Not been home for long, so haven't seen the highlights yet. But my initial comments: McCarthy and Charles were by far some distance our best two players. (Replacing Bazunu with Macca was always going to be a good decision.) Only one player was poor (same as Liverpool - Downs again). But there were issues with both WBs, and that is a problem when playing with that shape. Manning was very exposed and never seemed sure whether to close down or drop off. Fraser was playing on the wrong side, so our attacks down that side often slowed down. It took Still way too long to correct it. No idea why Scienza came off so early. Similar to Fellows in midweek. Moving Armstrong centrally was always going to be problematic. Starting Stewart three times in a week was always going to be risky. Derby were good.
I just don’t think Manning is a good defender. He is good going forward but he has never been able to put pressure on crosses. If you think back to when he joined he got skinned every week, so I imagine dropping off was how he has tried to fix that - but it is just as bad!
Nobody likes Billy big bollox fans, that's where i'm at. Leicester fans have become it ever since they won the PL, we have done nothing close to even justify it.
Home Some general thoughts... - It's worrying how poor we've looked whenever Ross hasn't played this season and it was ridiculously daft to risk him today. I said before the window shut that it seemed to me that Will wants a big lad upfront and if that's so then going into this season with just Stewart and Downs is a huge error on the face of it. - Downs actually looked slightly better today with a couple of decent moments, particularly the chest down to set up an attack, but still looks some way off the required standard imo. I think Will doesn't really trust him either or he'd have brought him on when Stewart went off. - Overall it was a pretty decent game of football. Not massively high on quality but a decent championship match between what seemed pretty closely matched sides. - Alex was excellent and as I said earlier our motm. In my view he's settled the keeper debate in the last couple of weeks. - Scienza looks good in spells but seems extremely lightweight and that's a bit of an issue in the team in general. I said after Watford we seemed a rather soft side and have seen nothing since to change my mind on that. - Quarshie loads better today than midweek and was the first time I saw him put an excellent tackle in (second half). Glad Will stuck with him as we need a settled defence imo. - Terrible goal to give away, and not the only time we switched off when unhappy about a decision not going our way. - Fellows looks an excellent signing but needs to get his head up a bit more. There was a moment about midway through second half where he was out on the left and Downs made an excellent run across the centre back at the near post but Fellows didn't look up and played the ball to the edge of the box where nobody was. - I said after the Hull debacle that over the coming weeks I was more interested in performances than results and I think that's what I found so disappointing about the second half today. It really was poor, we were very passive in possession, had minimum movement, and were ultimately predictable and easy to play against. The lack of good performances this season is a big concern imo. - LOADS of boos at full time when the players walked over which massively over the top imo. Manning (I think) looked pretty pissed off about it. Each to their own. - Atmosphere wise one of the better away ends of the season. Which shows just how poor our away support has become in recent years.
See. This booing is exactly what is wrong with our club right now. Entitled fans taking out the scars of last season on this season’s players. Deluded twats.
I’m sure that just like after the Boro match, booing players after a draw is incredibly helpful for them. (Can’t be arsed to find the blue ink, but it’s such bellend behaviour).
I agree with this to a degree and there's definitely a high level of entitlement in the modern football fan (at most clubs tbh) but I think there's more nuance involved than simply labelling anyone disappointed as entitles. Ultimately everybody has basically unanimously agreed for quite some time now that money is king in football these days, and I don't think it's expecting too much to have had one good 90 minute performance by October when we have one of the most expensive squads in the league. Also to play devils advocate a bit, last season when we were the financial minnows the general consensus was that we couldn't expect to compete with those with vastly more resources than us. And now this season the tables have turned and we have vastly more resources than others but people aren't allowed to apply that same logic? And if not will there ever be a time again where we can consider ourselves heavy favourites and expect a performance to match that status?
Libby, you are allowed to apply that logic. No doubt. But you have to couple it with reasonable levels of patience. Money cannot fix problems overnight or Man U would be good.
It's the putting down of other clubs that I object to, Tom saying "we should beat the likes of Derby" as if they are some backwater tiny club, They won the league a couple of times and got to a EC semi-final!
Yeah I didn't boo and like I say I found it well over the top personally, we're a very broken fanbase currently sadly. I do think there are bigger things wrong at the club than the fans though. Arguably though if we're allowed to use scar tissue from last season as an excuse for the players it's also at least reasonably fair to say the fans are suffering from it too? I suspect last season had a much bigger impact on the fans who spent thousands than the players who earned millions. Overall the support was fairly decent today for the first hour at least. Not great by any means but decent by the standards of recent years.
Oh absolutely. That is what I am saying is causing all this negativity. It isn’t this year. It is last year, and people need to be honest with themselves that that is the case. Last season’s prem team was worse than our championship team - and the championship team was 4th best in that league. It will take time to get anywhere near a dominant side.
Yeah I'm not saying otherwise re patience, like I say I'm playing devils advocate a bit really. I do think it's a fair point to raise though, that last season the general consensus was that we couldn't expect to compete with the likes of Bournemouth or Fulham due to the difference in finances in the squad, but this season it's unreasonable for people to expect good performances against teams we're miles ahead of in that regard is rather contradictory? Using the United example they're obviously massively underperforming but I don't believe that means it would be entitled for their fans to expect to beat Sunderland today.
Yeah I get that, though I'm not sure them being good half a century ago has much bearing on where the two clubs are today. We've spent the vast majority of the last 60 years in the top flight but that didn't mean I expected us to outperform Bournemouth and Brighton last season. Regarding today I think it depends on people's expectations for the season. If you think we should be aiming for automatic promotion then I think it's fair to say we should be looking to beat bottom half sides home and away. Anyway for me the disappointment this season has come from performances rather than results. I really don't think its it's entitled to think we should have had at least one good 90 minute performance in our first 9 matches. In fact I'll go further and say that had anyone preseason said they didn't think we would have had a good performance by this point, they would have been called overly negative by the same people calling them entitled now.
The day we stop expecting to beat a bottom of the championship side is the day we accept that we are a mid-table championship side. SR have said we are aiming for promotion at the first attempt, what we’re doing at the moment won’t achieve this. If the club had come out and said we want stability and a few seasons in the championship then we would have no place expecting to win today.
I've seen the good times and highs of the 70s and 80s plus the lowest of the lows of administration and near closure of the club. Our identity mainly through my supporting the Saints life has been the plucky underdog tweaking the noses of the elite clubs occasionally. I don't like it when I see our fans belittle other clubs apart from the Skates of course because in the grand scheme of things we are a middle sized club with a limited history although staying in the top league for so long is a good acheivement in my view.
Just back in the front door from Derby Thoughts... It was a game of two halves, but in the sense that the first half of the game was the 30 minutes where Ross Stewart was on the pitch and the second half of the game was the next hour. Honestly, I felt we looked great with Ross on the pitch, probably as cohesive and threatening as we've looked all season. Lots of nice, mixed passing, a balance of quick short play and direct play into Stewart and then exposing the space between the Derby back four and the midfield. Ross individually looked very good and managed to bring the others around him into the game and occupy the centre halves. Hopefully his injury is a minor one Sadly, after Ross went off, we seemed to almost immediately become drained of all ideas of how to progress the play beyond the midfield. Not enough movement, not enough penetration and zero physicality to use as a platform to bring others into the game. As a result the midfield pattern of play became a hell of a lot more sideways and backwards than it was in the opening half an hour as midfielders continually looked up to see nobody moving or stretching the Derby lines Given how obvious Will Still was about his desire to have a physical profile up front to build his attack around, to be finding ourselves in a situation where we look sh!t-or-bust based on whether Ross Stewart's body to sustain itself for an entire season isn't acceptable. For the only feasible alternative to be Damion Downs, who we spent £7m on and looks miles off the level right now, is also unacceptable. At best it is naive from Spors and co, at worst it is negligent I have spent a fair bit of time defending/trying to be pragmatic about Downs but my goodness, he really offers such little to this team. The runs aren't right, he takes up odd positions out of possession, he doesn't press the backline, he doesn't win enough in the air and his touch/first-time passes are clumsy I actually feel a bit sorry for him because he looks way off it and, ordinarily, a 21yo striker would be able to dip his toe in and find his way into this league with some 15 minute cameos in games where business is already taken care of Given the scenario we're in, he gets thrown in when we're under pressure, the crowd is restless and he doesn't deliver and then takes more criticism on his shoulders. He looks absolutely bereft of self-belief right now and I'm not entirely sure what the answer to that is. I'd ordinarily say he needs to play through it but he is such a passenger that it is not fair on the other 10 lads on the pitch - maybe a loan and/or 21s games in the meantime? Anyway, going from back to front... McCarthy was great today and the defence, by and large, seemed pretty settled and comfortable. Wood continues to impress me. I was happy with the defence and the midfield in the past week or so, but it felt like our question marks were in goal and in the final third. We seem to have calmed down the goalkeeping situation now somewhat and McCarthy should stay in goal indefinitely this season. There's a 'spine' emerging of McCarthy, Wood, Charles, Jander, Armstrong and ??? At the other end, we're still all over the place really. Given how obvious Will Still was about his desire to have a physical profile up front to build his attack and entire tactical approach around, to be finding ourselves in a situation where by the first weekend of October we already look ****-or-bust based on whether Ross Stewart's body to sustain itself for an entire season isn't acceptable. For the only feasible alternative to be Damion Downs, who we spent £7m on and looks miles off the level right now, is also unacceptable. At best it is naive from Spors and co, at worst it is negligent I feel we've not yet found the best way to make use of our new signings in the wide areas: Fellows, Scienza, Azaz. These are guys with pedigree (some in this league, some elsewhere) and we've seen flashes from all of them. My feeling is that the formation is helping the central midfielders and the defenders but requiring our new wide players to play roles they aren't quite accustomed to yet. Scienza looked lively today, I loved his positivity in always looking to go forward and he is an effortless dribbler. He needs to cut out the play-acting though because that's already becoming slightly tedious Beyond that, I thought Charles and Jander looked good again in the middle today. Today felt like a game where we got enough from the keeper, defence and midfield to win the game, but the lack of ideas from the forwards left us high and dry and made the draw feel pretty inevitable Anyway, back home with the last servings from the chippy and time to watch MOTD and the EFL highlights. Well done if you made it this far
Certainly history tells you this. Have a title to their name and European cup semi finalists. I don't get the statement that all these teams should just roll over for us
This was me for all of the last season we were in the Championship, as I was living in Wellington. I did stay up to watch the play off final at something like 3/4am in a hotel when on holiday in Indonesia though!! On that note, missed today’s game due to work. Sounds like we missed Stewart? Any news on whether injury is serious?
