Match Day Thread Southampton v Leicester City Saturday 17th October 2015 KO 3pm

I took huge comfort in the words of one of the most ambitious chairmen this league has known in Nicola Cortese. We made massive strides under him which made me think that Southampton could seamlessly stride into the higher echelons of the Premier league. In our first real push towards this end we finished 8th in the PL and I was throwing around the same sentiments about not selling our best players as you Fosse, but unfortunately the unquestionable and tangible ambition of Saints does not equate to the prestige or glamour that sustained success has aquired for the destinations ( Liverpool, Man Utd, Arsenal,Spurs) of our best performers. Despite the perils of reaching our so called plateau or ceiling we have the huge advantage of the money we have available in the form of the whopping TV deals, this means we can take quality players out of leagues like Scotland and Holland as they cannot financially compete with us. Leicester may well be the exception to this rule but from looking at ourselves and a similar club Swansea you can see that losing your best players is a formality and the competence of the scouts/recruitment who replace them is how clubs at our level really progress.

 

As annoyed as I was after the final whistle, if someone had offered me 7 points out of Swansea, Chelsea and Leicester before the Swansea game I'd have snatched their hand off. It should have been 9, but we're much better off than before the Swansea game.

 

Just thinking:
so there are 6 possible big clubs (Man City, Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs) who can keep stealing the best players from the 6 next best teams. At some point there won't be any space left in their squads for these players. It may seem a short term advantage to weaken the teams just below you to maintain your position but to win the Premiership or the Champions League you will need better players. The most successful teams recently (Man City and Chelsea) have not followed this strategy. I'm predicting we will not lose so many players next year because they will wise up and be as clever as me!

 

Can't argue with that.

 

City and Chelsea haven't been doing it because they're buying world class. The others have been purchasing from ourselves because they've struggled to buy world class, and we offer very good options a tier below without the risks inherent in buying overseas, and often with the added benefit of home-grown status. Hence, Man U get the best of ours (and are willing to pay a premium to do so), Arsenal goes for the kids, and Liverpool throws money in near-random patterns and hopes for the best. All the hallmarks of their normal buying strategies.

tl;dr Liverpool isn't being devious, they're just unimaginative. As evidenced by the fact that their purchasing habits haven't been the slightest bit beneficial to date. Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

 

I'm not sure (it's quite late here in Serbia) but I think I agree!

 

Yep say it as it is Ron!

 

Well we've been arguing the wrong thing I was only saying Davis was, be it in a small or large way, was at fault for the goal. Not that that makes Gazzaniga good. I'd still pick Davis over him any day, in fact someone was wearing a Gazzaniga shirt at the ground today I did a double take someone paid £50 plus printing on that!

 

Was he in his early twenties, about 6' 3, Latin looks and sat behind Ron?

 

All of this will be forgotten when we walk all over Liverpool at Anfield.

 

Used to have a pony tail

 

Should have seen that coming. Somehow didn't.

 

Deleted

 

This is true, but even so more good sides acts as a buffer. It's easy for the unclever to simply look at Saints and buy up 3-4 players when we are the only ones challenging. But if you have 4-5 sides, they don't know who to look at. And they can't buy 3 players from every side. The damage gets spread around so maybe the next tier of teams only loses one player each.

 

Yeah, I don't disagree. There are a lot of benefits inherent in having a deeper pool of high-quality players and teams in the PL, and that's one. We became a conspicuous transfer target because we had a fantastic season with a large supply of good, prime-or-younger players; as the purchasing power of the mid-tier continues to grow, so will the number of possible directions in which Liverpool can go when they panic buy.

 

There was one sub that I was crying out for from almost the moment the second half started. How on earth Romeu was left on the bench, I have no idea. I disagreed that Clasie should have come on ahead on him, and I was pulling my hair out at seeing Jay come on ahead of him. What impact has Jay had from the bench this season at all really? Bring him on when the game is in the bag to get some game time in his legs, fine. Bring him on when we're in need of a goal and getting desperate, fine. But he is still so far away from being where we need him to be, that bringing him on today when we did was just an awful decision. Even ignoring the fact that, in my view, going back to my starting point, we were crying out for Romeu in the middle of the park.

Leicester can't continue doing this and getting points on the board. One day a team will see out a lead against them. One day 2-0 will become 3-0 rather than 2-1. But whilst they do continue to fight back, fair play to them. They certainly did not deserve to lose, in my view. They were miles better than us in the second half, and even in the first half Huth had a glorious chance to score. Whereas from open play, we created very little for the whole 90 minutes.

Brilliant to see that we are finally, finally - after all these years - starting to look threatening at set pieces. I can get excited a winning a corner. Just a shame that we had so little of the ball in their half in the second half to win any more corners!!!

 

Yeah, Koeman needs to sort out his subs. Throwing Jay on for the sake of it is stupid when Romeu is on the bench and we're protecting a one goal lead.

 

Just realised we would be 5th if we'd won

 

Absolutely. There's some logic in trying to get another player on capable of getting behind their defense as the game stretches out, but they were overrunning our midfield for most of the second half...they didn't need to throw the kitchen sink and expose themselves at the back too terribly, because so many of their attacks came off changes in possession.

 

Well, I got up at 4am to catch the end of the first half and all the second. First chance I've had to see leicester play and wow, they are us two seasons ago. They ran us into submission and outbattled us. We are a good passing side but when they run around like that its like there are 18 of them on the pitch and there are no passes available. Like we did 2 years ago they have started great and will go on but they simply wont be able to maintain that sort of football for the season, injuries and exhaustion will start to show but they will be well safe before then. I really enjoyed watching them play.

We were done over in midfield. Pretty sure Koeman will be kicking himself after this because I don't think he expected them to press that hard and that well for the whole second half. I felt bad for the subs because who the hell would want to come on in the middle of that bombardment. We needed to change shape and tactics but continued to try and slip through with a quick one-two on the counter when we should have packed the midfield and held onto the ball. if they're pressing so hard they're going to give fouls trying to get it back and we ended up doing that ourselves. The one thing we don't seem very good at is putting our foot on it and shielding it, drawing players in and freeing up space elsewhere. I would have subbed Wanyama and Prowsey personally brought on Clasie and Romeu.

No one player to blame on the Saints side, probably a managerial cock-up if anything. Well done Leicester, very entertaining.