The somewhat mixed reception that Guly received on Saturday was a disgrace and could have cost us three points.
Over the past year or so I have noticed a worrying trend at this football club and that is to give abuse to certain players, of course crowds will often have a scapegoat and take a dislike to some players, but this is more than that and at any given time there are sometimes three or four players in our squad where a hate campaign seems to exist amongst sizeable sections of the crowd.
Some of you will perhaps point a finger at me for comments I have made about players on this site, but that is different, I make the comments only on here (OK down the pub as well) and I try to back up my opinions with facts, when I go to the match I gave and in some cases still give those players support.
It was perhaps two years ago this manifested itself at least in the past few years, Jason Puncheon was awful in the opening games of 2010/11 and the crowd started to get on his back, more than he deserved, but when I went to Doncaster Rovers last year for the first time ever I saw Saints supporters not just moaning at a player, but openly abusing him, "Guly your F*cking sh*t" chanted a little group of so called fans who were older enough to know better, this abuse got worse as the season wore on and to be blunt Guly who was having a decent season up to that point with eight goals and a number of assists to his name didnt deserve it.
Even two goals on Boxing Day as we beat Palace 2-0 plus another in a 3-0 drubbing of Forest at the City ground didnt silence the boo boys and the same chant as at Doncaster was heard.
It cant be a coincidence that after that Forest game Guly would not score again and whilst it cant be denied that his form was dropping, the abuse he was receiving had to play some part in it, quite frankly a sizeable chunk of our support put abusing Guly in front of achieving promotion.
The abuse has continued this season, but Guly has had several victims of this abuse joining him Danny Fox gets a lot of undeserved abuse and then there is Artur Boruc, yes his opening performances werent great, but to get the abuse he did after only 1 1/2 games for the club and most of it from supporters who probably hadnt seen his debut at West ham smacks of mob mentality.
But on Saturday the abuse got to the stage of being totally unacceptable, when Guly appeared on the touchline with 11 minutes to go large sections of the crowd could see no irony in their abuse of Guly as he came on, only minutes earlier the praises of Nigel Adkins were being sung, well it is the manager who decides who comes on and off, if you dont like his choice of sub, then blame him not the player.
But this turning on a player by the crowd could have backfired, we were leading 1-0 in a vital relegation clash against a big rival, the team needed to see and hear that the crowd was right behind them, the positive support was driving them on, this negative vibe emanating from the stands towards Guly could have cost us dearly, it could have made us lose concentration and god knows we have done that enough times this season without contributing to it ourselves, those who booed Guly on Saturday or even expressed concern about the substitution should take a long hard look at their actions and how it could have affected the team and with that the result.
Time and time again I read on message boards about how united this club is and how this is a great time to be a Saints supporter, if thats the case then being united means being behind ALL our players and not just selected ones, of course there will always be favourites and always be those that the crowd never quite take to, but the time and place to slag off players is away from the games themselves, make no bones avoiding relegation this season will be tough, lets not make it tougher than it has to be by barracking our own players