verlaine1979

4-2-3-1 has the same number of attacking players on the field as 4-4-2?

Something something Koeman, something something.

Call me an optimist, but I'd rather watch a team that contained at least one or two players with the ability to create or take a chance. As it is, we're not just mediocre, we're incredibly dull. Still, listening to the fan base on here, this is pretty close to the team most people seem to want: a bunch of strapping cart horses they can (for the most part) identify with.

We'd probably be better off with Boufal and Carillo in that team.

It's a mark of the gulf in class between the sides that I think their back line is quicker than our front line.

Yup - neat and tidy, but not really seen anything to suggest he has the passing range or creativity we might have expected, which is disappointing as he's got zero pace. Hoj's goal yesterday a good case in point. Moi picks it up on the right, starts to run diagonally towards the area, gets about 30 yards out and then just floats a waist-high nothing ball towards the penalty spot that any one of about three defenders could've cleared. The fact that it then broke for Hoj to finally keep one down was very fortunate for us indeed.

Agreed - the fact that quite a few deemed the first half an excellent performance shows just how far our standards have fallen. We played with reasonable energy before the break, created one or two half-chances, but if Hoj hadn't finally hit one on target from outside the box after three years of trying, we'd have had nothing to show for it. Again. As for Brighton, they were poor, but got in once or twice down the flanks during the first half, so you could see the potential for them to regroup and come out better in the second half. Our first team is mediocre in almost every position, our bench is weak, and our manager rarely seems to pick the right subs to see out or change a game.

Careful, someone will be on here in a minute to tell you that Matt Oakley was the foundation upon which MLT built his genius.

Davis becoming our go-to creative midfielder after the departure of those higher calibre players (I'd also add Lallana to the list) has been one of the key factors in our decline.

Yup - opening goal was a combination of hit and hope attacking play coupled with awful defending, capped off by a lovely opportunistic finish. If the move had gone as intended we wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the goal in all likelihood.

Fans bleat about the sanctity of contracts when good players want to leave, so you can't have it both ways. The club messed up terribly in extending an already generous contract, but that isn't Forster's fault. I wouldn't take a pay cut either, so as long as he turns up and trains like the rest, it seems to me that he has just as much of a moral and legal right to his salary as anyone else in the squad.

He puts a shift in. We're a 'puts a shift in' team now.

That looks suspiciously like the old-fashionedest of old-fashioned 4-4-2 line-ups.

The situation hasn't changed since Koeman. None of the youth players are tearing up the reserve competitions, so the manager does the easy thing of sticking with the expensive senior/international players, knowing that the decision can't really be questioned by the executives above him who paid large amounts of money for those senior players.

Agreed, much more used to seeing that sort of simple shift, acceleration and cross from Tadic over the last few years. If Redmond switches the balance of his game away from safety first and does more of that then he'll be an important player for us this year. God knows we need someone to step up and take responsibility for making chances rather than hoping time after time that another delayed, booming cross from Cedric will somehow find the one Saints head in the box.

He should fire his agent if that's true.

Looks to have reasonable control but no pace whatsoever. Tadic was the similar in that regard, but it remains to be seen if he's capable of contributing anything like as much as Tadic did.

Klopp's has already won the Bundesliga twice (and reached a CL final with Dortmund). That's what his reputation rests on - not the jumping around on the touchline stuff. I get that lots of people dislike him, but at their peak his Dortmund team were absolutely superb and didn't cost a fortune to put together.

Moderately well. We played moderately well before that. Better than in other games, certainly, but considering how bad we've been for two years, that's not a great recommendation. Fact is we didn't create a lot before the goal, and once Leicester woke up and started pressing us, we had no answers. Moreover, when Hughes made his first move to change the game before the sending off, he made the wrong decision with his substitutions, as he's done in all three games this season.

It didn't lose us the game, but the Austin sub sums up the problem with Hughes. We'd lost energy and possession at that point, and the only way to get it back was to reinforce the midfield. Instead he resorts to thinking that bunging on a striker might nick us a goal. We looked alright in the first half, and Redmond and Lemina were both impressive. That said, once Leicester woke up they dominated us.

Hope I'm wrong, but in a game where possession is getting away from us and we need energy, that substitution seems mental.

Nah. Le Tiss was obviously a special player with incredible passing range and vision from his late teens. KDB went to Wolfsburg and was immediately one of the best players in the German league at 21/22. Giggs clearly could always pick a pass, and came to rely on his inherent skill more as his world class speed went (though let's not kid ourselves, he was a much better player when he was fast). I've no idea why this is so controversial - once an attacking player is in their early-mid twenties, in the overwhelming majority of cases improvement is incremental rather than profound. Redmond is now 24, and has a mediocre record at this level. In four year's time, his level will be mediocre plus or minus about 5-10%. As for people saying he bursts past defenders - what have you been watching for the past two years?

Exactly - Redmond made his PL debut at 19 and but for relegation his first season, has been in the top division ever since. Why anyone thinks he's going to suddenly develop pace and vision (the two things he manifestly lacks) at this stage is beyond me, since they're pretty much the only two things you can't teach.

Seriously? Sterling was already a more dangerous player than Redmond will ever be when he was still a teenager. They may or may not have similar deficiencies in decision making and finishing, but one of them has world class pace and the other doesn't.

He's going to be 25 before the season ends. He's not going to improve much from this point on - 25 isn't young in modern football.