I think fans are overestimating how hard it is to change the mentality of players that were part of the second worst team in PL history. Add in the new players, and now only playing Stills preferred formation, it was always going to be tough sledding at the beginning. But we've lost 1 game from 5 in the league with all of that going on. Now is when the season really starts in the coming weeks. If Still hasn't got a tune out of them by the end of October then we might need to think again.
To be fair I put 3-1 to Saints in the predictor game on the Pompey board (we almost always lose if I put us to win)
Jander reminded me of Romeu. Was always aware of who was around him and where he was going to pass if he received the ball
Fraser has been our best player at home this season. We are not ready for promotion and this season is about stability and rectifying the damage from last season.
I'm genuinely surprised no team came in for Murphy over the summer. He showed exactly why he had the joint most Championship assists last season.
I said out of all of our signings this summer I was actually the most intrigued about Jander. Hopefully he's our next Romeu/S.Davis.
I just found last night's kebab in the fridge that I don't recall purchasing and all my female family are out for the day. Football is redundant.
Sheffield United weren't much better than us last time they went down and went unbeaten in their first 9 last season, winning 6. I think the mentality thing is overstated tbh and the gap in quality should override that. The unsettled team/manager is a much more relevant factor imo.
So much sense and calmness here. Of those 3 draws; 1 was away at Ipswich (toughest game of the season on paper). One was today (derby - form book out the window?). The loss was Stoke who are flying currently. Six points again from the next five games starts to become a problem. 10 points from next 5 and the hints look good again.
And as I said after the Watford draw, it's the draws which are the killer when you're looking at the top end of the table. We need to get out of this mentality of focusing on how many times we've avoided defeat. That's for when we're battling at the other end of the table.
1 win in first three. Same as us. Beat Watford at home to get going. Really not very different to us if you look at the actual games.
Honestly, I know it is easy to feel deflated but look at our sequence of games vs theirs. Very similar results but they have a run of much friendlier games early.
The next four games out of five are away including the cup tie. We face Boro at home and think that is a game we lose. I expect that our fortunes will improve in November although I am expecting us to effectively be cemented in a mid table position by that point with play offs looking increasingly remote. The league is still in it's early days but I would suggest because we have a new squad with a rookie manager , promotion is beyond us this season. A great season for us is to finish above Portsmouth. This will be a terrific achievement. Maybe some people in here will wise up to the reality. 25/26 is about laying the foundations for 26/27.
That first half was one of our worst ever tbh, given the importance of the game. We looked completely lost, and rattled by the occasion. Gave them loads of space, just kept backing off and not putting in tackles and when we had the ball or won the ball we would just panic and punt it forward for a front three with no height or physicality. And repeat. Madness. The passing and movement was embarrassingly bad. The ‘tackling’ and closing down of players and space just as bad. Charles easy MOTM for me. Looked like the only player who stepped up to the occasion in the first half, got stuck in, made good blocks and threw his body on the line. Has a calm head too. Agree completely that him and Downes cannot play together based on the first 5 games. Our midfield should dominate but it’s being dominated every game and that’s not good enough. Downes looks a shadow of the player he was under Martin. Time to try Charles and Jander who looked positive in his brief time on the pitch today. Mads was atrocious first half, looked completely lost. Azaz was invisible first half and then started to get into the game second half, made some smart turns and through balls and then got subbed off. Fellows also looked a bit nervous to me, but put in some good crosses…shame we had no height in the box…Felt sorry for Archer too, what the **** is he supposed to do with balls just hoofed up to him against 2 CBs that dwarf him. Should have started with Stewart. Embarrassing lack of shots, particularly against a keeper that was injured before he went off, and then not to test their backup. Not even close to being good enough today. We completely bottled it in the biggest game of our season. Really deflated after such a big build up to perform like that. No idea what Will Still tactics are 5 games in. It appears to be either hoof or cross it as many times as possible to a solo small striker. Genius. No idea why that’s not working… Thought the crowd started off really loud and just got more frustrated and disillusioned as the game went on and we continued to provide zero attacking threat. Only so many times you can sing OWTS to your players losing the ball on repeat. As usual, it appears to be an acoustics thing because we have this same conversation every game. People in the chapel say the atmosphere was poor, couldn’t hear the Northam, we were out sung by the away etc. But where I sit in the Kingsland, I can barely hear the away and thought the saints fans were very good, particularly considering how **** we played. Have had texts from people I know who live in Shirley saying they could hear the crowd a lot when you can normally only hear when there’s a goal.
There is definitely a disconnection at the moment between personnel, formation, and tactics. Still hasn't yet got it right. Today, I was relatively OK with the personnel and formation. But I totally agree that punting balls up to Archer is just stupid. Tbf to him, I think he tried his best given the circumstances - but by himself, against two taller CBs, he was always fighting a losing battle. If we're going to employ those tactics, we probably should be starting Stewart. But an issue there is that I don't think any of us really know yet how good he is - I still think there's a risk that he's not up to it. I'm not saying that Downs isn't good enough or that we wrong to sign him (it's too early to pass judgement). But I totally understand people thinking that we'd have been better served signing a different, more proven, striker instead.
