Well my first trip to Cardiff could have gone better.. To be honest though, I haven't found myself disappointed. Found it pretty easy to brush off those dropped points. Partly that's because I never expected us to win all seven remaining games anyway (though I didn't anticipate this to be the one where we slipped up) - those three consecutive home wins were nice, but it was always still a case of waiting for the play-offs. But mainly it's because I will never have any sympathy with a team who loses after missing a billion chances - you kind of deserve to have football come back and bite you on the bum. Zero sympathy with WBA today, zero sympathy with Chelsea today, and zero sympathy with us today. Sad that Stu's Saints career has quite possibly ended with that injury though.
Well, one thing is certain, and that is the Lemon Laces experiment sadly failed. We therefore need a sacrificial lamb volunteer to create a Leicester thread. Don’t all rush at once.
Lots of talk about the loss being the fault of the strikers for missing chances and very little mention of the two goals we conceded. If you keep a clean sheet you only need to score one goal to win a game, and if you look at the league table it's very clear our defensive record is our weak point. Nobody in the division has scored more goals than Saints but our goals against tally is mid-table standard. Given that we average something like 66% possession (supposedly because the opposition can't score without the ball) that's pretty poor. For all the good work he's done I just don't think Martin is very good at organising a defence. If we do win the playoffs I think we'd need a spectacular transfer window to have any hope of staying up. We wouldn't have 66% possession too often in the Premier League and I fear a Martin team could regularly get ripped to pieces.
You were right first time Chilcs. My last match thread was Saints v Leicester in October 2019. I am still receiving counselling from it.
I'd say now's the chance to complete your redemption arc, but does anyone actually give a **** anymore? Leave the match threads to the play offs. If posters are desperate to talk about friendlies (because thats what the remaining games are now) they can put it in Saints stuff thread.
Well, not what I was expecting or wanting this week. I’m not in the blame Russ camp at least not for the result. His football is what it is, loads of possession, loads of chances - big chances at that and unfortunately not a lot of goals. We should have offloaded Adams 2 seasons ago but we didn’t and his squandering of chances has cost us again. Great at some things but so so poor at scoring in big games when the pressure is on. We aren’t setup to hold onto a 1-0 lead and that’s our biggest failing, squandering all our chances and conceding 2 in the second half is the story of the season.
Absolutely! We were winning at HT against a very injury hit team. We should have been able to continue to move forward positively & 2nd half subs should have maintained our dominance or improved us. As above, defensively & mentally we’re very poor / mid table & it will be similar for the play offs. Can we get to the PL that way? Sure but I’m not convinced.
Had a similar thought about those three teams. Clearly they all need to sack their managers as they are, allegedly, responsible for the failures of the players. As for RM's defensive failures, turn that araounf and you could argue that it doesn't matter if we lose goals if we score enough. Not a philosophy that would work against PL clubs, butm could have got us out of here
I'm pissed off that we lost to such a poor team. That we show the same soft underbelly time after time, and the inability to manage the team in game by making the same old mistakes. But there was very little chance we would have won all remaining games anyway, I certainly didn't expect us to, though there was always a fools hope that we'd somehow do it. It's the hope that kills... What we need to do now is try and get some of our forwards back in form, develop a game plan for the same scenarios we keep facing and failing to deal with, and rest our most important players so that they are fit for the play offs. None of our wingers are scoring anymore. Che is the only consistent scorer in recent weeks and he is always liable to a stinker. If we are to have any chance in the playoffs we need the likes of Fraser and Adam Armstrong to be scoring again because we all know we are not going to close out any game 1-0. If Downes is out for any of the playoffs we are ****ed. If Russel Martin decides for the 27th time that he still can't see the obvious and plays anyone at DM except Downes or Charles we are ****ed. Rothwell should only ever be used as the Stu replacement (WE LEARNT THAT ABOUT 4 MONTHS AGO). Now we have no Stu, so we need to decide on the best way forward in the play offs without him. For me it would be Downes and Smallbone with Aribo in the Stu role. Brooks could play there? But he's just not hitting the heights that he should be and Rothwell can be the sub replacement in the Stu role if we need a goal. I'd like to see Edozie get the first half of games on the left, and Fraser the second half to try and get one or both back in form. Keep Adam Armstrong on the right and Che through the middle. If we need to change things because it's just not working and we need a goal, rather than chucking on all our wingers on and completely messing with any semblance of team balance, we could switch to a 442, move Adam Armstrong up front WITH Che, Bring on Brooks on the right and choose which of Smallbone or Aribo to partner Downes and which should come off for Brooks based on fitness/how the midfield battle is balanced. If we are starting to falter and the other team is coming into it and we need more control. Change to a 4231 and bring on Charles to partner Downes. These are things we should be able to do and things we will need to be able to do if we are to win the play offs IMO. I don't know anything about football I admit, but they seem to make more sense to me then just throwing all your wingers on and playing a purely attack minding midfielder at DM.
I think RM deserves criticism tbh. You build a team from the back and you start with a solid defence. Ours was suspect as the season started - and during the 25 game unbeaten it rarely changed. The last ten games or so has seen way too much fiddling. And the January window was a disaster that totally unbalanced the team. Bournemouth fans said at the time we had taken two talented attacked who did very little in defence. If they knew that, our scouts should have told RM.
This match was at least a mercy killing for hope. Am not angry at manager or players…they wanted to win as much as we did. Bit of a roller coaster, but this season has been mainly enjoyable, especially when you remember last season. I don’t like the play offs, but so much better than not being in the playoffs. At the end of last season I thought we might struggle to even get there. Saints forever.
Martin can’t keep complaining about our strikers missing chances, it’s been the same all season. He should know it by now and know how to shut a game down and see out a 1-0 win. In that respect it is on Russ.
Assuming that Downes is available (and we lose no-one else), I'd suggest that we have three main options for replacing Stu in the play-offs: 1. The most like-for-like option: To play Rothwell in place of Stu. He's arguably the only suitable option who can replace those bursting runs which Stu makes (the primary feature of Stu's game). 2. The "easiest" option: To play both Aribo and Smallbone, rather than just one of them. But neither offers what Stu does. 3. The change of formation option: To revert to 4-2-3-1, to probably include starting Charles alongside Downes (though Martin might prefer Smallbone). Could choose between Brooks, Sulemana or Aribo (or Smallbone if not used next to Downes) to play in behind Che. Personally I'd love to see us try the third option, maybe with Adam back on the right and Brooks in the hole. Bring one of our left wingers back into the XI. But the key word there is "try" because I don't know if it will work. Try it before we buy it. I wouldn't want us to use it for the first time in the play-offs. We need to go into the play-offs with a strategy that we are at least semi-confident will work. And that is why these next three games are so massive - we can afford to try something different, without needing to worry if it doesn't work. Having a second player in at DM alongside Downes would also hopefully enable our FBs to stay wide. And never have we been better this season than when Kyle was flying down the right-flank, linking up with Adam.
I also agree about giving the wingers more game time before the play-offs (regardless of whether 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1) due to how rusty they all now look. Albeit I hope we never again see Edozie and Fraser both trying to play left-wing at the same time, like we saw yesterday. That was bizarre from Martin.
This is the thing. Most teams now play with a double pivot like that, because it works. The only team that doesn’t it Man City, because they have Rhodri, the best in the world in that position. Surprise, surprise that Russ tries to do similar to them. When Rhodri is out, they look half the team, but they move Stones or Kovacic into the position. What they don’t do is put Silva or De Bruyne there, because that’s mental…
I really hope that the club stands by Stuart, he’s been great for us and has worn the shirt with pride. A years extension is not asking too much is it?
