Match Day Thread Bournemouth v Southampton Saturday 20th march BT sport 12:15

The opposition is also an important point to make

 

Am glad you wrote this note FLT. Its great to see him running at players and as you have written he is a confidence player, but we all need to be mindful that this is a Championship side. Lets hope he can build on this performance.

 

Sorry RH, l missed your post, pleased we agreed on the substance of our respective messages.

 

Does anyone else remember a game where a manager subs both centre backs not due to injury?

 

A long time Man Utd season ticket holding friend was once discussing Veron with a group of us in the pub (for younger readers you can Google this quaint old custom). He'd just destroyed a small team in a CL game. My mate said it was true he'd shown his repertoire of tricks, but feared he would not be seen in the next league game against Liverpool.

I like Redmond, and was delighted to see him play so well on Saturday, but the test of whether this is improvement comes next league game.

 

Redmonds decision making is never going to be great imo and that's fine. The important thing is his mental state and confidence. When he is positive and is making runs with the ball then he can make things happen for us. When he is not in the right mental state and his confidence is low there is little point in him being on the pitch. He's the type of player that, if he had a more stable mental side to his game AND he made the correct decisions on the ball more often than not, well, he wouldn't have been a Southampton player all these years. A confident and positive Redmond is a big positive for us, so lets hope this game has helped get him back on track, because unfortunately he's been absent all season.

 

Worthy of another viewing.

 

There's a really, really interesting quote from Ralph on this, that has appeared in some of the papers today.

"He is not 100 per cent convinced of his qualities. He needs one or two positive things in the beginning and then something changes in his mind and he believes in what he is doing. He has had a very difficult season. He is very sensitive. This is what he needs to do more - when he gets the chance, to turn and run, don't play back".

Which is what a lot of us (and particularly you, Fats) have been saying for a while. And hey, look, turns out that Ralph isn't "telling him" to not do that. In fact it's the opposite. He's telling him to do precisely that. So, you know, sometimes (and most often) it's not all down to Ralph what is occurring on the pitch.

 

I think the difference this season is that he hasn't been first choice for much of it and has had the role of coming off of the bench to change a losing position many times which has affected him mentally. It could be a concentration thing as well because I have noticed that he has taken his eye off the ball and miscontrolled it a lot more this season which fans pick up on. I think that his lack of form has been a bit overstated as it often is because fans like a scapegoat and he has contributed but not as much as previous seasons when he was pretty much never dropped.

 

And what separates the Messis from the Redmonds (as well as ability, and I am not saying Redmond has Messi's ability) is also belief and state of mind.

Believe in what you do, what you can do and you can achieve anything.

Sorry, Nigel Adkins talk over.

 

Can we send Nathan to Charlton for a few days intensive psychological training over the next week or so?

 

Ralph gets it. Pep gets it.

Bob from Shirley on Facebook doesn't.


Now...who to believe?

 

As, Bob on Facebook would say “what do Ralph and Pep know? My mate has a mate who knows someone who has a brother whose missus cleans the floor down at Saints training ground. She says Nathan never listens to anyone .....”

 

Case in point...

 

Perfect!

 

I mean it's one of countless examples, particularly when it comes to Redmond. If there was a braincell between them, they'd automatically double their intelligence.

 

You're giving Ralph too much credit. It was clearly Libby's kick up the arse that did it.

 

The whole team were galvanised into action by Libby’s reappearance!

 

I think they all start the morning with the dishwasher game. Redmond stormed it yesterday morning and that gave him the confidence.

 

Dishwasher challenge followed by cheese puns I heard.