Nathan Jones sacked as Saints er....."manager"

Difficult side to beat, we've lost 5/6 league games under him

 

We won our last three games before today, and Villa needed three huge slices of luck to beat us today.

 

And yet we're still bottom and still losing.

 

Yeah that's a bit of a daft statement really.

We're certainly not hard to beat but we're definitely harder to beat than under Ralph as don't think we've lost by more than one since Anfield?

Means not a lot in reality (still 0 points) but shows that we're always in games and if we could get that striker in it just might make the difference.

 

We were pretty good today but his subs made us worse.

He literally couldn’t have picked worse subs. Took off the best performers. Why Lavia instead of Diallo who was playing terrible? Why edozie instead of arma?

Crazy

 

Diallo recovered the ball many times, must have been the most. Yes his distribution with the ball needs work but, in a match that was mainly played in the midfield, I felt he held his own.

I can only assume they don’t think Lavia is has enough in the tank for the full 90 at the moment…

 

I was buzzing after the win against Everton (obviously), but also really happy for Jones.

Without wanting to get too high when we win and too low when we lose, I just struggle to understand his thinking and tactics.

Making so many formation changes in each game must be a nightmare for the players. Jo Tessem was bewildered again on Solent by the three at the back in the second half.

It looks to me like Jones wants to play a back 3 but can’t due to our players suiting the 4. So he keeps flipping and flopping between formations and we end up with random players in positions they shouldn’t be. Why was Edozie playing wing back at the start of the second half?

 

Not sure why we were all imagining off the back of some relatively fortunate wins, that he was suddenly good. He might come good, but not there yet.

 

If you give the ball away as often as you get it back then you might as well not get it back.
He works hard, probably a nice guy, but someone who shouldn’t be starting at this level

 

The guys a ****ing joke.

 

As long as teams attack us in a regular fashion then we will be fine

 

Fair play, game of opinions I guess. I honestly think Diallo is a championship player, tops.

Winning the ball back a couple of times nowhere near makes up for how often he gave it away in dangerous areas.
I don’t think he’s anywhere near strong enough or clever enough for premier league football.

Gebuinely think he is a massive liability alongside Baszunu, Adam A and Ely. Simply not premier league quality players IMO.

 

Its a case of needing quality all over the pitch and its glaring when absent at this level. Adams and Diallo are both just ok. Diallo gets away with it having quality players around him, Adams stands out up there on his own at the moment. Needs that quality foil alongside him again.

 

We have very few PL quality players so why the **** we bought the Argentinian lad and Orisic I don't know. If they're not good enough to make an immediate impact then we've simply spunked a load of money on simply more bench warmers. Our recruitment from the manager down is ****ing appalling

 

Exactly. All we need is for teams to never counter attack and never give away a corner or free kick.

 

not having a shot on target against Forest now makes complete sense. It denied them any opportunity to counter attack

 

Just realised that the above is bollocks - had obviously expunged the Brighton match from my memory!

 

I’m confused how can we play so well against City, and so poor in the majority of the other games. The Palace win was okay second half, poor first half. Didn’t watch Everton but sounded similar to Palace.

We haven’t come out and pressed like we did against City in any of the games. Why not?

Yes City were poor, but a poor City is still a tough team to play against.

 

I think I'm right in saying that was the 7th time this season we've been involved in a 1-0 result in the PL, and we've lost six of them.

That statistic by itself is bad enough. But then you throw in the fact that, aside from arguably the one against Man Utd at home, they have all been awful, awful games. The sort of games that deserve to finish 0-0 and never be mentioned again. So the fact that we're even regularly losing those games is a massive concern.

Of course this is by no means all on Jones. Five of those seven games were under Ralph. But at least they were mainly away games. Under Jones, we're now bringing them to St Marys too.

If you wanted to try and find some sort of positive, it would be that the margins are so, so fine that it might not take too much to swing those results in our favour going forward. For example, if we'd turned two of those 1-0 losses into a 1-0 win and a 0-0 draw, we'd be 14th right now. Maybe even 13th. And what is arguably the best way of improving our chances of swinging those fine margins into our favour? Sign a decent striker in the next nine days.

 

I made a similar point on the Villa thread - we have a losing mentality. If you can’t win a game, don’t lose!