 | Your
Report | Southampton v Watford Your Report added at 10:43:47
'The TRUTH is the table does not lie' says jameshill. Yes - but the 'what if' question (which, of course, can never be answered) is could we be doing better? Under RM's management our team would seem to be fourth best and that is the TRUTH the table tells us. Many fans have a feeling that we could be doing better. Poor old JS has become the fall-guy for that particular argument (as was Manning, and maybe Smallbone, earlier in the season) but in the end the tippy-tappy and the frequent inability to finish teams off has cost us dear and that is not the fault of any player.
Having said that it has often been exciting. Is that down to RM. Answers on a postcard... |
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Report | Ipswich Town v Southampton Your Report added at 09:47:54
RM must think this is figure skating or ski jumping where you get extra points for artistic interpretation or technical merit or whatever. Yes we looked good for most of the match, got two good goals but that means nothing.
The words frail and brittle used by other posters say it perfectly. We leave ourselves too open at the back and when the crisis comes we simply fail to defend. Do they not discuss basic marking on the training field?
One of the reasons that we are able to look good is that we send too many people up the pitch. Even mediocre opposition knows that there will be oceans of space where out full-backs should be and looking at the table I would say that Ipswich are not mediocre.
Oh and a goalie who is always half a second too slow moving sideways doesn't help... |
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Report | Southampton v Middlesbrough Your Report added at 11:09:25
There is an old saying (just invented by me) that says "teams who couldn't be bothered to defend rarely get promoted". I fully accept that we could have been out of sight in the second half but sometimes in football you do enter the last couple of minutes one up. What you do then is defend properly and win. What you don't do is give a winger plenty of time to cross to a man in the box who has no defender within five yards of him. And let's face it that wasn't the only time we allowed them space and time.
RM hasn't been the disaster that some (many?) predicted but I don't like this style of football. The open spaces in our defence are a sight to see, I don't often agree with Klopp but maybe we need another year in the second division to learn how to defend. We would get murdered playing this way in the Premier division. To play this way you need the resources to buy VERY technically accomplished players. There is an argument that 4th this season would be an underachievement. Might this squad have done better playing in a different way? |
| Your
Report | Birmingham City v Southampton Your Report added at 21:08:19
Phew. Entertaining I suppose.
Our poor start to the season was all about conceding loads of goals. We then, during the long run, seemed to sort that out. All of a sudden from Huddersfield onwards we are letting them in again. Including the cup, that is 16 goals in 7 matches. Not good enough.
Still, a win's a win - but I would settle for a quiet 2-0 win vs Preston!
Fully agree with Codge about the tippy-tappy in the box. It is just show-ponying for no good reason. It shreds the fans' nerves and is always going to give more chances away than it creates at the other end. The display at Liverpool was surreal in its sheer pointlessness. |
| Your
Report | Liverpool v Southampton Your Report added at 14:07:00
I have given thumbs up to every comment both positive and negative. The reason is that I am totally torn between 'wasted opportunity' and 'at least we weren't embarrassed'
On the one hand it was a good performance - Ally McCoist was reasonably impressed, not so much Roy Keane - and we were unlucky with the first goal and there were good performances from Aribo in particular and we didn't give a goal away with the endless tippy-tappy in our own box.
But: are we in the quarter finals? Did we score a goal? Did we concede several again? Did the surreal tippy-tappy exhibition achieve anything beyond looking like a travelling circus exhibition of juggling while on a tightrope? When I saw the starting line-ups I thought two things - Liverpool look beatable and where in the hell will our goals come from? I was right on one...
What did RM achieve last night? Was it a 'look I can rest players and play tippy-tappy' job advert for a 'bigger' club? Bottom line is it was 3-0 against Liverpool second team and could have been a lot better. My negative list seems a lot longer than the positive - so be it, a win against Birmingham and all will be forgotten. |
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Report | Bristol City v Southampton Your Report added at 12:21:05
Pity that our amazing run ended with a whimper rather than a bang. Six goals conceded since Downes went off which says something. We may end up only in the play-offs as, I think, Leeds have more strength in depth than us - but that will still be an achievement.
I am not going to get all negative due to one poor performance/result. The simple fact last night was carelessly giving the ball away and not responding well to being hit on the break. The way we play, the pressure not to give the ball away is intense. Bristol broke well and also pressed our endless passing back to where it wasn't dangerous. Those are problems that can be solved, they are not issues that should lead us to have a poor run - and even if we do fade a bit we are guaranteed the play-offs - no guarantee I know but as good as most of us hoped for at the start of the season.
I hope Downes is back for West Brom. |
| Your
Report | Watford v Southampton Your Report added at 08:30:38
Gillingham in the League Cup all over again, or could easily have been. Stupid thinking to start with so many changes. Only made sense if he definitely wanted to lose. The players needing game time didn't actually get it in any meaningful sense. We didn't need to 'rest' players - no midweek game last week or this. So play the core of the first team with three or four squad players who will then get real game time in a proper team and thus have their chance to gain confidence and get noticed. What he did instead was hang them out to dry in a team that could easily have lost 3 or 4 nil.
By bringing on the subs he showed that he presumably wanted to get through and now we have what was presumably the worst possible option: a replay. Muddled thinking to say the least. |
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Report | Swansea City v Southampton Your Report added at 12:14:42
I know we are in the second division but that first half was the best I have seen Saints since, well I would say the second half of that 4-0 cup game against Hoddle's Spuds - others will have different 'sinces' but it was certainly great.
A perfectionist would argue we should have been out of sight at half-time and it left us open to a shock result: Swansea were always going to have a 'spell' in the second half and could easily have got a second. That said we are looking pretty good and as an RM sceptic I have to say well done.
Just two criticisms: The tippy-tappy at the back in the last 20mins and the substitutions. They came together horrifyingly with that Stephens pass. Bringing on a substandard CH just at the time when you are expecting kitchen-sink time from the opposition and then playing high-risk nonsense at the back was asking for trouble and it VERY NEARLY got it. |
| Your
Report | Watford v Southampton Your Report added at 20:21:49
We are not scoring enough to put games to bed (we haven't been 2 up away from home all season and only three times at home I think). We are also always just vulnerable enough at the back to make equalizers a possibility. Oh well - we've scored several very late goals so perhaps this was due. Let's not slip up again at Cov.
The dull common sense view is that we are doing pretty well given where we were last May. Not spectacular - plenty of narrow wins, some draws and not many defeats. It could be a lot worse!! |
| Your
Report | Southampton v Rotherham United Your Report added at 22:05:52
Should have killed them off in the first half. Second half poor with a not totally surprising outcome.
Overall so far it is a pretty average start to the season. In truth we have only played two good games all season - Sheff Wed (when we had JWP) and Leeds. I expect we will be there or thereabouts for quite a while in terms of the play-offs because there is not an awful lot of quality in this league but we don't look that great do we? I fear that RM is not going to give us what we want and a long season of not very much lies ahead of us. |
| Your
Report | Southampton v Leeds United Your Report added at 09:43:11
That's a relief!! Of course it is only one game but it shows that when he picks our best players and we look to move forward rather than sideways/back from defence we can compete amd more. Bellis may well turn into a very good player and Sulemana has to be utilised while he is here. Of course if Leeds HAD got a second things would have got very scary but they didn't and that was to a large extent because we defended better. Yes no clean sheet but that didn't matter yesterday.
The one cautionary note is that we won because we were very efficient at converting chances. Going forward I think we do need to create more as we will rarely have that high a conversion rate. Anyway - let's repeat at Stoke and start looking UP the table. |
| Your
Report | Middlesbrough v Southampton Your Report added at 09:29:29
The main argument for not cutting short this latest SR management experiment is that RM needs 'more time'. The response to that is 'more time for what?'. Where is this going? It all looks pretty clueless.
The other problem, perhaps unexpected or perhaps not under SR, is that the new signings do not look promising. SR, just like last year, have flooded the squad with a bunch of players who mainly look rubbish, lost, or both. What was the master-plan behind the purchases (other than quick profit of course)?
I thought that this season at least we would not have to worry about heavy defeats, record runs of defeats etc. It seems I was wrong. Given that Leeds and away at Stoke are next up I could see us kicking off a relegation match vs Rotherham having lost six in a row - horrendous. |
| Your
Report | Southampton v Ipswich Town Your Report added at 23:32:35
We are going nowhere under this guy. Mid-table obscurity at best. Perhaps we can stay in touch until we get a proper manager but what chance of that with SR making the appointments. |
| Your
Report | Southampton v Leicester City Your Report added at 22:18:23
RM will not survive long. 7 competitive matches, 19 goals conceded and only two decent sides played. We were warned we would get plenty of ineffectual tippy-tappy and be sh1te in defence and lo and behold....
We will of course be told that things will get better but how will that happen with a manager who doesn't seem to think that defending matters. If you watch those four goals they weren't individual errors it was the whole bloody team. |
| Your
Report | Sheffield Wednesday v Southampton Your Report added at 11:52:37
The winning goal is just the type of goal we need to be scoring regularly this season. "Unlocking'" packed defences is not easy and on this occasion one was enough. We are not going to get promoted on shots from outside the box.
To be charitable their goal could be seen as one of those things where it just fell into the path of the main goal scorer BUT it was same old, same old in terms of a big opposition player being bigger and stronger at a corner and winning the first ball.
Ludicrously we now have a best part of four week wait to find out what team we will have in September. For me yesterday shows that Adams before A. Armstrong every time. Keep Tella and KWP if we can - and get a big strong striker who (hopefully if he stays) can play alongside Adams. JWP and Lavia are, IMHO bound to go. The worst case scenario is that all three who won the game with that nice goal will be gone when the window EVENTUALLY shuts.
It looks like Stephens is now first pick - he has virtues going forward but he is hardly a pillar of strength at the back but we can talk about that after playing a team that actually attack us... |
| Your
Report | Nottingham Forest v Southampton Your Report added at 23:14:46
Yes allsaint54 - AMN very poor tonight and your comment spot-on to Yosemite.
At least tonight we played as if we knew it was a 'must win'. We weren't good enough to win but even Selles realised that playing for a draw was pointless. It is scant consolation but it was a good match. Good luck to Forest. Looks like it is Leeds and Leicester joining us...
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| Your
Report | Southampton v Crystal Palace Your Report added at 21:30:14
Thanks SR. Your mad-professor experiments have sent us down. Everyone apart from you knew we had big problems at the end of last season. We ended up with the least experienced manager on the planet and a squad of waifs and strays without a leader or a forward amongst them. A total catastrophe - let's not blame individual managers or players but let's blame the people responsible: SR. With such clowns in charge I think it would be a big mistake to think we will be back up quickly. They will probably buy some cut-price youngsters in the summer.... |
| Your
Report | Southampton v Manchester City Your Report added at 12:15:40
I thought we were pretty good in the first half. We have to accept that Abu Dhabi in their hot pursuit of Arsenal are not going to drop many or even any points until the title is decided. Yes AMN could have moved a bit quicker for the goal but that was a goal made in billionaire's row and was going to happen at some stage. The most obvious thing during that first half was that we were not going to score. Whenever their first goal came that was the end of it and everyone on the pitch knew it.
The fact we rarely look like scoring is a big reason why we are going down - the other is the answer to the question as to why successive managers continue to pick Ely.
The answer to the Ralph worshippers is yes, if Nathan Jones was going to be picked as the successor, we might as well have continued with Ralph - but if NJ was going to be the successor then we could have continued with Mickey Mouse and been better off... |
| Your
Report | West Ham United v Southampton Your Report added at 19:50:34
I think that's it I'm afraid. We will all continue on with the mathematical calculations but basically what we watched out there today is what we have watched so often this season and it equals relegation. That's about the fifth or sixth 0-0 we have contrived to lose 1-0 by giving away a soft goal. A very average Wet Spam simply defended and waited for the goal Moyes knew we would give them. Not sure it was lack of effort as such SaintPaul - it was more a lack of strength, experience and, let's be brutally honest, quality. Wet Spam were rubbish but they beat us comfortably. Why didn't Tall Paul play from the start? Little Theo and little Mara got exactly what we all expected they would get - nothing. Three sides worse than us? I can't think of one... |
| Your
Report | Southampton v Brentford Your Report added at 23:24:38
A full house and a little bit of optimism after recent results so pick the best starting 11 and get at them. Or alternatively start with Mo, Diallo and Bednarek, give the ball away a lot, don't look like scoring all evening (apart from Che's obligatory miss) and then, to cap it all don't bother to mark at corners, the one thing that Brentford are good at...
Sadly, I think we are done now. Tonight was the big night. Brentford should not be able to play poorly and beat us so comfortably. Why on earth would be think we can beat the likes of Fulham, Bournemouth and Palace when we play like that. A truly miserable evening in every way. Why did we buy the big guy up front - has he had a decent headed opportunity yet? And finally, that guy going through at the end and scoring. Would Che or Walcott have put that in to equalize? Of course not... |
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