http://www.itv.com/sport/football/article/2013-08-13/premier-league-season-preview-southampton/? 10th.
14th again from Joe's uncle http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/aug/13/premier-league-preview-southampton Even with video if you're bored http://www.theguardian.com/football/video/2013/aug/13/southampton-premier-league-preview-video
On of the comments on the Guardian is pretty good! Especially the disaster movie part. "Here we go... The drums pound out their rhythm, the trumpets blast out their fury and once again we prepare for the agony and the ecstasy of a Southampton Premiership season. I'll actually start by doing something a little different and congratulating Ricky Lambert (“Saint Ricky” to us Southampton fans) on his England call-up, whether he gets on the pitch or not. These sort of things have happened before... Kevin Davis and Jay Bothroyd both got England caps after all... but rarely have they been so well deserved. At a time when any flash new thing who show potential and a brief run of form can seemingly get into the squad (Zaha, Sterling and as much as I like him Chamberlain being obvious examples; all solid enough players with the potential to be great but all given caps pretty softly) it's a welcome sight to see an elder statesmen who fought his way up through the game be rewarded, even if it did take an injury/transfer crisis to get him there. And I don't think it's just a reward for Lambert. I genuinely think he can do a good job for England and while his age clearly means that it would be foolish for him to be anything more than a bit-part player in the short term he can do some good. Yes, he's a battering ram... but he's a battering ram with a ballista mounted on top, a lockpick hanging off the back and a pavise protecting him. In the box he can cause havoc, smashing in headers, muscling his way through for tap ins and the like but he's got a rocket of shot on him from further out (although I believe he'll be unlikely to show off his dead ball skills for England), he's got an excellent eye for a pass and the skill to deliver it (a massively underated part of his game is how many chance he creates for Southampton which have nothing to do with brute strength) and his hold-up play is excellent. It may be that he flops at international level and this is a “one and done” appearance due merely to the circumstances Hodgson finds himself in... but if given a chance, I don't think he will. Back onto the more Saints-centric view and “agony and ecstasy” is a rather apt turn of phrase. Few teams could thrill, delight and entertain the way Saints did for part of last season. But likewise, few teams could horrify, dismay and fall apart in the way Saints did. At times our season resembled the early stages of a disaster movie, scenes of apparent bliss and serenity dispelled by the sudden arrival of an unfortunately timed tornado/volcano/earthquake/tidal wave/ice age/alien invasion (delete as appropriate) before the chisel jawed everyman action hero who was down and out but ready to serve once again (Ricky Lambert), frustratingly handsome foreign exchange student (Morgan Schneiderlin), brilliant but erratic mad scientist (Gaston Ramirez), annoying kid who somehow saves the day (Luke Shaw), long lost brother who happened to return right at the key time (Jack Cork), stoner dude who does nothing for ages, suddenly is amazing for a brief period and then goes back to doing nothing (Jay Rodriguez), grizzled ex-army vet who briefly helps and provides some comedy with badly time bathroom shenanigans (Jason Puncheon), arrogant and generally good but makes one huge mistake businessman (Boruc) and beautiful but flakey love interest (em... Adam Lallana?) save the day but still leave the world a ruined, destroyed place. Guly de Prado plays the character who dies early on while Fonte and Hooiveld are those in charge behind the scenes who try really hard but only make everything worse (although Fonte has a redemption story in the middle somewhere). The home stretch of the season is perhaps a perfect example of this. At the end of March and start of April we put together a run of three wins against Liverpool, Chelsea and Reading... and good wins at that, with Southampton clearly being the better team in each match. We were up to 11th in the table and considering our upcoming games and the form we were in it didn't look outlandish to suggest we could pass our highest ever Premiership finish and crack the top eight. What actually happened was four draws and two losses (including being tonked by a West Brom side who were in horrible form) where we scored three goals in six games. We weren't quite dragged back into the relegation battle... but we did have to have a few nervous glances over our shoulder at times. Our chairman has ambitions of us reaching the top six. Our matches with the two Manchester clubs, Chelsea and Liverpool showed that we have the talent to perform at that level. Our matches with everyone else showed we lacked the consistency to do so."
That's just the start. He wrote a 7000 word epic over a few comments, for some strange reason. Don't bother copy and pasting the rest.
I wasn't going to! I thought the first comment was probably enough xD I'm just quietly reading it now. It's pretty good actually.
That is a perfectly fair opinion of our last season. Three teams that did not come to St Mary´s (Pool, Chelsea and City) were well dealt with, will be interesting if we can break down teams like Stoke, Spam and Swansea this season.
"Whether Pochettino opts for Kelvin Davis or Artur Boruc depends on who shines in the pre-season friendlies with very little between the two custodians." What??? Dont they watch us at all...?
He must have written it for a website, surely? It's the most in depth assessment (unnecessarily at times) of our previous season and the next as I've seen anywhere. Also, Guly hate. Lots of it. "and Guly de Prado, who's frankly pretty terrible at this level, had an awful season last year (the highlights being own goals, appalling misses and being done for drunk driving) but is somewhat of a utility player so will likely sit on the bench a few times and has been in pretty good form during the pre-season games."
Maybe it's just a really extreme in joke. There was only one own goal, I seem to remember that it was just a deflection in the wall but that Guly played pretty well that evening, three days after the Stoke game where he was probably MotM. And we should have won both, those two games + the Sunderland defeat probably spelt the end for Nigel with hindsight.
He did play well against Arsenal and the own goal was just unlucky. The last game I saw was the Sunderland game (H), we really were poor... I was gutted as I only get to see 3 games a year max (Wigan and Sunderland last year ). Mayuka had that weird first half cameo where he was useless, they scored a lucky goal and we had absolutely no teeth at all going forward.
To be honest, that preview is by a LONG way the most well researched and accurate summation that I've seen. Pretty much bang on.
Great little preview for the new season, all about Saints. [video=youtube;Y2lOtgEb14E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2lOtgEb14E&feature=youtu.be[/video]
Enjoyed that video...glad it got as far as SRL's call up. Interesting choice of goals...had forgotten Marsden's.
http://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/southampton/news/season-preview-southampton_98027.html A negative one. 17th.
I was gonna say the same. I'm happy to let negative predictions go by provided they're justified (as Jacob Steinberg's was) but this is strange. Could well be battling for top half but Cortese in the boardroom will disrupt them too much? Not sure on that..!
