which achieved nothing as Newcastle players were never going to be drawn up the pitch with 9 men

 

Given our continued need for redemption I would not be dropping/resting Bednarek, not even with the illustrious temptation of seeing Salisu kick a football bubbling up. His OG was clumsy but I find it fairly hard to condemn him for the first, he was trying to put out a fire he shouldn't have had to. Misjudged it a bit but if I was him I'd be trying to clatter ball or man instead of letting Saint-Maximin freely collect a ball too.

Unless Ralph decides he needs a reset mentally, I wouldn't be muddling a formula at the back that has already been muddled with too much recently.

 

I disagree that United showed the world how to play against 9 or 10 players. I think we showed the world how not to play against 11 players when you are down to 9 or 10. We did the exact opposite to what most teams would have done and lost badly!!!!!!

 

Have people been watching Salisu through the fence at the training ground and know something I don’t? Why would we put him in for a debut in our biggest game so far this season. Me. I’d play him in the next premier league game; right now they aren’t as important

 

This. Even if Salisu turns out to be our best defender since Claus he hasn’t played a competitive match for god knows how long. Why risk playing him in a game that is probably our only chance of winning anything?

 

How long is Armstrong out for?

 

If I'm honest, dropping/resting Bednarek never even entered my mind before seeing it suggested on here. So I'm with you there.

Sure, our mentality was all wrong today - too passive etc - but I only saw two players who played badly. And neither of them were Bednarek.

 

snap

 

Djenepo is not the answer as a replacement for Redmond as he's very innocuous as well!

 

Whatever gets you through the night bro

 

At least he does take players on and sometimes gets past them!

 

Plus his instinct is to get to the byline.

 

I stopped reading a few pages back, just to try and remember the team I support. It is Southampton isn’t it, I think.

I am 51 years old. I’ve seen us win the FA Cup once and lose it once. I’ve seen us get to the league cup final twice and lose it.
I have seen us relegated from the top flight twice (I was 4 for one of them) and I’ve seen us relegated from the second tier once because we went bust.
I saw us come second in the league once and get to two Mickey Mouse finals. I’ve seen 27 years of consecutive top flight football.

I’m just baffled by the expectations of a % of current fans of our club. Opportunities? Yes. Glimpses? Yes. During a season when we have no money, a ridiculously small squad and have played the best football we’ve seen for 4 years over the last 12 months, people are making suggestions that baffle me. We’ve just had two bad games.

I am going to stop trying to understand, finish cooking my dinner and open a bottle of red.

have a good evening folks

 

Plastic !

 

I hope that is a Tuscany red or a meaty Shiraz. Think I will do the same

 

Obviously we will never know the accuracy of your prediction but I strongly suspect if he'd replaced Ings with Tella and he'd missed a hatful of chances you would have been on here right now asking "Why did Ralph take off our top goalscorer for someone untested? Ings would have buried those chances."

No, I can't prove it. I do know you'll deny it. But it would be very much in line with things you have posted in the past. The words almost write themselves. Your desire every time to pin 100% of the blame on Ralph is remarkably consistent. It might be worth reflecting whether that's true and maybe why it's true.

Vin

 

At least Redmond has scored a goal, but they both are poor options in team having a real dip in form

 

So has Djenepo against West Brom.

 

I think you are right that we need to remember we support Southampton and expectations should always be cautious unless we get taken over by some super rich oil state.

But the issue for those of us born in the late eighties and onwards is that we have never experienced Saints really achieving anything, the JPT and the promotions were fun, but they weren’t the FA cup or mixing it up at the top of Division One.

As such it just becomes frustrating having every season at best burn out in February and at worst turn into a brutal scrap to survive.

But hey, that is the reality of supporting the vast vast majority of clubs, doesn’t mean we don’t have a right to get hacked off at a bitterly abject performance and very poor run of form though.

Still back Ralph 100%.

 

This does feel bad at the moment because of all the positive feelings we had earlier in the season. You know what if I was given a choice of supporting a team that was in the bottom three of the table for most of the season and just managed to survive or a team that led the table briefly and then had a dip but was never likely to get relegated (i hope) I know what I would pick