And if the lower teams had the star player we had, they'd have got promoted and therefore would have only got promotion because of the star player! We're lucky we had the star player(s) who helped us get promoted and had a huge impact, you can't penalise us for that!
I thought Liverpool pressed and shut the game and all of our threat down brilliantly after their second goal. Massive credit to them and Rodgers for that. Unfortunately a few here can only see that as a failing of ours, rather than an effective tactic from the team rightly second in the table.....
To be fair I doubt we're the only ones prone to a bit of navel gazing... but there's not always a need to overreact to every defeat. We were ok, they were a bit better, and sometimes those fine margins get you a 3-0 defeat.
Absolutely Qwerty - all fans are incredibly prone to analysing to death where things went wrong for them, rather than saying 'actually they did a great job'. We seem to have accepted that as the case with Mourinho and Chelsea, just not with many others.
The pressing game works for us because it raises us above the standard you might expect for a team of our quality, but we shouldn't be surprised if it works better for a team crammed with talent. I think sometimes our first touch let us down and then the players were closed down quickly. That can be a shock to the system when you are not used to it...all a learning experience. Luke let the ball get too far ahead of himself on several occasions providing opportunity for the opposition and Chambers (normally very effective for us) was neutralised by Liverpool. They had done their homework on us. We still managed to give them a match...dust ourselves off and move on.
I really don't know. Right now I actually think he looks clueless. He is certainly not the player he was against Liverpool away.
He's clearly rusty since the injury but he's not appalling. You can't acknowledge that an injury has hampered him and still criticise his performance.
I don't know. I think we are just all way too sensitive about it one way or the other. If you were to say Saints played worse than Liverpool, certain people would be offended and argue. If you were to say Liverpool played better than Saints, those same people would be okay with it, and it would be a different set of people who would argue. But it's the same statement. It's what you read into it. Saints being worse than Liverpool will be interpreted by some to mean that Saints were crap. Liverpool being better than Saints will be interpreted by some to mean that Saints were good. Truth is, Saints were pretty much just Saints. I would personally say we weren't that bad or that great, and that we would have beaten quite a few teams with that performance but unlikely to beat Liverpool. I mean, we're 9th in the table with decent margins both above and below us. That speaks pretty clearly to me. Some people see that as glass half-full, others glass half-empty.
Yes I can. I did. Actually, what I said was maybe he's still suffering the effects of the injury. Otherwise I can't see how he's so bad. And I really do think "appalling" is the right word. But I would like to reiterate that I did think he played OK earlier in the season. When he came on on Saturday though, he really didn't seem to have any clue about what he was doing.
Lff, which is it. You just said above he was 'ok' earlier in the season, in this same thread, you earlier claimed to say he was 'immense' early in the season...???
Lff, which is it. You just said above he was 'ok' earlier in the season, in this same thread, you earlier claimed to say he was 'immense' early in the season...???
Thats just pedantry. I know I said "immense" in one game (Liverpool? I can't remember now). I think he improved. It all seems a long time ago now but against West Brom I seem to remember him doing OK but not brilliant. It doesn't really matter, the fact is he was on a scale of OK to immense before his lay-off. Now he is on a scale of bad to appalling. What I am trying to ascertain is what is the reason? I put in one suggestion, his injury, but that was taken out of context by HB. But up to now no-one has adequately been able to explain it. I'll put in another suggestion, maybe we have changed our style of play a bit since Cork's been playing and he hasn't been able to adapt to it. Its only a suggestion please note, not necessarily what I think has happened.
I remember Wanyama looked good in a televised game early on in the season against West Ham. If he was in possession and there wasn't a simple pass on, he would keep hold of the ball and allow opposing players to bounce off him. It looked risky but it was quite effective. I'm sure at some point since this, but before he got injured, someone has told him to move the ball on quicker, and this has highlighted his poor passing.
Well what do you think has happened? As for being pedantic, come on Lff, you can't post one thing then another to suit your current comments and then not expect someone to point out the glaring contradiction. You now say he was ok against west Brom ... Bloody hell fella, that was the first game of the season and we won; I think you decided he wasn't going to be good the moment you saw the team sheet and Cork wasn't it it. I enjoy a lot of your posts, but your Cork favouritism is not allowing you to accept anything good about Vic. I don't have a favourite from those two and I think this allows me to see that Vic needs to get game time to get match speed back to wear he was. Cork has been superb and I am not saying he should be dropped for Vic. In all these Vic discussions I am not thinking one or the other, but simply reading people like you not being prepared to give Vic any leeway because they have cork as a favourite player. Even when Vic was playing and being a key part in the best defensive record in the league at the time, people pointed out where he was not good. That was blinkered. All I hear is that we don't know what would have happened if he wasn't playing then or the opposition may have been different; that's all conjecture. What I know is that watching those games the Saints unit looked formidable. It hasn't done since. To make things worse and more complicated (despite what that Scottish bloke said, football isn't that simple), if Jack was out for two months I'd bet his recovery time would be miles quicker in getting up to match speed; he is a different physique to Vic. From the moment he came back you've picked and niggled at him based on your preference for another player; that's unjust. You were on him after 45 minutes of the Fulham game when he shouldn't have been played and wasn't ready. Look passed the things you see and look for the things you don't see. Next October, watch him closely like you did last week and instead of counting mis-placed passes, look at where he stands, where he moves to and what spaces he fills. I say October because its just some random time in the future not related to any current situation. I remember some people moaning about Jack Cork in the championship season (yes, believe me that happened on here) and I said he was our Nobby Stiles. He did important stuff that maybe different to someone else. Well I'll use the Nobby Stiles thing again. Was he one of the best 11 players in England at the time of 1966? I doubt it very much, but with him England won a World Cup.
