Nemi

Have Saints really trained out all of Livramento’s desire to take someone on? Bizarre that he’s no longer driving forward and just going backwards - it’s really held up our play.

Problem for Saints is we have decent depth but the quality is so much lower it makes the whole team play worse. Feel like that’s why JWP was worse last season as he had two awful CBs behind him and McCarthy. Take out some of our most important players and suddenly the whole team struggles.

Think he was offside anyway but someone needs to get on the end of that

I’ve always criticised JWP but to be fair his general game has improved a lot recently, not even considering free-kicks. A lot more active in picking the ball up in between the lines which is good to see

Only got another 10 mins today but how easy is he to marshal off the ball. Neither Ings or Adams were terrible in the first season - they weren’t as good but they both showed they’re capable. Armstrong meanwhile shown literally nothing about him whatsoever, it’s so clear he is out of his depth. Some can step up, some can’t - that’s just how it goes and Armstrong is a Championship level player, no more.

Maybe it’s time to bring Allardyce in, but instead of sacking Ralph we let him do the first-half and Big Sam can do the second.

Broja has been a great signing - now would be a great time for him to show he can score twice in a game and help us kill it off. That’s what would set Ings apart.

Bad news is we’ve actually got a lead going into half-time to lose again.

Lol well he had to score something eventually

Yeah I said this was a good team, but persisting with Walker-Peters at LB is madness. Need to play people in their actual positions, if Livramento is better than KWP, then sorry he has sit out, not be shoehorned in. Really don’t see how people think Ralph is stubborn or won’t listen - clearly he lets the players walk all over him, and tries to keep people happy by trying to accommodate players who just don’t fit the team.

At least things can’t get worse, this time

Exact team I’d go for, so this will probably be our worse loss yet!

Yeah this sums up the problem really. They should have seen that there wasn’t really a great striker option on the market and tried to diversify where the goals were coming from in our team. Saints are far too reliant on the strikers to score goals, and they’re probably not good enough to have that burden.

Well I guess my point is that there’s probably a manager somewhere who will get lucky and get a short-term new manager bounce to save us. Who this person would be I’d have no idea - it’s probably based on pure chance. But if there aren’t wholesale changes to the club they’ll certainly just find themselves in the same mess 12 months later with everyone calling for their head again. I’d rather not become a team who scrapped relegation while chopping and changing manager each year. But I think by simply sacking Hasenhuttl while everything else stays the same, that’s what would happen. This club needs a complete fresh start IMO.

I’m certain Ralph will get us relegated this season and I’m positive there’s a manager who could probably just about save us. But I really struggle to see how people think one man will turn around a squad that has consistently been terrible and underwhelming since 2016. Elyounoussi has only ever scored one for Saints. Tella, despite some promise, still only has one goal. Djenepo has what? Two or three goals. Walcott is clearly finished. The fact that Redmond is our best attacking mid says it all. These players output has been shocking for a long, long time. Bednarek and Stephen’s have been part of some really, really awful defensive partnerships. Lycano and Salisu are still pretty new to the PL. Livramento is still only a kid. Walker-Peters is decent but he’s still no world-beater: it’s not like his output has ever been that great either. I think everyone can agree our keepers are crap. Romeu and JWP have never been as good as people make them out to be (they weren’t regular starters under Koeman) - that’s especially showing this season. At least Adams send to be improving, but he’s still inconsistent. Broja is still in his first PL season; same with Armstrong and I can see nothing about him which shows he’s gonna make it at this level. For the three or four decent players that are left, the rest are really, really poor. And that’s shown in the fact hardly any of these players have been starters in a top-half PL team. And they’ve consistently finished in the bottom half with Saints. I don’t see how that’s ever gonna change. And nothing will change in my eyes until there’s a total clear out top-to-bottom. New manager, new players, and new owners.

It’s gets clearer and clearer every week that Ralph isn’t capable for this job, but man I do find it crazy how opinions like this think his biggest flaw is stubbornness or having just one tactic. The problem is is that the line-up changes constantly, he has no-idea what his strongest team is, shifts people into weird positions, and overall we look nothing like that high-energy, high-press team like we were at the start of his tenure.

Yeah I know it’s a problem, just saying it was already a problem before he joined

For all of Ralph’s faults, these capitulations happened well before him. Saying that he’s totally incapable of fixing it, but it’s probably not an easy issue to solve when these players’ whole careers have been consistent big bottlejob

Honestly, do we have any players capable of controlling the tempo of a game? Can Ward-Prowse or Romeu really control the tempo of a game? - I don’t think so, everything seems to be done in a panic or a rush constantly and that isn’t sustainable for 90 mins

I wasn’t able to watch the game today so can’t comment on tonight’s performance. But from previous games he strikes me as someone ego needs to play on instinct. This is probably fine at Blackburn last season when there’s Harvey Elliot creating changes for you in a lower league. But for Saints there’s still such a gaping lack of creativity the strikers are too often trying to forge their own opportunities. And in that set-up Armstrong seems to overthink it and drive himself into dead-ends. Get someone creative into midfield who can construct chances for him, I’m sure he’d be reasonably decent - though I don’t he’ll ever be a world-beater in this league. This transfer window we’ve signed some decent players, but I don’t think we’ve thought about how well they’ll integrate into our team and Armstrong is the prime example of this.

Tbh I’m still more angry about the Norwich loss. I’m all for taking some risks and trying something new against the bigger teams - and invariably, it will sometimes go badly wrong like today - but you’ve got to pick up the points against teams around you if you’re going to do that. Ultimately, losing to Liverpool won’t relegate us, but losing to Norwich definitely will.

The problem isn’t losing 4-0 at Anfield. The problem is that Saints just don’t look very likely to score that often.

Not just the keeper, but Jesus, they were two extremely simple saves, and he has to take the majority of the blame.

Problem is that your not going to win very many when you can only score 1 goal per game. Especially when there’s a goalkeeper as dodgy as McCarthy - who in my eyes has to take most of the blame today - I could of saved both of them. But that doesn’t excuse Hasenhuttl’s poor decisions today. I feel like it’s a cliché to say his subs are bad, but today they were genuinely bizarre. As much as I praise Diallo, he was really poor today - really he should have been taken off. And as much as I criticise Ward-Prowse he was actually pretty good, got himself into dangerous positions for whipping in crosses, though his set-pieces have really gone downhill.

Not saying that JWP shouldn’t play but how he just walks back into Diallo’s spot is mental. Could certainly accommodate all three if JWP is deemed undroppable