We try and play football through a packed 18 yard box far to many times in most games when early season both fullbacks and wide men tried to get in behind defences using the width of the pitch and getting to the byline before putting in a cross. all defenders hate being turned and defend crosses whilst facing their own goal a few yards out. It's also been mentioned many times before that we must shoot far more from outside the box, we have defensively although being well organised and with good numbers behind the ball coincided a few goals from very good shots and also deflected shots through having a packed box. These are just two basic parts of attacking football when playing against packed defences and hopefully will be addressed more as we have to play lower league teams who will be looking to take a valuable point with packed defensives.
It's not that we are playing badly but if I think about our players, I can't think of many who are in a rich vein of form at present. Mané would be an exception and obviously the banned and injured have disrupted the team. Coming away last night I didn't feel too down about the performance, and I thought WH were a better team than last season by some margin.
I'd be more worried if we werent making chances but we had 21 attempts with 7 on target. a 10 day break and we'll come back all guns blazing against the scousers.
I was crawling through the "roadworks" and I was fuming when I saw that there was nothing going on at all! God knows what you were like!
Why are we still talking if Banning Trixter ? If you don't agree with him ignore him . Banning people for banter just makes us look too precious IMHO . Does anyone remember not606 ? If we acted like this then , nobody from other teams would ever be allowed on here !!!!!
I know it's not like me to criticise the refereeing of our games But last night was possibly the worst performance I've seen all season. Pelle was (again) manhandled all game with zero protection, there were at least 3 clear handballs (Song tipped one past Harry Reed on occasion right in front of the ref) which weren't given, then when Jose stopped one which seemed to be going at his face (I admit to not being able to see it clearly) he gets booked, the ref said clearly to Cole at one point "I'm watching you" then when he kicked Maya in the face there want even a card! He basically allowed West Ham to push, pull, nudge, trip and bully our players with no protection. Appalling display. I'm not one for a ref to be breaking the play up constantly by whistling for everything, but he has to play to the rules and give players protection. Too often at St Mary's we see Pelle given no protection, then he gets frustrated and can't play. Where have the decent refs gone! Can we get some out of retirement? That idiot last night wasn't fit to ref any professional game!
When lying in bed last night, I was figuring out how much added time should have been added at the end of the 2nd half: Adrian red card + sub = 3mins Yoshida injury = 2mins 4 subs (1 West Ham sub at HT and counted keeper sub with red card) = 2mins West Ham timewasting = AT LEAST 3 mins So there should have been at least 10 mins added on.
But not many of those shots were clear cut chances, if any. Overall, I agree with what Ron said in the post match interview. Even he says we didn't play well against ten men, rather than being unlucky.
Agree, Tom, but no ref is going to give that much time - they'd have the manager screaming blue murder at them. We were discussing at around the 87 minute mark and we all agreed they'd give 5 minutes, because they only give more if there's a serious injury. Oh and don't forget the ****er who ran onto the pitch - another minute there at least .....................
Plus the dickhead from the crowd running around. I kinda hoped he was going to take the whistle and ref the match himself mind you...
Yes, and he's right. We've seen in the last 3 home games that teams have sussed us out. They pack the box, stick 10 men back behind the ball and force us to knock it around to try and find the gap. We were never going to get many chances in the air against that last night, so we should have got our runners into the box at speed to make the defenders think about things. Mind you, we were never going to get a penalty from the joker in the black were we? We must pull the defence around - we'll see 'pool and Spuds packing the box now and trying to catch us on the break, I bet. Hope Sterling is still injured!!
Spurs and Liverpool will treat us with respect, but will have enough confidence to give us more room. May suit us better #hopefulface
So much for my prediction that WH wouldn't 'park the bus'. In fairness though when they had 11 men on the pitch they were trying to win the game but really Saints were so in control that WH just weren't able to create anything. The sending off was actually bad for us as it meant WH simply defended and, you have to say, they did a very good job of it. In reality we were playing against 9 men as Carroll couldn't run at all. So it turned into a bizarre 'practice' match, attack against defence and we just weren't clever enough despite our considerable efforts. The only obvious thing near the end was that we somehow lost width at times which RK was getting annoyed about. On the plus side, Reed looked very good again against a physical team. Incidentally, Sam Allardyce was an absolute disgrace; constantly moaning at the 4th official. "Moaning" is the wrong word actually, "screaming" would be more appropriate. He should have been sent off simply to prevent him having a heart attack. His efforts to get Mane sent off were as I said, disgraceful. ps We'd have won with Cork playing
Thanks to the roadworks throughout my 100 mile return journey last night, I didn't get home until nearly 1am so went straight to bed...knackered. Agree with many of the points made about the Saints players so won't go over that again My main issue was with the ref, Pawson...if he never adjudicates at SMS again it will be too soon. Without doubt the worst refereeing performance I have ever seen and we have had some bad ones in the past. We all accept they are human and do a difficult job, we accept they make errors but this clown made so many it was unbelievable and was so effected by the West Ham player pressure and antics that he showed himself to be spineless as well as inept. Did his decisions change the result? No not really so I am not criticising him for that but he added hugely to the frustration. Fonte's booking & free kick in the first half was right infant of me, it hit him in the ribs...wrong Mane's booking...ref responded to West Ham player pressure & Song rolling around until he was booked then jumped up and ran off Yoshi's facial injury from the West Ham players flying Kung Fu kick, he only booked him reluctantly due to crowd pressure I could go on about other decisions but it was topped off by the 5 minutes injury time...Pawson you were having a laugh! An absolute minimum of 10 minutes wouldn't having really covered the extraordinary amount of time it took to send Adrian off, injuries to the West Ham hard Man (Carrol) and Yoshi and then the amazing time wasting that was going on. PAWSON.....you were a joke!
See WHU intend to appeal the red card. Obviously handled outside the area, so can only assume they think he was fouled first. Is that even grounds for appeal?
Someone justifying the pitch invader last night daisymcc92 wrote: He is 13 years old, people shouldn't be quick to judge saying he has learning difficulties from the way picture looks. He has no such disability he was peer pressured at school to do it this for a bet. People who are saying things about his appearance should grow up and stop picking on a child. Thank you.
