I agree he should stay in the team. It wasn't a howler, just a small misjudgement. He probably should have gone with a fist rather than a palm when he decided to come. But **** happens. His save from Jesus at the end was quality.
I know gunn was supposed to be the next best thing but I don’t know why Ralph persevered with him so long. Pressure to play him?
To be fair a confident Gunn is a very very good keeper. He was superb in the 0-0 at Chelsea last season. But he does need a spell out of the team right now for his own sake as much as the team's.
Er, yeah, that. There's nothing to be gained by piling onto the team now after the last three results. What was important to me today was seeing how they and Ralph approached the game. Ralph set them out to do a job and they proved that they can commit themselves to balls out defending when needed. This was a polar opposite performance to Leicester so job done. We can get 10 men behind the ball and throw everything into blocking attacks. We aren't going to win games that way though and as soon as we brought on Djenepo and Adams and pushed up for an equaliser we were caught 2v1 and 4v2 and City should have beaten us 4-1. Ralph's challenge is finding a way for us to play that rocks the opposition back and keeps them under pressure. We need to score 2-3 because we have shown we aren't going to win 1-0 over and over and over again. Really hope that with the attacking talents of Bouf, Djenepo (he looks v. good) and Redmond he can find a system that creates the chances we need. Shout out to JWP. He has been so underwhelming all season but once again as he has done every year, when things get hard he doesn't shirk or hide away and shows up with the goals. Line drawn, moving on and hoping for the best.
What I most enjoyed yesterday was watching the midfield three working as a unit. If the ball came down the flanks they all shuffled across but still maintained a good line in front of the back line which helped force City into using crosses more frequently than passing through us. I like Hojbjerg when he is on his game but for me he all too often roams all over the place leaving space and he also lets players run off him without tracking them. I would be happy with that midfield next week when they should have more scope to push forward.
I have always liked Allardyce . When he was at Bolton , wasn’t he one of the first managers to look at the sports science stuff ? Would he come here anyway ? Pointless at the moment anyway coz Ralph is here
To be honest, if Allardyce was manager I would struggle to find much enthusiasm to watch Saints. I honestly couldn't think of a more negative appointment. Good job it will never happen. We need to stick with Ralph and recognise that rebuilding the team is going to take a long time.
I think Allardyce is a much better - and much more flexible - manager than he is usually given credit for. But no, just no.
I REALLY hope that Armstrong gets to stake his claim to start before Bertie comes back and Ralph goes back to the same disfunctional midfield of before with PEH Next problem would then be who gets dropped out of PEH JWP Oriel This may sound Nuts but maybe he needs to put PEH in for Oriel and get him to protect the back four and stop running around so much because when he does that, as you say, he’s always in the wrong place He might learn a bit more discipline from a simpler role
My guess is Bertrand will either leave in January or next summer, if there are any takers. We should have sold him and kept Targett. Matty had bags of energy, enthusiasm and he was not short on skill either. He was a natural born Saints player.
The challenge for us is that 50% of our games are against teams in the top half of the Premier league.