verlaine1979

Spot on - Martin's only trick is hoping that passing it around at the back will lure the opposition out of position. There's nothing remotely inventive about his formations or in-play tactics. It's just a facile version of the cliche that the opposition can't score if you've got the ball.

With all due respect, the overwhelming majority of criticism is aimed solely at Martin. With a couple of exceptions, there's relatively little criticism of individual players, which isn't that surprising as it's so clearly the system that's to blame.

Nope. Pep is polite about everyone he's not actively feuding with. He can afford to be. Let's not have this be a rerun of the "Pep loves Redmond" nonsense.

City had 22 shots on goal. We had 2 chances on the break, which weren't so much created as given up by a City team camped outside our penalty area. Can't see why anyone would be taking encouragement from that.

I almost admire your optimism, but do you really believe a strategy that gives Jan Bednarek more touches than any other player on the pitch is eventually going to click? There's nothing courageous about shining a spotlight on your players' deficiencies and expecting the opposition not to notice. Teams become more than the sum of their parts when the strategy succeeds in amplifying strengths and minimizing weaknesses. I see no signs that this approach is ever going to achieve that goal - its flaws are too fundamental. As for the "code to winning games". Criticism of Martin's approach is almost universal, from the fans in the terraces to the pundits on TV. Are you saying that it's simply enough for you that he's unorthodox? Because there are a million ways to break football orthodoxy, and almost all of them are going to be shite. What has Martin done to earn your trust that he's the man to rethink a sport that has evolved over more than a century and millions of professional games?

Out of curiousity, how many years have you been watching Saints for? The idea that this pound-shop version of total football is worth a club of our stature risking multiple relegations is, frankly, absolutely fucking mental. Unless, of course, you've only been watching for a few years, in which case your naivety is maybe a bit more understandable.

Not sure the player investment profile works during the seasons when we're in the Championship. If you're in the PL you can sign a promising player like Fernandes who immediately looks like someone you'll make a healthy profit on. Are those players going to be interested in joining the second tier of English football, or are we going to end up recruiting more players like Shea Charles? Likewise, I'm not sure you see full value from your saleable assets if you only manage a single season at a time in the PL, as you're inevitably selling with the pressure of relegation, when everyone knows your better players will want out (and will possibly down tools if they don't get a move). In other words, if someone has convinced Solak that yo-yoing back and forth between the PL and Champ is a good way to make money, then I'd love to speak to him as I've got a bridge to sell.

This again. We've played vastly more intricate, beautiful one-touch pass and move football under Poch, Koeman and Ralph than anything we played under Martin. His style is nothing special - it's the football equivalent of driving round the Nürburgring at 10mph.

The annoying thing is that overplaying in your own final third and moving the ball slowly ISN'T part of the City playbook. When their CBs are pinging it about between themselves it's more often than not on the halfway line. Looking at Guardiola's managerial career and taking the lesson that possession anywhere on the pitch and at any pace of play is the key is utterly moronic.

Didn't they pay about 15m for him? Hardly earth-shattering. Less than Sulemana in fact.

The seeds of our current predicament were already sown last season, as many who watched the losses against Leicester, Hull, Ipswich and a few others predicted.

This would be a compelling argument were it not for the fact that Ipswich's billionaire owners (a description I'd quibble with, as the investment fund that owns Ipswich has billions in assets under management, but they aren't all at the disposal of the club) only spent a grand total of about 2m per season over three seasons building their back-to-back promotion-winning machine. Nobody is disputing that Ipswich were in the race - the shocker is that a team put together for peanuts (I can't be bothered to do the maths, but I doubt their entire Championship squad cost them more than a single Shea Charles) performed so much better than us to sneak into the autos. As for our squad being ripped apart - no more than any other relegated team (Leics lost Madison, Tielemans, Barnes etc.), so no special pleading here. And we spent plenty. Likewise, the characterisation of us prioritising attack over defense might be a nice story in hindsight, but again it doesn't bear a lot of scrutiny. Why were Leeds and Leicester able to score at a similar rate, while conceding so many fewer? We played a slow, pedantic style of football that prioritised possession over either solidity or fluidity, and we scored plenty of goals because the Championship is so poor that Adam Armstrong and Che Adams is a potent combination at that level.

You're being incredibly generous here. He finished fourth in a three-horse race, played a style of football that was demonstrably fragile against any sort of energetic press, conceded an absolutely unheard of amount of goals for a promotion-chasing side, and got absolutely spanked both times by the eventual league winners, which puts the cheerleading about having the measure of Leeds into perspective. As for Ipswich, you call it bad luck, I call it Martin not being able to organise a defense.

Nope. Nobody is paying anything at all if Russell Martin staggers into the PL via the playoffs and then flames out in relegation right away. He's got no reputation to trade on. He'll just be another small time failure.

No one is taking RM off our hands for that kind of money if we get relegated. Leaving aside that Kompany's reputation as player and captain is probably at least 50% of the logic behind Bayern taking him, his record as a Championship manager shits all over RM's. Burnley blitzed the league and went up as record-breaking champions. We... didn't.

I'm not sure which kind of striker fits a manager who wants to build slowly, never attempt through balls and rarely put in crosses.

If his plan was to avoid defeats by keeping the ball as close to our own goal as possible all game, he's a fucking moron.

Spurs have defended poorly, but I don't see a lot to choose between the two teams' attacking talent. Mitoma and Minteh easily as good as Johnson and Werner.

If there's one thing our cautious control of the ball has given us this season, it's defensive solidity. Right? Right??

Downes and Aribo trying to pull the strings at the edge of the box. What a state of affairs.

I think the fact that we're being dicked three nil at half time probably warrants a bit of humility. Abject shite.

The comparisons with City are just bonkers. Their CBs pass it about amongst themselves on the halfway line. That's not even close to what we try to do, which looks more like a frantic game of defense vs attack on a 3-a-side pitch.

Like Watkins, he's a CF who plays on the shoulder rather than a target man, which is hard for him to do when our attacks build so slowly that the defense is set on the edge of their box by the time we've inched it forward. In Dibling and Fernandes we have two starters (+ Lallana) who can pick a through-ball. We need to choose an approach that allows us to play to our strengths rather than emphasizing our weaknesses.

Is Jan Bednarek better at passing than most PL attackers are at pressing? If the answer to that question is "no" (and it is - he's proven himself a carthorse with the ball at his feet over multiple seasons) then we have picked fundamentally the wrong tactical approach in seeking to draw teams onto us. It's as simple as that.

We got battered first half and we're lucky to be ahead. Second half was better, but we hardly dominated. Got what we deserved.