Nemi

Ward-Prowse has been so bad today, he’s just hitting blind long balls into nowhere

For me: Bazunu KWP ABK Salisu Perraud JWP Lavia Diallo Aribo Adams S Armstrong Need someone more mobile in midfield over Romeu for me. Surely a midfield three would suit Diallo and if it doesn’t we really need to ask ourselves why we signed him. Really hits home just how poor our squad is still when trying to pick a line up. Just can’t understand how Ralph / SR can’t see the need for a new winger along with a striker and defender

He’s the Adel Taarabt of managers. Unstoppable on his day, but that day rarely comes. That’s why I find him so frustrating because there is a very good manager in there somewhere, but it feels like we see it less and less as his tenure goes on.

We were always gonna lose the first game no matter who we played. Can’t just throw in a load of (promising, at least) youngsters into a pretty dire squad and expect instant improvements. I’ll wait to see how it plays out, but I really do worry about our approach this season. I feel like the owners, coaches think they’re playing Football Manager and they’re good enough and clever enough to compete in the Premier League with such a young squad with such a weak core of experienced players. I honestly don’t think Hasenhuttl's a terrible manager but I certainly don’t think he’s good enough to manage this squad to safety. And that seems to be his key problem. He thinks he can nurture these talents and play in a way smart enough we outperform the quality of the squad, but he can’t. So every transfer window he wastes time barely improving the squad then acts surprised when we’re close to being relegated. He needs to realise he ain’t a terrible manager but he’s definitely not capable of improving players and getting the squad to play better than they are. I reckon we probably have the 18th best squad and I think we’ll probably end up there.

Our strikers are so bad every defender we have probably looks like Vidic and Ferdinand in training. Probably a big shock for them and the coaches when they actually come up against proper attackers.

As someone who’s unable to watch, is it actually that bad or is it just that Spurs have a far superior set of players compared to us?

I think this is basically spot on (though I guess I rate Henderson - in his role at Liverpool especially - far higher than you do). It’s too late now, but I genuinely think that JWP would have been much better if he was converted like Trent into a RB role. He’s an incredibly effective player when he’s facing forward and has the space to play the crosses he’s capable of. But facing backwards towards our goal, he does play it too safe and he does slow down our play. Honestly, I think overall his best spell was alongside Hojbjerg, who was a bit more mobile than Romeu and was able to do all the dirty bits (which made him look worse) while JWP was able to have a bit more freedom. I feel now due to Romeu’s lack of mobility he’s always playing slightly constrained, and finds himself in positions he’s not as confortable in. Like you say he’s not an out and out CAM or a CDM and playing with Hojbjerg he was able to play more within his comfort zone knowing that he wouldn’t have to cover as much as he has to now. The other issue is that he is our biggest creative outlet (more due to the fact that the other positions are so lacking), which does reflect well in his stats. But the way he creates - by putting the ball into dangerous areas rather than targeted passes - didn’t really suit our strikers. He’s our best creator but he is also disconnected from the strengths of our team. Which was a massive problem last season considering our goal scoring issues. And it ended up that we relied on his individual qualities to dig us out of trouble (free-kicks, shots from distance), while his weaknesses contributed to that need for him to bail us out, because our midfield was moving it too slowly, and they weren’t playing to the strengths of our strikers. Ultimately, and this is completely obvious, but, selling him could benefit us if the right replacements are brought in. In general play, he is probably replaceable when you weigh up his strengths and weaknesses. And some of those funds could improve is in other critical areas where we are lacking. But it could also completely screw us if the right players didn’t come into replace him.

Not sure if you guys think I’m criticising JWP for this, just pointing out what his strengths and weaknesses are (which all players have). Just a shame that our strikers last season (expect Adams I guess, but I still wouldn’t he’s exceptional at it) weren’t good enough in the air to play to Ward-Prowse’s strengths. And it’s a shame that Broja, and Armstrong especially, would have benefited from some targeted through-balls in behind the defence which isn’t really JWP’s strength (I can only think of a handful of examples from his whole career). And of course, the fact that there were basically no other creative players in the squad, left a pretty substantial disconnect between our only creative outlet and the way our attackers wanted to play, which really hurt us last season. Hopefully, heading into August we’ll either have a striker who is better at attacking crosses or another CM/CAM who can unlock a defence, because last season too many of our attacking play came from wide areas and crosses while we looked completely toothless through the middle.

For me he is outstanding at putting a ball into a dangerous area but I feel like most of his assists are this - balls which are a nightmare to defend but not necessarily aimed at a specific player. I do feel like his weakest area is the more mental areas on the ball (in the sense that he sticks with the things he feels comfortable doing) and maybe why this is why he isn’t as good as spotting passes compared to others

He never got the credit for this playing at Saints but his passing has always been really good. Even though he didn’t score loads for us there’s a few assists that stick in the memory (v Portsmouth, I think he also set up Ings to win a penalty vs Arsenal maybe with a great pass). I always wanted to keep him because even if he didn’t score he usually did contribute in some way but now he has added goals to his game too he his starting to look a real decent player. I think he could definitely get to at least Adams’ level. If I remember he was really starting to break through before Covid but injuries then got in his way. People also forgetting he is still only 21 and was playing for us in his teens - it’s hard to think of many players his age who were doing better - but it’s pretty typical of Saints fans to slag off a young player trying to find his feet.

Yeah fair enough, they are. But none of them are particularly great defenders either. All these players have had fairly unremarkable careers before (and after, if applicable) Southampton as they’re all pretty underwhelming players, probably not helped by poor tactics, but none of them will suddenly transform into good defenders in another team.

I’m sorry Bednarek gets caught diving in and over committing himself more than any defender I’ve ever seen. Salisu is pretty bad at doing it too but Bednarek has been doing it for 4/5 years now and has never once learnt. If Salisu is still doing the same thing in a few years then that’s the point to worry, but it’s his first season in the PL and he has time to develop. Bednarek has consistently been making the same mistakes for years on end and it’s time to now bring in some more quality if we actually want to progress.

All players and all teams play well occasionally. Good players and good teams play well consistently. The last four seasons we’ve only picked up points on a good spell of form over a couple of months. The rest of the time we’ve been consistently shit. The good form is the anomaly, the bad form is the standard. We can’t rely on shit players and manager getting a bit of luck and having a high spell every season. But every season we managed to convince ourselves the players are good and the manager is good because we’ve managed to go on a bit of a run each season (despite never really winning that comfortably), when in reality they’re both poor, it’s just we just let our expectations go too high, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Even with shit tactics, it’s still the players in the pitch playing and it’s still the players on the pitch who can’t string a pass together. Don’t sit there making excuses for any of them, at the end of the day it’s them out there playing the football and they’ve been fucking shit at doing it for the majority of their careers and shirking the responsibility. Manager needs to go, players need to go too.

The tactics weren’t great, and I’m still for a change of manager, but let’s be honest, the reason we lost is because the players are just not very good. No variation of the tactics will change the fact that we shit ourselves when in possession and can’t keep the ball for more than 5 passes. We lost because we had players who’s quality is far lower than the other team, despite it basically being their reserves. That’s how poor this squad is.

I think we’ll struggle with 11 players, let along 10!

If you’re having to change your philosophy because you can’t coach your team properly then you probably shouldn’t be manager. There are plenty of coaches who can get their team to press high while maintaining some sort of shape. If a coach’s philosophy is to press high it shouldn’t really be too difficult to get his team pressing cohesively in order to maintain some sort of structure whilst doing it. Saying that Bednarek has been liable for kamikaze defending his whole time here. You’d expect that was something that could be coached out of him. Salisu seems reasonably liable too - I’m not sure if this is something he did in Spain too?

I feel like our defense is always trying to do too much. Constantly flinging themselves around, charging out at people, always looking desperate and flustered. Got to go back to basics and tell them to maintain shape, don’t try and win every ball and just be difficult to get past. Surely it can’t be very difficult to coach that? Van Dijk is one of the best defenders not because he tackles or intercepts a lot, but he’s just always there. Our defenders are the complete opposite - too busy flying into tackles in the halfway line, while the opposition attackers are clean through on goal.

Maybe Brentford 4-1 aside, we haven’t actually had a convincing win all season. We’ve benefited from a good run of form in winter which has probably saved us but that was the anomaly - the quality hasn’t been there all season. I don’t think it’s a case of players not trying or being on the beach, we just don’t have the quality, our tactics have gone stale and overall a refresh of the players and manager will be our only way of getting out of this mess. For me, we can’t just simply change one or two players or just change the manager and expect things to change. We need a complete restructure of the squad and coaching staff from top to bottom.

This is a good point though. We can’t just change the manager and just expect things to improve. Three squad is dross and a complete reset is needed. Unfortunately, though for me, this includes the manager too. It’s time for a clean break with the Southampton of the last 4/5 years.

Maybe we could go for Joey Barton and install some of that nastiness that will apparently solve all our problems

Tbh I didn’t see someone not trying, I just saw someone lacking confidence and lacking quality. And he became more frustrated as a result. Broja isn’t the problem, the problem is that we’ve had to rely on a 20-year old loanee, who I assume was brought in as back-up, to be the main source of our goals this season.

He’s done an ok job, and we have had memorable moments, but for the majority of the time here the football has been crap and the results even worse. I don’t know who would be a better option and realistically we could do a lot worse, but we’re not gonna get any better with Ralph and unless we want to just scrape relegation every season we need new ideas. I’d take the risk and get someone new. I’d rather risk getting relegated by at least trying to be better, cause it isn’t fun being a Saints fan right now

Brentford taking piss now. When did we last pass the ball like that?

Pretty sure he was talking about our number 10s and was pretty spot on in saying that.