Fabrice29

There is a whole Martin thread full of people blaming him for our season. I’ve posted one of many posts in my previous post and there’s a couple on this page who are still blaming him now.

Yeah that’s what I think, in the pl especially the spines of team are physical monsters. Baleba the other day just dwarfed the rest of our squad. No issues with the style of play we had for me personally but we never supplemented it physically to compete in this league. Attack is the most obvious for me though, played all last season without Onuachu and this year instead of recruiting technically good strikers with physical prowess (after Adams left and Delap turned us down who did we go for of similar attributes?) we’ve just ended back where we were 2 years ago.

Yeah see at no point did I say Martin did no wrong or am I trying to rewrite history (like for example people who insist last season wasn’t a success), I’m merely pointing out that it was quite obvious not everything was one man’s fault, not everything would change if that one man left and then if we do decide those two things were true then we probably need to settle on a way of doing things before changing to another way again. If you want to talk about specifics of fitness then go speak to the sport science guys at the club to find out the facts. I have no real issues with the fitness of our players but do have serious concerns over the physical attributes of our squad. Which are two different things but do often get merged by some. It’s much easier to shout about one man and his crusade to give days off than actually try to work out why over two PL seasons and 5 managers a core group of players continue to be out of their depth, so bravo.

The apathy is definitely the worst bit. We’ve come into this season with a worse attack than last season and okay fine it’s taken a few months to realise that but when it comes to January, season over or not, the club should be going all out for someone to score some goals and it doesn’t appear to have happened. We’re 2 years on from a season in which we realised that the January signings of Sulemana and Onuachu weren’t good enough and yet here we are back with them starting again. It’s piss poor. It also makes me laugh people were convinced that was the right thing to do in January forgetting they would have to sit through another 4 months of football and ‘why has he picked that 11!?!” talk.

Probably wouldn’t check Abk’s and Alcaraz’s records away from ‘Russ’ since being fucked by him if I were you.

Honestly can’t stress enough how utterly deluded you are if you are talking about tactics or different combinations of players as if they will make a difference and it’s so incredibly obvious to everyone except the manager. Take Joe Aribo for example, we’ve been in the PL 2 seasons and he came here as an attacking midfielder and is now playing at the back. If you think we haven’t tried every single combination in between you are seriously deluded. The ‘try something different and be adaptable ’ brigade need to reign it in too. People like to be romantic about RH’s time here so let’s remember that he was pretty stubborn/steadfast/arrogant whatever you want to call it in how he wanted to play. He created a play book ffs. And guess what, it was fairly successful. Until obviously when we got relegated and we flipped between 3 managers. Only then getting success again when we went back to an arrogant/stubborn manager who was pretty unwavering in his desire to do certain things. It’s almost as if having a plan, a long term goal is a good thing and not just flipping between potentially 3 different ways of playing again like we might this season. We 100% should have doubled down on a style, even if everyone was adamant Martin had to go we should have continued to stick with that way. OR if we really did think changing the style was the answer then we should be doubling down on that again now. Drumming it into players that this is how it’s going to be so they will need to get on board. Setting out a plan. I’m pretty sure that’s what the technical directors job and message will be, to drum that home, so just like when everyone hated the previous manager, now is the time to stay true to the long term plan, not jump to Rusk again so we can play a different way for a few weeks for no real benefit. But, my biggest issue with SR is it seems pretty eager to play to the crowd when things go shit so I would not be shocked to see them do exactly that again.

Except that’s not true. There was a very good post on here somewhere a day or so ago explaining all the things we’ve tried doing differently. What you actually mean is why didn’t we defend on the edge of the box and try to luck out with a draw which is all well and good but in the very example you’ve given we lost by exactly the same way we did when Martin applied his different method.

Saw us play quite well against a better Liverpool just one month prior to that under Martin though.

The above post had such hope and summed up the mood on here that one person was such a big problem that was weighing everyone else down. The anger and disappointment was so focused on the manager at the time that anyone suggesting that it might not all be one persons fault was shouted down and scoffed at if they even suggested that changing the manager wouldn’t really change anything other than piss off the players. Maybe if you’re angry at the manager just check if you were one of the few that laughed at the below post just a few months ago.

What you mean is why cant the manager actually do something that get results isn't it? We've flip flopped between various different people trying different things over the last 5 managers and nobody actually wants that either it seems.

It's lovely you've provided the definition of shots on target but its not really relevant to the point Give it Ron was making about shots. And fwiw we had more shots, shots on target, shots off target and 1 less shot blocked in the Spurs game than yesterday. I'd argue we were defensively worse yesterday by any shot based definition you wish to talk about too but that goes against the "Martin is the worst ever and everything he did was terrible and we definitely will improve if Martin isn't in charge" narrative you seem to enjoy so much.

Along with your recent post about not believing in XG like it's a conspiracy theory, I slightly worry you actually believe this.

We had more shots against Spurs than we did yesterday by the way.

Yeah we got promoted mate.

We got promoted with the last mid to bottom end Championship manager btw and next season again that would be success. Its almost as if where you finish with one team isn't necessarily an indicator of how you'll do with another and that success in the PL is about a bit more than who you have as a manager. If people want me to stop having a pop at fans, maybe the fans shouldn't say silly things.

I don't think detachment is on the fans. That's down to the actions the club has taken. I do think it manifesting itself in the form of the treatment of Smallbone and ABK is piss poor though and that is on the fans.

Agree with you here fwiw. Hopefully this new technical director is here for the long term so they can stick to one plan. Would probably mention that quite a lot of fans singing "your football is shit" at the main instigator of the previous style suggests SR were just trying to appease the fans with this change but don't want to sound weird.

Yeah, I think turning on a boyhood Saints fan who turned up for us last season whilst cheering a guy who hasn't wanted to be here since we finished bottom last time is worth calling out. Weird, I know.

I've edited the post with some extra views but what would you like me to say about the game? Another post saying we weren't very good would satisfy you would it?

Good reception for ABK when he came on today from the same people the sarcastically cheered Smallbone last week. Incredible stuff. Sums up nicely our major issue for me. We are completely removed from the success we had last year as a fan base, a club and a squad both on and off the pitch. Everything that was fun and good last season has gone. We had 2 players start today who started the play off final. Appreciate there's some that weren't good enough and that will naturally happen but there's no recognisable trait from last year to this. Completely devoid of any identity and any link to the team that was actually delivering. But hey, ABK's back so happy days, cant wait to cheer the boyhood Saints fan off the pitch again.

Yes, mainly to annoy the people that genuinely believe there is such a thing.

Yes, some players will perform better under different managers. That's the case for the previous manager, this manager and any future managers we have. My point was that it's only natural. Lesley I think will get a chance at Chelsea one day but I'm not convinced that any other player has improved under Juric enough to be getting into other PL teams which you seemed to suggest. The only players even debatably getting into other PL teams will be the ones we knew about under Martin too.

Cue first page of this thread being full of posts shouting "Just wish we'd play our best 11 in our best formation ffs!"

As opposed to the players that don't feel aligned and loyal to him you mean? For example...

Well we did have success didn’t we? Albeit at a different level but it was playing a very specific way which some fans might not have taken to but the players certainly did and some of them cited that way for the reason for joining this season. We have seemingly done a u turn on that way of playing now, which is well within the clubs rights but even in the bad times this season the players seemingly still bought into that way of playing and it’s well within their human nature for some of them to still feel aligned with the previous way. Obviously there is a desire for players to be adjustable (or as some people put it ‘man up pussy’) and obviously there will be some players that prefer this way but it’s a mess at the top that has created this, not the players. It’s no surprise Juric recently talked about wanting players in who suit his style. If he or the next manager is given that a then we get a new way of doing things, the same issue will arise.