Match Day Thread Crystal Palace vs Southampton 12-12-2015 3pm

Football fans are a fickle bunch. Ron will turn this around as Archers said beat Spurs and whinging Wenger and we'll be world beaters

 

Then lose to Norwich.... It's the Saints way.

 

Yes, we need to be cagey about that one, a couple of cheep goals will knock us off our perch and knock us down the pecking order.

 

They were poor, they were ****, what's the difference?

 

I love Ron, but it's very fair to question his recent selections, as they have been dreadful (in my opinion). We are still a decent side, and with more potential to be unlocked, which is why it's thoroughly depressing to watch these team selections gift the opposition points.

I said in the summer that we should have gone all out for Wijnaldum, he's exactly the type of player we need

 

I would rather watch paint dry than watch Match of the Day and it isn't because of Saints bad form its because of their **** choice of pundits.

 

"Every player but one was ****" is rarely, if ever, true. "Some/Many/Most of the players were poor" is much more likely to be true.

Vin

 

Definitely agree that we have a Morgan-shaped hole in our side, if we could get someone who could fill that kind of role half as effectively as he did it'd do us wonders, I guess that I just wrote off any hope of really accomplishing that as soon as he left. If we have players in our sights we think could do that then we should definitely pull out all the stops, unless Ron is still rock-solid in his belief in Clasie once he gets to full speed. I think going out looking for the new Schneiderlin would be a bit of a blind search though, for a club like us I fear he is the needle we found resting on top of the haystack, now we've lost him we're gonna have to find one at the bottom. Maybe I overestimate Schneiderlin or underestimate the black box, though.

Tempo I feel like fluctuates massively depending on confidence, I never mind too much when we work the ball fairly slowly side to side when the other option is to look for hopeful passes but I see a lot of people get infuriated by that (If I had a nickel for every time I've heard 'X player only passes backwards'...) what can frustrate me is when we're clearly lacking rhythm when players can just turn and make the easy pass the ball along the chain i.e. LB>CM>CB>RB or whatever without looking up at the open space they could move into or passes they could make. That's where Morgan's effortless authority and confidence worked wonders, even when we weren't at our best he could move the ball and move with the ball quickly and efficiently. So I don't reckon we have players who can't/don't play at a high tempo (Which can also translate to headless chicken), it's just a cyclical thing and something that needs to be coaxed out of a few of our players.

 

Some players simply are irreplaceable, and not just for Saints. Arsenal have never been able to replace Patrick Vieira, Man Utd never replaced Keane, and it's most unlikely we'll be able to replace Schneiderlin. The thing is to find another way of playing, without those players. At the moment we're unbalanced, but there isn't another Morgan waiting to slot in and do his job; the balance needs to alter, and that's about finding the right shape and system with the players we have. Far easier said than done; in the meantime we need to focus on the simple stuff like not giving the ball away too cheaply, and not allowing space in front of our back four. The rest will come; we have good players, eventually they'll gel. Hopefully soon.

 

I know. But that's how they do it I suppose.

 

Shane Long's movement is better. Jerome is a good Championship goalscorer but not Premiership striker. Long has scored some important goals for us but he is not prolific, however how much game time has he had this season - his goals to starts isn't bad.

 

On the whole, I don't think in the last two games that we have played that badly, we just simply did not take our chances; particularly against Aston Villa. When confidence is high those would have gone in, however we are going through a lean spell but if you are not scoring any minor error will lead to a defeat.

This season was always going to be tough replacing Schneiderlin and Clyne while strengthening our squad, particularly when many other teams were also strengthening without losing players - there is very little difference in quality between many teams, however we still have a fairly thin squad and none of our summer signings have come in and done something exceptional (many have done ok). Koeman is trying to change things around to improve our fortunes but much of the personnel remain the same as there are few options.

Looking at our side, you have to ask where are the goals going to come from, as aside from Mane and Pelle, we don't have many players who you feel will chip in.

 

Also, I think we should compare ourselves to Palace and say that they have invested well in the summer and have some fine players - perhaps they are being underestimated and they certainly have a plethora of good attacking options.

 

It's not the questioning, it's the factual, matter of fact statements about decisions bring wrong and obviously so. They're not all that way and it's as if Ron has no idea what he's doing compared to the experts on here.

 

Didn't you realise FTL we have around 250 managers on average posting on here. All with opinions and differing ways of seeing things. Errr isn't that also called human nature?

 

We could never replace Morgan by buying one player. It would cost us far too much and I doubt we could even attract a player that good. What we should have done is buy one defensive player and a attacking link up player.

 

But what if he really doesn't have a idea and is panicing? Sometimes even managers run out of ideas. I am not saying Koeman doesn't have a clue but I am saying it can happen. (Playing devils advocate)

 

Of course it can happen, but I don't think it is here.

 

Thing is, none of us know really what goes on, so all the "HE HAS TO DO THIS OR HE IS WRONG" stuff is just merely speculation. Perhaps Long has been banging them in daily from all angles this week in training. Maybe Harry Reed has looked completely bobbins at Staplewood. Possibly Cedric has just split up from his girlfriend and is mentally all over the place. Virgil might have dropped a hammer on his toe doing some DIY last weekend.

WE HAVE NO IDEA.

Ron does. So that puts him at a massive advantage, discounting the fact he's played an awful lot more football than the rest of us put together.

Now as I've stated, I don't subscribe necessarily to the "we can't criticise Ronald Koeman because he once played for Barcelona" train of thought, but I also don't subscribe to the whole "if he doesn't do as I think then he's an idiot. 100%" train of thought either. We can have an opinion on things, and we can say what probably looks right on paper, but there are any number of imponderables as I've stated above that we just have no clue on, and have to trust the likes of Ronald and his training staff on.

 

Owen has played more games then all of us as well. But then he knows jack **** about what's going on.