Back from a nice dinner which has cheered me up…
So, positives from the game…
… tumbleweed going past…
Perraud came on, so that should mean that we don’t see Djenepo as an attacking full back again.
Djenepo and Valery both did well in their involvement for our goal. He showed a few good in attack elsewhere in the game, as did Valery. But that’s where they are at their best.
Defensively, they got easily moved out of position by Spurs who then exploited all the room they had been given time and again.
KWP had a good opening spell, but Spurs reinforced that side, and that allowed Sessignon plenty of room to run into a second open flank.
Salisu’s own goal was very poor, Bednarek gave his opponents plenty of room at times, and Stephens had his poor moments, such as dawdling on the ball, ruining one of our rare good moves. But all three were also having to move out of position to support all that space on either flank.
Lavia also looked good, particularly early on. Technically good and composed. But Spurs overran our midfield as easily as if RalphBall v1 was in effect. He wasn’t able to put any bite in to stop that. Not that he could have done on his own anyway. It was good to see JWP involved in a more attacking way, and Romeu is technically capable further forward. But neither were able to offer that much support to the flanks or their back line. I was thinking Romeu should be the furthest back, just as he’s the best at that role.
I didn’t see AA before he joined Saints. From what I have seen, he seems to like an early instinctive shot. It would make sense if the team were set up to take advantage of that, or to know to compensate for it.
Perhaps RalphBallv2 is supposed to have our attacking fullback get lots of service into him? Perhaps the new midfield three are supposed to control the game, allowing Aribo to set things up for AA’s finishing?
Instead, we got AA running between Spurs defenders. He’s not going to hold the ball up. He’s not going to outrun people from the half way line and he’s not going to score wonder goals from there either. I can’t imagine why he’s with us, since it’s not a good match to the way we play.
I can only imagine Adams absence is due to an imminent move/ a falling out/ a massive player huff or Ralph thinking that his new tactic will turn around any second now, and being too stubborn to see that it won’t.
Aribo did okay, and had a decent chance late on. When he was more attacking, the team lost even more of the limited creativity it had.
With the likes of Djenepo and Valery running at players from deep we frequently gave the ball away. Saints struggled to put any decent passing moves together. Possession retention seemed poor. If RalphBall v2 needs a decent amount of time for its automatisms to kick in, then I’m not sure Ralph will have that luxury.
An unexpected bonus was finding out that Southampton FC is haunted. The ghost of a failed trialist goalkeeper is possessing a succession of our keepers. It’s the only explanation why all of them are so poor at kicking it. Bazunu was agile and lively. He does seem to think that having a scowly face is going to fool people into thinking he’s a top keeper. No howlers from him, unlike some of his teammates. I do miss the physical presence of Forster in there, but that’s personal preference.
When Ralphballv1 worked it was thrilling to watch. Ralph just couldn’t get us to transition from it, when it wasn’t working to find a workable compromise. Either in games or across a longer period. Today was a lot closer to the shambles at the close of last season, than when that tactic ticked. Apart from a little in the opening 15 minutes, were resoundingly second best throughout.
It was always going to be a challenge to find us a new approach, or find a solution to the deficiencies in the old one. The clock is ticking. Leeds is a game we should be looking at points from
