Musty I'm not convinced by Gomis either, but the whole team were dreadful today, we simply didn't turn up, so clearly Monk didn't do a good enough job off motivating the boys.........
Just got back from the game, it's bad enough that I had to watch a gutless performance, than the English pricks singing Swing **** low sweet ****ing chariot, plus that god awful oh when the saints go marching on. Don't they want to play with any pride? The ref less said about his first half performance as he was most biased homer I've see in ages, three tackeles from behind, Taylor taken out and no card. Shelvey in his frustrations did it and oh a yellow card. They won every second ball, got their foot on where our lads were too worried they might hurt themselves. God knows what Monk does with them at training, where has our passing game and wing play gone?? We're so one dimensional, Southampton were happy to let us have the ball, because we did **** all with it. We're so narrow with our play, only when Jeff came on we had some width, but he did bugger all as Southampton closely marked him to nullify his threat. That's why we need some variety bit just getting the ball to our one and only winger. We're powder puff in midfield nobody is doing it for me, what I did like when Leon came on, he got the ball moving quicker than the pedestrian football were playing, teams must love to play us at the moment because we're so predictable. Southampton to be fair are a decent side, but we made them look a lot better that they actually are. When was the last time we scored from a corner? They attack with pace and drive, which is what we used to do. Monk needs to sort it out, because I see a VERY long season ahead of us. If we keep on like this forget top half we will be scrapping.
"Striker Bafetimbi Gomis, who has scored four in the league so far this season, went missing before he was found and substituted at half-time. His contribution? Seven passes in total, no efforts on goal and what is now his obligatory stray into an offside position." - BBC The Pressure is on Monk now, lets see how he comes through..........
time will tell Dai, I hope I am wrong. one thing I did say was about the striker, you would rather have Gomis over the 3 I mentioned?
For me the root of the problem is how we are using Ayew. It TOTALLY unbalances the team. We saw that at Watford and what's unacceptable is that we didn't learn from that miserable defeat - we replicated it at St Marys. What's worse, the players seem not to be playing for one another, as though there's disharmony in the squad. We are a shadow of ourselves from only a few weeks ago. Before Watford the talk in the Press was of Champion League football. Todays performance had relegation written all over. We had a tried and tested system - the template of the Club. It's been torn to shreds in the last few weeks.
I disagree with those blaming the players instead I blame the system we played. When you play the top 6 teams such as Man City you can be a tad defensive and look for the counter attack but when you play teams such as Southampton who are for heavens sake on the same level as us you need to be positive. When we were warming up and I saw we had no wingers, because Ayew is not really a winger but more of an inside forward, I knew we were in trouble. Sure enough because Taylor was heavily involved in defence there was a lot of space on the left but with no wide man the midfield was forced to turn inside where they were invariably blocked off. We then kept moving the ball right but with the narrowness of our game this meant this side of the pitch was overpopulated with the same result. Southampton counter attacked with pace some thing we couldn't do. Gomis was rightly subbed but when Montero came on the play now kept switching to the left but because he was marked by two players he was not as effective as usual and with no pacy winger on the right we were still too narrow and our passing game is suffering .In my years of watching football the most dangerous attacking ploy is still down the flanks and supplying good crosses. Most of Gomis' goals have come from this. So I repeat I don't blame the players but blame the tactics and you have to ask who is responsible for them.
I agree with that. I thought the players deserved criticism for the Hull performance because of their inability to put the ball away but Monk really needs to take the rap for yesterday. He needs to change things because I'm convinced that we have talented players but they seem to be on different wavelengths. The system definitely needs looking at.
They also deserve criticism for their inability to actually challenge for 50 -50 ball , too slow in thought and action. Southampton were no great sakes but they played it simple and with purpose ,something we seem to have forgotten to do. They knew they were collectively poor because at the end of the game with the exception of Ash and Shelvey they kept their distance from the away end.
On the bright side I did think Taylor marked Mane well and had a decent game. OK I'm clutching at straws.
