Holmes_and_Watson

Cat

Game

An innovative, interlocking human pyramid in the goal. RalphBall v3 10-0-0 🙂

Fire

Radio chuffed for TAA putting Liverpool ahead, as if scoring somehow balances the poor defensive ability, which is why he's not picked for England.

For a second I thought he'd been sent off for a high boot, before I remembered who Boot was. 🙂

My memory is of annoyance when NA would make tactical subs against bigger Prem teams, when we were clearly on top of them. He must have been doing something right to be in that position. There were signs we were getting to grips with the season when he went. His record with us shows he was easily good enough for the two leagues below. Remember, when you are feeling stressed or are in a bad place, just ask yourself "What Would Nigel Do?" and let that positivity in. 🙂

Hubby will have been looking at his contract to see if there was a wage reduction on relegation clause in there.

Being surrounded by alcohol seems like a good place to be when you hear the score. 🙂

Despite being poor, Forest still managed to create 3 excellent chances, that they then wasted.

That

Head

With so far to go, it's hard to see who Ralph will want to build his championship team around. 🙂

Shrug

I do agree. By "step up" I was meaning that I hoped his experience in a number of roles would help him fill a gap here. While I've not seen loads of his Arsenal games, I don't recall him in a Romeu role. Hopefully, he's got the all round game to do a job there.

Today was his peak. It's all downhill from here, starting with a massive slump and 3 own goals next week. 🙂

A save is that he didn't know the names of any City players. Obviously at 6 , Turkish will have ensured his son can recite full commentary of the '76 final. 🙂

I'd point out that:- - The entire team was underperforming after RalphBall v1 got found out (and quite a lot of the time around that), so far from being just Romeu. - Romeu was one of the players that, even when under performing, we really missed, with performances slumping even more without him (for the most part) - That his position/ role in the team was a key one, while several other positions contained interchangeable players. - It was also a key postion in all versions of RalphBall, to counter the press breaking down / shielding our defence. - Diallo clearly wasn't able to cover in this position, and it was not an uncommon view that some cover in this postion was really needed. - Some of his departure thread will mention his importance. So it's not a case of hindsight, as one of simple contingency planning the club should be capable of. - Had Lavia impressed, made the first team on merit then great. Even better if he was super fit and played lots of games. But at that age, and in the competitions we are in, having Romeu as a sub (Ralph keen on having the 5), as a replacement when resting developing or tired young players, or as a supporitng player on other competitions would still have made plenty of sense. - I hope AMN comes good. And in that postion. But it was an uneccesary risk, when we had a player on our books in that role already. Right, off to start my rant about how Romeu was our best ever player and the Saints board should be prosecuted for forcing out our star player. 🙂

No one likes a show off, and I'm glad we don't have any here. >sob< 🙂

The disapointments just keep on appearing this weekend...>sigh< 🙂

What are the thoughts in it being a nice touch to give him a guard of honour at the end of the game, when he breaks that total? 🙂

Towards the end of the window I had us down as a high 6 out of 10, tipping over into a 7 with a very late arrival of a striker to come. The club, and everyone else, knew one was required. The club were extremely confident a signing would be made. We have a modern recruitment dpeartment where a number of targets are assessed. For every one of those deals to fall through outmatching our recruitment's abilities was a big failure. Yes, we got Mara in, but he was never billed as a combined Broja & Long replacement. Getting shot of Romeu reminded me more of the penny pinching we-know-best approach of the Lowe era. Overreliance (and overhype) on the young players coming in , combined with cutting down on that wage bill flying in the face of competent squad management. A half decent management team could have arranged a transition between the two over the coming season. There have been games when I'd have them both starting. Instead, you can see that Lavia was offered a starting spot right away, and that information was used to push Romeu out of the door to other pastures. It's unfortunate that Lavia is injuried. It's incompetence to not have contingencies in place. It's not as though we all couldn't see how important Romeu's role and presence in the team had been. We could also all see that Diallo simply wasn't that replacement. We can only hope AMN steps up, but it's not been a good start. And it's a situation that could have been completely avoided. It was Romeu's new club's connections with the Man City group that got it over the line in the end. We couldn't wait to cut that wage bill. As S-Clarke said, we had a good start to the window. Then chose to chuck that by not recruiting a player for the key postion required and offloading a key first team player, with no real back up in place. A transfer window of a high 6/ low 7 rapidly falls away to a high 4/ low 5, despite all the good work that has been done. I can imagine Ralph using the lack of a striker, Lavia's injury and Romeu's departure in discussions. He will argue that we are conceding fewer per game this season than last, and that our win percentage is the same. He will point to the personal errors that have led to so many of the goals. Relying on players without a clinical finish he could argue, along with those errors, is what is costing us in a tactic where goals are going ot be harder to come by, than in RalphBall v1.0. But to do that is to argue against a lot of other, more miserable stats.

Scroll down past winning euro millions... all the way past truthful politician ... keep going all the way past invasion from a parallel dimension... 🙂

That just shows you the fine margins in football. In your scenario, it's a rear guard action where City sneak a winner. In mine, we sneak a winner after a lot of defending. Hard to blame Ralph under such circumstances.

ABK and Salisu's physical presence does enough to keep Haaland out of the goals. As Pep is distracted looking for wonderkid Redmond, who he set up his tactics to oppose, JWP gets a free kick into the box. The goalkeeper paries it and Stu hammers it home (even if he was aiming for the other part of the goal). 0-1 Saints win.