gio1saints

Sports Psychology is not really all that hard to understand - even I have a Uni qualification in it- @CB Fry but your ignorance of its obvious applications and your standard abusive response says more about you than you probably wished to reveal.

The squad diligently “practising penalties” ahead of such matches cos it’s helpful in the event of a penalty shootout is one of the most popular dog whistle football myths going. What it actually does is identify that one or two of them are capable - and the rest should never be allowed to take them. That’s why the team always has a nominated taker and a back up taker( or two) if he’s not on the pitch. The team that lets it be known it is “practising penalties” are psychologically conditioning themselves NOT TO WIN in normal time. If I hear that the opposition are “practising penalties” I’m delighted. It’s a sign of fear and weakness. I absolutely DO NOT want to have RM tell us the team are practising practising penalties. I want to hear WBA are however.

He played our strongest available 11. Playing THB, Jan and JS together is quite some barrier to try and get through- especially when you have a KWP and a RM or Bree on either flank for cover. Was like an umbrella around Alex. That should be starting line up next two games - and final if we make it. Defensively much harder to breach than previous versions but still lots attacking options.

Excellent point. I remember that game as I was there ( for both) and felt we lost the Final before we even arrived - by that league game line up and performance. The final itself seemed a strangely subdued ( by wgs standards) exercise in not getting humiliated again rather than us laying any serious blows on Arsenal. It felt like the manager primarily and thus the players had no real deep belief they could actually win - but rather wanted it to be a respectable score line and competitive. Still love WGS but that match was not his high point! My view for Saturday is : Fuck cotton wool our best players , reasonable score line and “ being competitive”. My view is to play our best team of fighters - the team most likely to tear a Leeds players leg off to get the ball*. Not to play safe. Playing safe invariably gets you injured anyway and you win nothing. Play hard play strong play properly not at 90% and give everything you have - and may the best team win. Same for play off matches. Same if we get to a Final. With whatever players we got left still able to stand. We got a squad. At this stage it’s not so much about skill it’s more about bottle and a winning attitude. * and yes that does mean I start with Jack Stephens 100% of the last three matches. My starting eleven is the eleven most willing to sacrifice everything for the team.

Psychologically very difficult match for Saints but not for Leeds. Leeds must try win whatever -saints in theory will do same - except we also don’t want injuries ahead of the playoffs. For that reason alone- forget form- you’d have to make Leeds strong favourites to win. Similar performance to Stoke and possibly similar outcome. It’s then all about getting attitude right for two leg play off. And potentially a one off winner takes all final at Wembley. Im actually more sanguine about the playoffs than the Leeds game. By the playoffs there are simply no alternatives but to go flat out. Leeds is inconvenient basically.

There’s a negative narrative on this forum about Stephens ( about most topics saints tbh) that I’m sure you are aware of. I don’t agree with all of it. Sorry if that’s argumentative.

Pity he did not pick Jack to start for our 5-0 thrashing then isn’t it. Sort of undermines your argument. Honestly the forum mythology that Stephens is rubbish and is only playing as he is Russell’s bestie is one of the more ridiculous comments I’ve seen on here. Decent bloke, decent player at this level and a captain who plays with heart on his sleeve. Willing to play any position for the team. Yet skated when he does not even play. Go figure.

You will get a PB football brand. You know that’s what I mean.

Really interesting take on it. I’ve not thought about Managers being associated so strongly with a “ brand” that they feel unable or very reluctant to veer away from it even if it loses. Everybody knows RM style of football. If you are an owner and you want one of those PB managers then Russ, if available, is always very high on the list. IF, on the other hand, Russ diluted his “brand” by chopping and changing tactics such that is simply reactive doing whatever is needed to win ( aka like José!) then arguably he is jeopardising his biggest career USP. Win or lose, bizarrely enough. In todays World a lot of owners are looking at brand image almost as much as results. With RM you know exactly what you are going to get. Exactly.

Just passed Will & a fellow player/ coach dog walking Riverside park. Managed to get a smile and positive eye contact as was wearing obvious Saints gear. Alls well I hope! 🤞

I hope we do learn is what I said.

I don’t expect anything in life anymore - but I’d strongly hope. Any professional businessman would do a proper post-mortem on this full season performance - succeed or fail. Some of the footballing deficiencies were evident well before now. That they were not rectified or sufficiently rectified is obvious. Why, less obvious. More nuanced than many on here think. The Saints Foundation recently published an Impact statement showing in granular detail what they have been up to in the last year. The good the bad and the ugly of their charitable activity. There was no bad and no ugly thankfully - unlike if a similar exercise were undertaken with Southampton Football Club. Identifying the bad and the ugly at SFC post season is essential to improving performance next season. I’d hope that this happens in fulsome and comprehensive professional manner and available to us supporters - like the Foundation Impact statement - not just in a few paragraphs at the AGM, shared to the Echo or accompanying the accounts.

Not if we learned from this season and rectified the issues. Is that so unreasonable an idea ? Sacking RM and his team for not finishing top two is a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not every match this season was terrible. Not every match this season was rubbish. Not every player was bad, not every performance embarrassing. Not every substitution or tram line up a joke. Some, many, performances were excellent. Maybe finishing fourth was about right. But some seem to be blind to that. What’s wrong with building on this season but ironing out the mistakes instead of chucking the whole concept in the bin and starting from scratch? Maybe I’m old fashioned but all this hiring and firing I don’t see as the best overall solution. Didn’t we have enough of that last season? What good did it do?

Yup there will be turnover a plenty. Wether it’s a good idea or not to keep changing manager each season is the question though. I think it’s bad. Sacking RM if we do not go up ( or even if we do) and the circus that follows I have no appetite for. It might satisfy a few on here but no new manager comes with a guarantee. Continuity is valuable in itself for any organisation wanting to have long term, sustainable, success. If we do not go up this season then our best chance to go up next year, imo, is to use the intelligence, maturity and experiences of this season with Russell& his team - not start from scratch with a new lot. The debacle at end of last season surely must have taught us something?

Well I’ve renewed in Block 41 and am rather looking forward to the new experience!

Yes LCFC play PB football. More effectively than us. So perhaps the issue IS the Manager. Looking at overall context I think that there are equally strong or stronger other factors that have influenced the results other than maybe Maresca > Martin. One strong candidate (for me) is that if we’d had a functioning proven goal scoring alternate to Che to rely on for this season we probably would have outscored our opponents enough to make up for whatever other defensive frailties we have shown playing this PB football under this Manager. There are others but either way , for multiple reasons we did not quite evolve ourselves enough and fast enough this season to be a top two team. I do not think this ( fairly) ranks as a “bad” manager and a “bad” style but hopefully it will be assessed and we learn enough from it to do better in the Championship next season or the EPL if we do go up via playoffs.

You don’t win a match in your six yard box but you can certainly lose it- very easily. Brighton last night was as extreme an example of PB dogma as I’ve seen - on a par with Saints early season gaffes. It was Howard Wilkinson who helped pioneer the attitude that the more often the ball is in your opponents danger zone the more likely you are to score. The first science and data based approach to English football really. It launched an era of essentially hard running big players in long ball football. But also launched a heavy reliance on data collection and analysis. Saints (and Brighton last night) PB football are examples of extreme football dogma - data analysis rules. The PB style was originally based on multi title winning Barcelona. But like all winning styles it’s been researched to bits and most tacticians / coaches can effectively counter it - caveat at highest levels. Not in our league though imo - yet. PB football has not been ineffective in the championship. Burnley walked it last season playing that way - but clearly it’s not been effective enough for us to be one of the best two teams this season. There is a distinction between the style and the efficacy of its application that is ignored constantly. Especially on this forum. Man City play an extremely effective PB football style. What this season is showing me is that the PB style IS good enough to be there or thereabouts to get out this league but that it absolutely needs to evolve to survive in the EPL - and given that we are not guaranteed ProMotion this year that evolution almost certainly needed to be accelerated earlier in this season. Why it was not is conjecture but perhaps was more a combination of bad luck ( if our big new CF was not injured in particular ) and a uniquely strong top four in this league this season - more than a rubbish manager and a bad style of football - imo of course.

Hi all of you now in SF heaven. Some of you are getting your kicks out of Russell and team bashing. Better than any Pompey fans you lot are at it. Egging each other on with who can say the nastiest things. Last time I checked we are fourth in this league. playoff certainties. Have played some great stuff all season mixed in with our usual saintly fuck ups. Still can go up with a few wins. Not bottom three and abject failures all season like last year. This lynch mob like anger against him - and team - and any who stand in your way defending them is classic bully behaviour. If you want to know the real reason some of our coastal neighbours call us “scum” sone of you need only reread the wretchedly vile abuse some of you post about Russell Martin, his team, our club, on here. I will be there on Saturday to support like all season. Thankfully many of you will not but there will still be some who feel negative support is what’s best to get us through the play offs. For the rest - and it’s the vast majority we will be giving him and team max support to regain some confidence and set us up for play offs. If you are coming to SMS Saturday to boo hiss shout abuse at Russell and the team etc then my advice is stay at home. We don’t need you.

Talk about hitting a man when he’s down… I agree probably too many goals gone in that lookedsave-able but Baz is not just a shot stopper though. He is/was Russell’s totem for PB based football. It starts with the keeper. Without Baz there would not be the ( largely successful) style weve seen all season. With all the criticism being handed out about him I thought only fair to also identify the positives.

Have you watched his games this season? He has played well every time selected.

Spot on. This is an Emperors new clothes type of post because you are staying something so blatantly true and obvious yet so apparently deeply wrong that not many others dare to say it: It’s been a blast this season! 😇

I think that Joe Lumley just got given a massive snub. It will be super hard for him to recover from that I’m afraid. The bottom line is that RM made a gut decision not to pick him - when for all intents and purposes he has been the #2 goalie for us all year. It was the right decision in a sense because of (1) Clean sheet (2) we won - but it was a bad decision in another sense because of (1) Lumley knows he is not trusted by the gaffer and that surely means he is gonna leave. Along with Alex who will also leave. I had an inkling that changing the gk for this game might galvanise the team but had no idea it would be Alex not Joe. Fact is it DID do something. We were noticeably more defensively aggressive and less willing to dawdle in our own penalty area ( apart from last five minutes). Maybe the knowledge that it wasn’t the usual keeper and perhaps let’s protect him a bit more changed the mindset? If so this was a genius decision on that front because it’s what all saints fans wanted- better defending attitude and application - but I would not go as far as to say RM thought that through to get the extra defensive steel he did from his team. Picking Joe would essentially be Baz mk2 but Alex is cast from a different mould and players knew it. Or maybe RM gut told him what to do and he trusted that instinct. I don’t care it worked!

Scintillating football at times. Best half I’ve seen us play here in a long time. But PNE shape has made it easy. Che, Manning, both armstrongs, Aribo Flynn Kyle Jan THB Alex all excellent. Goals and SHOTS all excellent 👍

Apparently that was what they were discussing in that huddle and surprisingly Jack didn’t get the gloves. 😂. It was Jans vote that did it.

IF he gets a ban might it accelerate an RS recovery from injury somewhat?