verlaine1979

Well, my negative opinion of one particular member of the midfield is pretty well known...

We've haven't been an especially potent attacking team for a couple of years now, but we definitely seem to be getting more set in our ways as this season progresses. Most spells of possession either end with a long pass looking for Pelle, or a slow shuffling of the ball out wide looking for an overlapping fullback. Tadic occasionally swaps wings, and Davis does that thing everyone loves where he pops the ball five yard to someone with no appreciable chance of influencing the game, but aside from Mane our support around Pelle is static and disengaged. Another problem is that no one apart from Mane has any desire (or possibly ability) to actually move with the ball, and his ability to create overloads and stretch play is generally limited by the fact that he generally receives possession in the final third. Both fullbacks will run, but only if there is an open channel, while Wanyama, Davis & whoever plays as third midfielder almost never risk going past their opponent. We've become slow and predictable, and recent contemptuous away performances by Stoke and Liverpool suggest that other teams have started to notice.

We're a team that converts possession into crosses rather than chances.

Maybe the specific branding was Cortese's, but I'm pretty sure Reed and Kruger are still talking about a unified style of football across all age groups, a first team heavily reliant on academy graduates and the idea that the manager is always subordinate to the identity of the club. Ultimately, whether the club are actually practicing what they preach is immaterial here - the public perception is that we are a 'project' club, and our manager has just come out in public and said he isn't a 'project' manager. Maybe it was heat of the moment and he didn't really mean it, but compared to the 'spend more' stuff you hear from every coach this time of year, I still think the 'project' stuff is a much bigger warning shot.

Of all the comments he makes, that strikes me as the one most pointedly aimed at the hierarchy of the club. With its lofty goals, academy graduation targets, five years plans and so on, what is 'the Southampton Way' if not a project?

Their best players are better than our best players, and their mediocre players are as good if not better than our mediocre players. The only area of our respective best XIs where we're better is that our weak links are probably less of a liability than theirs.

JWP definitely has decent technique, and I do think that the pace and trajectory of his free kicks are very good compared to both Tadic and Davis. However, at the moment he is completely lacking in the confidence-verging-on-arrogance that separates good players from mediocre. I wonder if this is basically the down-side of his boy-scout reputation - sure, he gets fewer negative headlines that the likes of Grealish and Barkley, but he also never seems to exhibit any of their will to impose themselves on the game. To actually utilise technique and vision, you need to believe that there's no one else more capable than you of making a difference - until he decides that that's the case, he'll continue to play safe passes, handing over responsibility to others.

Yup, the unfortunate truth of the matter is that neither of them are capable of putting in dominant attacking CM performances. They are both just conservative, ball-preserving midfielders, with Davis' better physicality and tenacity giving him the starting edge over JWP's superior dead balls most of the time. In recent weeks Clasie has shown signs that he might be capable of playing incisive passes from a central position, but until he recovered from his injury, the middle of the park was pretty much a creative wasteland.

No real crispness or accuracy in our passing. Some decent periods of possession, but the ball always feels on the verge of bobbling out of control or ending up as a 50/50.

Did the commentator on NBC just have to stop himself saying 'they have been rubbish'?

Didn't we go the entire season in Poch's last year without winning a game after going behind?.

I think this is more than just a one-game issue. It might seem especially stark as Stoke played well and punished us, but we've had some rubbish spells of football in the past month or two, most of which have been characterized by ponderousness and a lack of conviction in attack, coupled with an inability to cope with being pressed by the likes of Leicester.

At the moment, everyone seems to spend an age on the ball having a good look around before moving it on. Is this a deliberate possession-retention tactic, or a loss of confidence? We aren't a slow team, but we move the ball so slowly. Stoke played mostly on the counter yesterday, but in almost every phase of play they passed at a higher tempo and with greater accuracy, which is crazy - if you're going to take 20 seconds picking your pass rather than playing it first time, there's no excuse for the inaccuracy we saw yesterday from pretty much everyone apart from Clasie.

Clasie the only player we've got who doesn't need 20 minutes and a lie down before deciding whether to run with the ball or pass it. At the moment it feels like the coaching staff have been replaced by a tape recording of a red-faced Sunday league manager yelling 'get it wide!'... Long was abject, Fonte's passing was awful, Davis was back to his toiling, tedious self... Such a depressing game to watch, no movement, no zip in the passing, no vision.

Crazy talk - he's been our best player by far this half. His first-time passing is the only thing stopping us being completely mired in endless midfield tedium.

Well he did in the end, and judging by the angle he found, he probably shouldn't have bothered.

His dinked cross for Long's goal in the first Euro qualifier suggests he's got decent technique and vision, so there's definitely hope for him. Since we're set up to play to Pelle's strengths, our other forwards have to be extremely versatile, and at the moment I think Juanmi is probably struggling to make the transition from on-the-shoulder striker to a more all-purpose attacker who is expected to make chances as well as loiter up the field looking to sneak a yard.

Clasie, VVD and Tadic are all better passers than those two. JWP and Davis are both safe in possession (and to give him his due, once or twice a season Davis will play a genuinely phenomenal ball - his outside of the boot cross for Maya against Everton last season was great, along with a lovely scooped pass near the corner flag against someone like West Brom) but neither of them regularly stretch the game with their passing.

Clasie looks like he could turn out to be the central midfielder everyone mistakenly believes Steven Davis to be Dominated the game, but lots of unimaginative or just plain sloppy play in the final third. Glad we got a pen because we didn't look like scoring from open play. Still think the team has a creativity problem in the middle, but with Gaston missing again, perhaps time to accept that we just don't have the personnel to fix it.

Got to stick with the previous starting XI, but with Romeu in for VW. If that team struggles to break down a Sunderland side set out to pinch a 0-0 (and well they might - Davis has done well to get in the goals this season but I still don't see him as anything more than a water carrier creatively) then it would be good to have Ramirez on the bench as an option with 30 mins to go.

Also, Romeu may be slow, but Clasie aside, he's as good a passer as we've got in central midfield - would definitely start him ahead of JWP or Davis in that anchor position (though on current form, the latter will surely continue as the AM anyway).

Maybe we should stop trying to hit Pelle so often once we're comfortably ahead and the opposition are trying to raise their game? Putting the ball in the air to be contested is always risking possession, and it only takes Pelle's levels to drop a little for the CBs to start winning more than they lose. Obviously this isn't the only issue, as we were weak and slow to the second ball in the second half of both games, but fewer high balls to Pelle would create fewer second balls too.

I don't believe any of our other midfielders would even have attempted that pass into Pelle, let alone executed it. When Clasie received the ball there were two Bournemouth players directly between him and Pelle, and two easier balls open - either out to either Tadic or recyling it for Fonte to shunt on to Cedric on the opposite wing. Hopefully as he gets more comfortable we'll see more of that, as the ability to pass through a defence rather than constantly trying to pass around it is something we've been missing for a while now.

Had a few good cameos in the world cup. Very different kind of player to Gaston physically, free kick specialist too. Would probably to be a lot more direct than any of our current #10 options (aside from Mane, who seems to prefer receiving the ball wide and cutting inside when he's ostensibly in the #10 position rather than running with it from deep).

So far, in the few appearances he's had, Juanmi looks exactly the play-on-the-shoulder striker we were told he was when we signed him, and most definitely not the creative #10/Davis-alternative some of us were hoping he might be. At present, I can't really picture him replacing Mane's contribution across the front line when he goes, but he's got plenty of time to develop at least.