Match Day Thread Southampton v Manchester United, Sunday 29th November 2pm Sky Sports Main Event

Let's not meltdown, but I would point out that Mark Hughes was sacked after he'd drawn with United having been 2-0 up. Trust Ralph came in with cardboard boxes this morning and I'll await the announcement of the new manager. Harsh but fair.

Yesterday was a reality check. We're still a good side, but not quite as good as we hoped - certainly with a couple of injuries. Their back four would have had a more uncomfortable game if Ings had been playing. This is a criticism of no-one. But clubs of our stature don't lightly miss a player of his quality. I would also go with the Redmond observation too. While I think Moussa is lovely to watch, he has neither the threat nor work-rate of Redmond.

 

I think it was Ralph himself that was asking for a streamlined squad to offer a natural pathway for the Academy players to break into the first team so we are bound to have a couple on the bench. We are never going to compete with top 6 clubs with the quality that they can fill their benches with.

 

I find that our colonial cousins are more comfortable with Shermans than Septics

 

Is 5 an attempt to distract from TIO1#7's spoon antics?

 

I’ll always back the skilful ones with a bit of magic....








as long as they’re given a run of 6 games

 

Which is fine, but if your not going to trust them to bring on, then whats the point?

 

I wonder what Dan N'Lundulu is thinking today, would he ever in his wildest dreams ever expected to play in the Premier League against Man U? Yes, it was only 5 minutes but it is on his CV.

 

I think we just lack a little bit of depth to be able to play our style for 90mins. We were lucky to hold on against wolves too.

Not looking to scapegoat but Vesty has cost us twice in a row now by not moving up with the line.

onto the next one!

 

Can't blame Vestergaard for the 2nd goal really. Totally understandable that he moved to cover the goal after McCarthy's weak punch.

 

A very good away point against a strong Wolves team and a last minute loss against a multi-talented (and costly) Man Utd team without probably our most key player are not reasons to start navel gazing too much. Better to focus on the bigger picture with the return of that key player plus Redders and hopefully Salisu to strengthen the overall first team pool.

 

Yep, 2025 will be our year!

 

You're right SA as are others with a similar balanced view. However the disappointment was just as keen as any loss, a few ****s were thrown and the seeds for a hangover were sown.

 

Watching the MOTD2 highlights, this afternoon, and the Arsenal v Wolves game in particular, emphasised just how good our point was, at Wolves.
They are becoming a beast of a team, full of players with skill, fight and incredible strength. And I enjoy listening to Nuno.

 

The depth of our squad is summed up with 2 words. Shane Long.
Love the guy for his effort, running and endeavour but he is not going to come on and score the winning goal. I think the commentary, yesterday, said that he hadn’t scored, after coming off the bench, in the last 55 attempts.
Granted he doesn’t always get too many minutes, but it would be nice to have more of a goal threat to turn to, when we are desperate.

 

With every one of the top 5 clubs dropping points this weekend (foxes currently trailing) the damage from our defeat is nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

 

Six points from the next two weekends and we are back in the game

 

Very few points between us and the rest of top ten teams....need to pick up points soon or its a swift slide down the table for us. Confident we’ll do it .

 

Very harsh, Badge. Look at our rivals' benches and see who you would prefer;

West Ham - Sebatian Haller
Newcastle - Andy Carroll
Aston Villa - Isidore Traore
Leicester - Kelechi Iheanacho
Everton - Cenk Tosun
Crystal Palace - Christian Benteke

Having a reliable substitute striker for a club of our size, is quite clearly very difficult, as you can see from the evidence above. Because basically, if the striker was more prolific, he'd either be a starter, or signed by another team. And judging Long's ability on what he delivers in the final ten minutes of a game, is unfair, because he has proven earlier this year that if you give him a run in the team, when the team is playing well, he can score regularly.

And Long's role when he comes on, is not (or at least it shouldn't be) to win the game for us. Theoretically Ings and Adams should have put us in that position by the time we need Long. Long's role is largely a defensive one, since you can boot the ball up the pitch, and he will chase it down and take the pressure of our defenders. Not many of the other strikers I've listed can do that.

The moral is, don't form your footballing opinions based on what commentators say, because they are largely a bunch of ignoramuses (we even have a new thread dedicated to this).

 

I think you’re right but I’d change the words hard and soft to properly and improperly

You can’t play Ralphs game soft because you keep arriving just too late. You can drop back and just stay organised but Ralph doesn’t coach them to do that and I think we’d all say we just aren’t good enough defensively to do it either

This a long term project and we probably need the new signings up to speed and products of the Ralph system Academy ready to go to be more consistent at implementing this very high demand strategy

 

On the bright side, I think we’ll stay up....