the man simply cannot defend. he has no tackle and no positional awareness whatsoever. how does he keep getting games?
good hit from jay rod, didnt half move about no blame attached to their keeper for me. what a finish!
Curious whether Bothroyd and M'bia will still be out there after the break...Bothroyd has to be a silly challenge away from a red at this point, and M'bia is never afraid to crock an ankle unnecessarily.
That's the worst half I've seen from us for ages. Just awful. Very lucky to be level. Playing right into their hands giving Rémy space and aiming long balls at Samba. I'd like to give Fox a chance but what was he doing for their goal? Must have seemed a nice idea to run back to block the shot, but Boruc wasn't coming out and Rémy took so long to get the shot away with the ball bouncing it would have been such an easy tackle if only Fox had done the obvious thing and gone with him. Leaving him with that much space was absolutely unforgivable. Obviously Hill didn't mean to clash heads with Lallana but it was still an obvious foul and probably a yellow card. Speaking of which Mbia and Bothroyd are walking tightropes. Both could have had second yellows and I think another foul by either should see them off. Shame to lose Lallana but he wasn't playing great and Lambert and Puncheon have looked off the pace as well so I think Rodriguez's directness is just what we need, as shown by our goal. The shot was straight at César but we got lucky with the rebound and it was a lovely finish from Ramirez. Need a much, much better second half.
A shame about Lallana, but Rodriguez would have had to come on in the second half anyway. Takes to long to get the ball out of the back, Saints need to counter the counter. Thought Ramirez was playing well even before the goal, a few really nice passes that went for naught. As for the defense, it's easy to pick on Fox and I'm not necessarily defending him but he's only playing because Shaw is out so less worried about that than I am about the centerbacks. Neither Fonte or Yoshida has looked very good. Fonte perhaps because he's coming off injury but I really think we need two CB's for the starting XI next year. Maybe Forren could be one of them.
Some more balls into the box would be a good idea, as they're always taking a few too many touches to clear their lines and you never know where it might drop. Rodriguez adds some extra height now as well, so it'd be good to take advantage of that, especially as they're really crowding the midfield. Defensively we need to be much, much better or they'll catch us out again. Shaw on?
Unfortunate that he had to go off, but this is definitely the sort of game where Rodriguez is more valuable than Lallana, methinks. QPR's more than capable of defending if we're playing everything in front of them...need that little bit of cutting edge that Jay provides.
Worst we've played under Poche to date for sure. He needs to bite them a bit at half time and get their focus back. Rickie really off song so far and we're just not creating enough. This is absolutely there to win though.
speaking of which, where is Forren? It concerns me that this is Fonte's first game back in months and there's no CB on the bench
I am not too sure high balls into the box will work. Samba is one of the only defenders to have dominated Rickie so far this season.
