Now before I start on the subject, I watched the whole of the game tonight thanks to a stream and Southampton were clearly the better side on the night and deserved their win, this is about a trend that's developing. What annoys me though is that we've conceded another goal whilst defending a situation we shouldn't have been defending. It was clearly a goal kick rather than a corner, and the fact their player was wearing fluorescent boots which should have made the touch more obvious to the ref (can't fault the linesman since he was on the wrong side to be able to see it) just adds to it. What then follows is we scramble around defending the corner, and when it comes in for the second time they score (effectively twice since Fonte scored and then Lambert hit in the "clearance" as well). This keeps happening to us. Alright against Tottenham it was a penalty so that's one you expect to be scored. But for corners and freekicks it's getting really irritating, and as a club we've got to be asking why. Tonight we defended every set piece except the one after the mistake, and the amount of times we've come out of games this season saying the opposition have scored from the mistake by the ref says that in those games as well we've defended every other set piece well. Yes, the referees shouldn't be making the mistakes, but equally we shouldn't be conceding pretty much every time they make them when the rest of the time we manage to stop a particular team's set pieces. Are the players letting the frustration about the bad decisions distract them whilst the opposition capitalise, or is it just coincidence that we can't ever seem to defend the wrongly awarded set pieces despite not being that bad the rest of the time?
On the night from chances created they should have had another 2 or 3 goals, best team won on the night. Hope the hoof ball of last night disappears; no point in having a midfield! Brucey seemingly not able or willing to change the tactics at half time. A lot down to at least two, and on times three defenders hoofing the ball direct to the opposition. If you don't keep teh ball you are likely to get beat as happened last night. Onwards and upwards and a number of players have a great opportunity on Monday against Brighton to stake a claim based on last night.
You mean the constant hoofball since we signed Jelavic and Long? 5 games of the ****e so far, boring as ****.
I was watching Bruce in the second half and he was going mental when players we're just hoofing the ball up. Now clearly the long ball thing is something he's chosen to implement since signing Long and Jelavic but he must have told them to stop it at half-time otherwise he wouldn't have been so wound up by it.
Whether or not it was a corner, our marking was appalling, there were 3-4 Soton players queued up to take that shot. It looked again like Elmo should have been tighter, but he wasnt the only one! On replays he seemed to wander around whilst Soton took potshots!
There was a time Figueroa picked up an enemy clearance, plenty of time and space to bring it forw..WHACK! Down the channel to no one, Boyd on the wing tracking back to collect the ball, Long central waiting for the ball to be brought forwards. Brucey was flailing his arms over his head and clearly not impressed. It's got to be said though, Figueroa is complete and utter ****e.
Figueroa and Bruce just hoofed the ball every time they got it, we kept gifting possession to Southampton.
Calm down, it wasn't blatantly wrong. Commentators only spotted it after watching replay after replay.
we have to take the goal chances thu, early on we should ave been up and so when the ref makes a mistake we are ok
The linesman near the East Stand made some very obvious and very simple errors. They didn't, for the most part, affect the result, but it's pretty laughable from 'The Best League in the World' At one point Boruc took a goal-kick and passed it to the Japanese bloke, who was about three-yards inside the Southampton area. It didn't even register with the linesman to flag for what is, by the Laws of the Game, an offence.
As much as it pains me to agree with him - this is correct. The goal was like the game.....Scrappy. It was as though Tony Pulis had taken charge for the night. On another night Saints could have been 2/3 goals up within 20 mins. We have played 2 of our worst PL games this season against Saints. That needs to improve next season. Forget last night now and move on.
He should have got Aluko on at half time then!! Sit him between the midfield 3 and the strikers - problem solved.
It's just one of those things, our first goal against Man U came from a corner that shouldn't have been given, the officials are never going to get every decision right.
Whether the decision was right or wrong, we had 11 men in our area, they had 5, one taking the set piece and one just outside, there is no way in the world we should be conceding a goal from that situation.
The standard of refereeing in the Premier League is absolutely embarrassing, every week we see massively controversial decisions in massively important games. Referees are starting to become the reason people finish where they do, probably just how they like it.
Bruce said in his interview we were getting the ball forward too quickly (ie. hoofing it) they were doing it whether he wanted them to or not. If they ignore his game plan he should be sorting them. Our midfield just watched the ball going over them.madness.
It was blatantly wrong. It was a fluorescent boot in front of our player that hit the ball in a direction our player couldn't have hit it. The fact commentators only spotted it after several replays is more down to them than anything else. Even with the initial "TV cam" view I thought it looked odd but couldn't be sure. The referee's view was of something a lot bigger than the view I had on the initial viewing. It's largely beside the point though. My issue isn't with the decision, it's with the fact that we're ****ing awful at defending the situation when ever this happens. These last 2 quotes exactly. We're not consistently that bad at defending them, if we were we'd concede 3 or 4 a game. We seem to have a massive issue after a wrong decision and we (as a club) need to find out why, because it's proving really costly.
This is correct, I sit not far from SB technical area, and he was going ballistic trying to stop them hoofing the ball up field in the 2nd half.
