Just caught up with the thread which was hopefully more entertaining than the football. Was out all day yesterday and ended up being told the score at a friend’s moving away party. Turns out the guy who told me is the headmaster of Downside School and his family are all Saints fans. Glad I missed the game!
Ralph was saying in an interview that the team were not pressing at the same time and that left space inbetween the midfield and defence that Chelsea exploited mercilessly. The team should know the drill by now, I mean we have only been playing that way for 3 years!
That improves the current mood then. On second thoughts........? Let the improvement begin then, it has to at some point and this would be a good time to put things right, whatever the team is put out. They all, manager players etc had a really bad day, we all do!
To be honest, I'd happily sell all of them (apart from KWP, JWP and Perraud) and start afresh with a new manager next season. How these lot can get utterly ****ing spanked every season and nothing changes is beyond me. We've become so apathetic about this that we just accept it!
90+% on the Rout/Rin thread disagree, might be different if our points/GD were as low as teams below. We're **** but not total **** our rollercoaster results bear witness to that.
I went in a group of 8. Eldest son & partner over from Australia- first game in 4 years. ( they were regulars during the early wilderness’ years so very loyal). So between us we’d paid around £500 plus travel and it was pretty clear the players couldn’t be arsed. I appreciate JWP’s skills but it’s pretty clear he’s not a leader. Maybe it’s something about the character of modern footballers but I cannot imagine a Jimmy Case/Claus Lundekvam or a Michael Svensson allowing players to ‘perform’ like that without some really severe bollocking. In the words of the inimitable Brian Clough we were lucky to get nil.
His positioning and distribution left a very lot to be desired yesterday and he hasn't been that good throughout this recent poor run IMO.
He's still only 22. Very young for a CB. Agreed, he still has a lot to learn and he should do that here. It's rare to see a CB this good at 22 though.
Sorry but the team deserve a big kick up the ass for that performance. Beddy needs to be taken out if he really is thinking about his country game before us who pay his wages. He should remember if it wasn’t for the saints he wouldn’t be playing in the national team. Also the mid field were nowhere to be seen during the game. They all are supposed to be professional players playing their heart out for the team. A very disappointed fan. Just working out things to buy a season ticket!!!
Pretty much every team from mid table down (and sometimes up) will get at least one whacking a season. We just seem to do ours with icing on top.
That was pretty much what Ralph said. They had obviously been preparing for this game all week and focusing on a new instruction assuming that they didn't need to go back to the basics they've been drilling in to them forever.
I think the problem is all our results seem to go in runs. If we were winning one, losing one it'd probably be easier to take. These absolute hidings though are just too much. It's ridiculous. Behind Brentford now to boot. Bloody brilliant
Brentford’s season has been good run, bad run, start of good run. Brighton amazing run, terrible run. Ours has been bad run, good run, bad run. Equally likely to switch around again by end of season.
The trouble is, we’re (naturally) so focussed on our own team, we forget to notice that pretty much all the teams between 10th and 16th have the same inconsistent patterns. So what you have to hold on to, is *how* you are playing, even when you’re drawing/losing. And that’s where sometimes it gets painful, as days like yesterday, we don’t even look like we’re trying much. Whereas at the start of the season, you could see what we were trying to do. Games like yesterday aren’t acceptable, and the team/management know that. But in the main, the rest of the time we’ve hiccuped, we’ve shown up and there are positives to take.
Totally agree. Which season I think Lincoln made a fair point, our runs may be easier to take if it were a bit more mixed up, at least for some of us, anyway. btw - if a bid came in for JWP in the summer, say £50-60m, would you take it?
We don’t have the money or the setup really to have truly consistent results. Very few do. What we can do is try to approach the matches with a consistent way of playing, which we in the main do. That’s why games like yesterday are so odd. Re JWP. I don’t think he’s really worth £60m as a footballer, but I also think it sends out entirely the wrong message, particularly under new ownership, if we sold him. So no, I wouldn’t. But that’s not a wholly football based decision.
Well if that's the case, The question I suppose is what is Ralph actually achieving that others couldn't? If we're just after staying in the Premier league then we could get Dyche/BFS in and achieve the same without getting record breaking arse kicking every season. If the sum total of our ambition as a club is just staying up then let's get someone else in and see if they can change it. At the moment we're only a couple of points in front of teams who were dead set to go down a few months ago. It's not acceptable
