The match report in The Times was positive about us....saying how we allowed Swansea to weave pretty patterns and then resolutely defended until Swansea ran out of steam. Also mentioned Boruc and the improvement after JWP was brought on. They praised Lambert's play in their England watch section.
I watched Sky choice and missed MoD, but the Sky coverage seemed to edit out all of Foxys faults, as well as any contribution by Wanayama apart from the "goal", or did none of it happen? Don't get me wrong I was at the match and I know what did happen, it is just the coverage gave a false impression.
although yes he was left exposed at times , fox had no answer for Dyer ...I cringed when the team sheet read his name before the game ,although the fans that cheered sarcastically on the occasions he passed to a red shirt are just idiots !! ......taunting the away players is done to put them off and add pressure and so what positive outcome do some saints fans believe doing it to one our own players will have ? ....
I didn't think Fox did that badly considering his obvious limitations. Completely agree that those who are haranguing him from the stands should stay at home, there's no place for that no matter how bad a player is.
Fox is purely a back up left back. He knows he'll never start when Shaw is available. It's like some people think we should have a world class left back just sitting there on extortionate wages to cover Shaw when he's injured or ill. There's no real point slagging Fox off. We won and kept a clean sheet. It's not easy to defend against a player like Dyer when you have little pace. Shaw will come straight back into the side. I wish people that boo or sarcastically cheer our players would **** off permanently.
"allowed Swansea to weave pretty patterns" Please. Saints created bugger all after the first 20 minutes but won the match thanks to inept, comedy defending. Even your most ardent fans have said as much. Boruc has made team of the week on the Beeb, with Crooks citing the two excellent saves from Michu and Bony. We deserved a minimum of a point and had 60% possession away from home. Some would say the stats reflect a deserved 3 points, but that's probably pushing it. That's football. We'll play a lot worse and win this season that's for sure. Good luck for the rest of the season.
Sadly games are decided by goals...we know because we should have had more points against Sunderland, Norwich and West Ham but strangely possession and passing didn't help us. Our manager said that he wished we would stop making heroes out of goalkeepers...we did again on Sunday, but luckily it went our way. It was a tough game where we could finish and Swansea couldn't. However, it is not luck alone that has meant we have let in only two goals. Swansea are a good side and I would be amazed if both teams weren't in the top ten at the end of the season.
The only thing that worries me is when we have the utterly predictable slump. I take it all the positivity will once again be replaced by hand-wringing, Ramirez slagging, Wanyama worrying and utter nonsense??
Likewise I could say that Swansea created bugger all other than in your dominant 20 minute spell to end the first half, in the second half despite completely controlling the game really you barely seriously threatened the goal, the closest you came was from Dyer's miscued shot from the edge of the box after some nice build-up and then several headers from reasonable positions that didn't come within 3 yards of the goal. Artur had a good game but finishers as good as Michu and Bony shouldn't be giving him a chance with the opportunities they had, and despite Dyer coming so close when he hammered the post I thought he should have done better too after he'd got himself into that position. We've had a lot more than 58% possession and had a much wider shot-margin than 17-12 than our opponents and come away with nought in the last year and have learned the hard way that you can control a game as much as you want but you need to get the ball in the back of the net and at the end of the day, we had it in there three times and your guys couldn't notch. You were close to a draw, certainly closer than the scoreline would suggest (3-0 would have been even more unkind - and to think your boys were moaning about Mike Dean before the game, he felt so guilty about incorrectly giving just a corner against you he incorrectly ruled out a goal for us! ), but that doesn't mean that you deserved one. Good luck to yourselves too.
To counter the slup is the fact that we are winning without playing our best. What will happen when we do. Man U watch out!
It really is quite surreal. We're sitting 4th in the table, just two points off the top and having conceded just two goals, and yet it's plainly obvious to me - and others, clearly - that we haven't even been playing our best football. Yes, Liverpool aside, we haven't played the top teams right now (although in terms of where we want to be this season, beating WBA and Swansea shouldn't be taken lightly). But as we showed last season, when we do play our best football we can trouble - even beat - those top teams.
Whispering Dave was having kittens, talking about two players larking around and out of game, i.e. they were out of position. To be fair to them, they thought a goal had been scored, and play normally stops for an organised restart. They seemed to get the idea petty quick. Watching the highlights later, Steve Davis made me laugh because he was standing right next to Mike Dean, waiting for some sort of formal restart, when he noticed the ball was in play, and took off like a rocket after it.
Quic question to anyone that has seen the extended highlights, should vorm have been sent off? Looked like it from where I was sat.
Think he is referring to a moment early in the game where he farted around with it a bit on the right side of his box, it had just rolled out of the area and he tried to knock it back in to pick it up, oblivious to the fact that Dani was steaming in behind him and tackled him as he turned, he just about managed to scuff it back into the box but he went to handle it outside the area in the process. I only saw the one quick replay and they didn't show it in on MotD2, but I think he just about managed to stop himself from grabbing it before he got it back in the box, he certainly seemed to instinctively go to grab it though.
