Amazing how many people don't understand what the word "irony" means. The opening post of this thread does not describe anything ironic.
Hear what your saying but it's pretty much only Barca and the Brazil teams of 70's / 80's that can get away with I'll score more than you approach to defending. Problem is against the top teams they have more quality and most of the time taking them on over a 90 minute game we'll get beat so I understand what NA has done against City and co. try and turn the game into a 30 minute match and against a team of much better quality you have more probability of creating a shock and holding on to it. Against the next set of teams they will be capable of sitting with two banks of four against us, shutting us out and hitting us on the counter attack if we just go at them. Think Chelsea in Europe last year. We have to have a balanced and realistic approach to games - in terms of quality we are some way of the overall pace and we need to accept it - there was a post i read at the weekend that talked about Lallana being a great player - I didn't call the person out on it at the time but its worth noting that he has been a really good player for Saints over the last couple of years but he is some way from being classed as a great player in the company of other premier league teams and that stands for the rest of our squad - t is going to be an uphill slog this season and NA is trying to find a way of giving us an edge with his tactics. It nearly worked against City and Utd but backfired horribly on Saturday through poor individual errors, not because of the system. We've got to give him time to find his way in this league with us - its a long season there's plenty of points up for grabs
Lamb , you said it right there , pace on the break , counter attack in numbers , we needed pace for that hence Lambert being dropped .
Nice post but that is not the first time this season we have conceded four goals in a game and it wont be the last . Awful defenders do not suddenly become Bobby Moore with a good positive team talk . I do admire your optimism .
Okay you're putting words in my mouth a bit here. I'm not advocating gung-ho, balls-to-the-wall cavalry charge football. I'm saying I think we generally had the approach right in the first 7 games. You stated early in the thread that part of the thinking behind dropping Lambert is that we need to play a more conservative brand of football and protect the defence. I'm saying that we can't afford to drop our biggest goal threat and I think we have to continue with the approach we took in the first 7 games because we've had some (admittedly limited) success playing that way. Our defence has consistently conceded soft goals for a while now so I don't think we can rely on keeping it tight at the back because someone will make a mistake. I don't believe it's just organisation that's missing either, that should be pretty simple to sort out on the training pitch and things haven't improved. Your description of the West Ham game sounds exactly like what I expect from our defence. Despite what gomarchingin says they're not completely hopeless cloggers who can barely kick a ball. You can list off the bad luck or poor play for each goal and say "That won't happen again" but our defence frequently play well for most of a match but lose concentration at vital moments and concede a soft goal. Straight away I can list Fox's header for Man City's winner, Clyne's slip for the first and Hooiveld's tackle to give away a penalty against Man Utd, Fonte losing possession for Wigan's second, Yoshida being out of position for Arsenal's third (at least I think it was the third). That's 5 different mistakes that all led to goals and it's by no means an exhaustive list - Bent's goal for Villa and Osman's equalizer for Everton were both soft as well. There are no doubt excuses and reasons for each of those individual mistakes but the most important thing is they keep happening. It's not a new thing either, I seem to remember defensive errors resulting in goals against us last season, although I can't remember specific examples off the top of my head. The defence may not be continuously making the same mistakes but I don't think the fact they make a wide variety of mistakes is particularly comforting. However, I don't think the situation is hopeless. I'm not going to write Boruc off after one game, I actually think he'll prove to be a (very?) good signing and I think a back four of Clyne, Yoshida, Fonte and Richardson/Fox has the potential to do a job until January. But I don't think sacrificing your biggest goal threat in an attempt to keep it tight until the 60th minute is the way to pick up points. You can't afford to weaken your biggest strength to slightly strengthen your greatest weakness.
I don't mean to so much put words in your mouth as I was just exaggerating and slightly mis-understanding your points, apologies. I think the big difference is that I don't see Lambert as being 'dropped' so much as 'saved'. He wasn't started from the bench because Adkins did not think we didn't need him or his talents, but because he wanted to utilise them in a different way. I don't think at this stage so early in this season, we can afford to just assume our defence can make a mistake and not try and stop that from happening. And organisation is not something as easy to impose as I think you are suggesting it is. You can spend days on the training pitch, but we have an inexperienced team, none of them are playing with the same teammates next to them each week and being lead by an inexperienced manager. But all the training ground can be destroyed in a heartbeat for a team that is low on confidence and belief. Our organisation was nigh on perfect apart from a couple of scary moments from Boruc in the first half, but as soon as one unlucky and daft goal was conceded that was destroyed and we instantly conceded a sloppy second. Then we came back into the game and controlled it again, before conceding a freak third and killing the game. And then the fourth was also sloppy but also sublime from Maiga. And I understand your point and agree with all your examples of poor goals we have conceded. However the only one I think truly comparable is Clyne's slip. It was a horrible moment of silly play and rubbish luck, but Clyne's going to be careful about his boots from now on and that wont happen again. By the same token, Boruc will not concede a simple 40 yard free kick that bounced 2 yards in front of him, Fonte wont do what Artur should have done and punched the ball, and Yoshida (hopefully) wont have to play at LB again. Fox had issues in every game he played until the Fulham one, Hooiveld has had some shockers, and Bent and Osman's goals were the same kind that we have conceded far too many times. If those things or other recurring issues and reared their ugly heads in the West Ham game then I'd have written it off as more of the same rubbish, but that wasn't the case. Overall the recurring theme of stupid goals continued, but as I have preached several times across several threads, everything can be evaluated, and nothing should be taken purely on face value. On face value, more stupid goals and more reason to doubt our defence and our methods, but when you dig deeper, there is much less reason to do so I believe. It might end up being that we have to give up on focusing on protecting the defence and just base our hopes around Lambert and the rest of the attack, but despite it's highlights and good moments, there have been plenty of poor aspects and I don't think we had done enough in the first 7 games to mean that trying a different technique was a bad move. I personally would probably have preferred to have Lambert on the pitch, but I entirely understand Adkins' thinking and agree with him in many areas. We have played 3 away games prior to this, Man City, Arsenal and Everton. We had 3 different approaches, the first against City was very like the one we played on Saturday, and against one of the best teams in world football it almost worked perfectly, and even when it didn't, many hailed Adkins' tactical nouse and super subs. The Arsenal game from the first minute we got pinned on the edge of our own box and were mercilessly slaughtered until Arsenal had secured the game to the point where they no longer needed to waste any more effort, and even then we conceded two more goals on the counter, that was a game to be forgotten. The Everton game we had pretty much the opposite approach to City and West Ham and played our best attacking line-up and tactics from the first minute, and that lasted 15 minutes before Everton comprehensively punished us for that. Under those circumstances can you really criticise Nigel for playing the way and the players that he did?
I did not agree with the decision to sit Lambert. But having said that, the bright side of that game is that it give Saints a chance to re-evaluate their tactics. All respect to West Ham, who I do think is a decent side and did what they needed to stay up (in the short term, anyway) but they are not on a level with Man City, Man U, Arsenal. This was a side against whom Saints had a chance to dictate play a little bit. And in fact the strategy worked somewhat as conceived as Saints looked the more dangerous side and held possession for long periods. But it is too far into the season to say that Saints could/should have won but were done in by bad luck. Clearly there are massive problems on defense. So now it is clear that the tactic was ill-conceived as Saints could not score and defensive gaffes still allowed West Ham to score 4 goals. Given a chance for a fair test, the idea of sitting Lambert clearly does not work. I'll cut Adkins some slack for trying something, because at least it gave us some clear answers. I think we learned a few valuable things. One is that yes, the defense really is that bad and you cannot try to win games 1-0 or 2-0 with them. Another is that removing Lambert doesn't really help. One thing about Lambert is that he's surprisingly decent defending against set pieces. Do Prado might be better in open play, but because Lambert defends penalties and corners better it offsets that advantage. And Lambert is a better finisher. I think Saints are going to have to win game 4-3, probably with that extra goal coming on some piece of quality and Lambert provides that potential. I will say that Adkins' season starts this week. We'll have to see what he comes up with. It's now totally apparent to everyone that Saints have a real problem on defense. And teams will start to devise tactics to take advantage of that. Adkins HAS to go to Plan B now. There is no other option.
The issue is they dont really have to devise tactics as we will sort that out for them , We dropped our goal threat We came to defend and only counter attack We still conceded 4 goals That sort of tells a story in its own , we came to defend and gave them soft goals (not to say they did not deserve them) , we got exactly what we deserved , exactly . That was not naive that was stupid beyond comprehension .
That is not true. They were NOT playing defensively. Saints had most of the possession and did try to attack, albeit somewhat badly and with no end product. Did you even watch the game?
