Isn't just Championship strikers that struggle. The likes of Shevchenko, Falcao, Torres, Higuain were all crap when they played in the Prem. Makes you kinda appreciate Shane Long just that little bit more.
This made great reading this morning. None of the bottom three have won in their last fifteen games! Saints have three wins in their last five games all against those bottom three!
An odd one, didn't seem like a bad tackle when it happened, though he was in obvious pain. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50884180 (dam, Tom beat me to it by seconds)
However, a superb shot nevertheless. Tried it again a few minutes later, fortunately Alex was up to it. Showed the spirit of the team which was refreshingly positive. We’ll need that level at least for the rest of the season, that’s for sure.
Yeah, I think @archers nailed it when he said long is Ings choice of strike partner. Makes total sense. It’s a case of dead mans boots up front che will have to bide his time and take the chances that come. He’s guaranteed to get time over the next month, fingers crossed he gets chances and puts them away.
I think we are trying to set a record for most missed opportunities from 3yards with an open goal. Bertrand last week, long and hojberg this week.
I was harder to place that header than it looked because of the speed the ball was sent in at. I would not be too critical . I was glad to see Armstrong singled out for praise by Merrington on the radio yesterday. He is something of an unknown quantity and I do bet the suspicion that we perhaps have under-estimated the quality of player we have bought. I would rather see him in the squad as opposed to Romeu at this point in time.
I’d rather have him in the starting team than Oriol, but I like having O on the bench, particularly with Hojbjerg struggling so badly for form.
Adams seems okay to me. I think he could very likely still come good given some time. It’s unfortunate we don’t have the luxury of bedding him in. The problem was playing him and not Ings at the start but of the season. Ings has to be the focal point and goto guy. Adams could do alright as a partner for Ings the a la Long, though he’s not quite as good as either Long or Redmond in that role. We seem to be a much better team in the counter. We have some attacking players with speed. We don’t really have master dribblers aside from Boufal and possibly Djenepo, but we do have midfielders who are willing to bust their asses and who are all decent passers, including longer balls from deep. And of course Ings is a good target guy or withdrawn striker. Really he does everything well except being a touch slow. When we press, I think we actually end up getting sucked up the pitch as everyone is “attacking” on defense. This negates our strength in the open field as it compresses the pitch. It also leaves us horribly exposed on the counter, as our midfielders can not recover. How we are playing now seems to me like a lot closer to how we played last year. It’s how Sims was so effective. You get the ball to Ings or JWP, and they can feed the runner, then trail in behind them to get the return pass or follow up on a rebound. I wouldn’t call it route 1 long ball. It’s not like everyone is behind the ball. We play longer passes but not necessarily always up the middle and/or over the top. More like a compact 4-4-2 where we let the other team have some possession but we keep our shape, so we can keep open our known direct counter attacking channels. Kind of a poor man’s Leicester, I guess. It’s a simpler style, but perhaps more effective because of it. I think maybe what happened to Hasenhuttl is like what happens in your FM game when you spend 50 hours tweaking your crazy 2-5-3 assymetrical tactic with the Ramdeuter and trequartista and then you take over a league to side and your players are like “WTF?” And you get sacked five games in. Our players are pretty good at their positions but lack that extra bit of culture/nous to play Hassenhuttl’s outside-the-box genius tactic. When Hasenhuttl first got here, he kept it simple as he was new. But then over the summer he tried to transition to the fancier stuff and it did not take. Now he is letting the players play again.
