Match Day Thread Saturday 22nd February 2025, St Mary's Stadium, Southampton v Brighton, 3pm

I’d get shot of him now and put Rusk in charge until the end of the season.

 

Or the one after next

 

Did they announce the attendance & thank everyone for their support. I always love that moment.

Couldn’t make today; my aunts 90th at the Bugle, Botley. Really disappointed I couldn’t go with my lad; few beers, football chat, Saints chat & the game, possible result or at least a performance. Just got back & reading the thread & made it to here. Don’t really know what to say. Expected a performance today at the very least but it seems zippo. Juric reconfirms he’s a pretender. SR? they employed him & apparently he was high on their list previously!? We’re now just waiting for the “Spors” affect? Sorry but with their previous track record, I’m far, far from convinced.

 

Isn’t he unbeaten? 1-1 away BHA? I know they should have blown us away in the first half but played well 2nd & arguably could / should have won? I really just don’t see the point in Juric. He’s out of his league & we’re paying him a good salary & possibly for 18m (please tell me no)!

 

Now just watched the highlights. My lad text me to say it should have been six. He’s lying, 7 from what I saw. Don’t care about the injuries, behind the scenes disagreements, this is pathetic. Solak, SR whatever you want to say, are the custodians of our club & making a mockery of us. Said last week I can’t see us getting the Derby target. No change there then. Disgusted tbh & I didn’t even make it today. I’m thinking this is our worst season ever? Am I wrong?

 

Yes it is. And it will be. And nothing we do now will change that. So accept the pain, and move on to next season.

 

What did people think of the rapturous reception ABK got when he came on?

 

Ridiculous. Heres a bloke who has very much downed tools, refused to play for us in the past, and yet on the other hand, we're (last week, at least) booing one of our own academy lads off the pitch.

Interesting different approaches there.

 

I know it's very early days, but I'm still waiting to see what Welington brings to the LWB role. Seems just as afraid to run beyond the half way line as Manning.

 

Honestly I found it a bit weird, especially the cheering his first few touches.

I get everyone has been baffled with his absence and thinking he should get more game time but this is a bloke who's acted the **** behind the scenes and doesn't deserve what basically amounted to a heroes welcome.

He's part of the problem and by no means a solution. One of many who needs binning.

 

And to cap it all, WHU **** any chance of the season having an exciting end. Edit; nah that’s not fair on WH; Arsenal.

 

Was it more because we were bringing on a CB?

 

Nah loads of people kept singing his name and cheered his first few touches. Was bizarre.

 

We can withhold money. Protest. cause a scene in the stadium / owners like other clubs?

Anything is better than meekly accepting this awful ****

 

Season ticket sales will be the prime factor in SR selling up.

 

If there was a protest I’d come along

 

We deserve to take Derby’s record. Completely pathetic.

 

Well it’s better than booing him like the garbage that was dished out to WS last week. Besides with Bednarek off the pitch we needed to offer encouragement to someone who probably realises his errors and was maybe a tad apprehensive? No problem for me.

 

Didn't go to the Bournemouth game last weekend. But for some reason back again today. It's a weird feeling when the goals are going in against you and it barely registers as a negative emotion. Never felt such indifference sat watching my side lose every week.

We were awful. Without Ramsdale that was 6 or 7 today and tbh for large parts of that game when it was 0-0 and 0-1 Brighton were just going through the motions. They looked miles ahead of us technically, individually, as a team unit, and yet also looked like they were playing in 1st gear for large parts of the game. It was so easy to just drag us around and play simple balls straight through the middle of us.
I really, really cannot understand Juricball. We are making it far more complicated for our own players, who we all know aren't good enough in the first place, and for what? I'm yet to see the benefits of this man marking ****? And what does making and your only DM drop into CB to pass the ball 5 yards to a RB playing CB achieve? All it seems to be achieving is making our players look even worse, ensuring they are regularly out of shape, playing in unnatural positions and getting dragged around at will by the opposition to their advantage. How is this helping us in any way?? Our players are too slow to be constantly out of position.

Dibling looked so lost today. Disinterested or frustrated and just wasted. Fernandes was wasted playing further back too, though still think he did okay and was still one of our better performers (not hard), OH and the entire reason Fernandes was playing further back next to Ugo was to allow Aribo to play CB btw...inspired.
Ugochukwu had a dodgy start, but thought he handled being on an early yellow pretty well, and it was noticeable how much bigger the space to play right through the middle of us was when he was subbed off.

Highlights for me were Welington being unable to head a ball away 3 times in quick succession and their player breaking through on our goal, selling I think it was KWP? and Ramsdale a dummy that they both fell for and then taking so long to knock the ball into an empty net from a few yards out that he gave KWP? long enough to get back to his feet and clear it somehow? Couldn't quite see or understand how he didn't score?

Brighton missed plenty of chances at 0-0 and 0-1 but we were still in the game up until we had our goal disallowed, and then they scored their 2nd, which from where I was sat looked like a foul on Aribo? From that point on we did our usual pathetic collapse. I thought the ref was very quick to give Brighton freekicks for minor fouls and 50/50s and very reluctant to give them the other way for the same things.

Final thing. Yeah the ABK celebration was weird. I was fine with the big cheer when he came on, because it didn't feel so much for the player. More that we were actually replacing our injured CB with the CB that had seemed invisible in recent history despite the injury issues we've had at CB. But when the singing about him and cheering his touches happened. Yeah that was weird. I also though he looked really slow when he came on too, and my admittedly vague memories of him first playing for us he was really quick? **** knows what we do next week at CB and DM. I'd love to think it can't get any worse, but this is Saints.

 

Yep .

Gaining promotion from L1 at the first attempt