The Kraken

Bazunu just doesn’t make saves. His positioning is terrible, he’s given Mahrez all of the goal to aim at. He did similar with the Cancelo goal, just hugs the near post.

They’re both completely lightweight and do very little going forward.

That’s was a passage of play that sums up Saints under Ralph. Win the ball, get plenty of numbers up around their penalty area, and it’s back at our goalkeeper within ten seconds. Cowardly football.

Too easy. We have no midfield presence and they’re just going to overwhelm us.

Ward Prowse got absolutely fucking ripped. Rubbish.

I don’t know if under 50s are ever going to be offered a jab through the NHS. There certainly doesn’t seem to be any plans for it. I kept a close eye on it as I travel to Spain a lot, and Spain relied upon an in date (within 1 year) vaccination record as condition of entry. My last jab was December 2021 so I was starting to wonder about it, but on coming to Spain last week they didn’t ask for my certificate at any point, so hopefully that’s something that has now gone away.

Bradley, in the summer before Saints kicked off the Championship season, did you think Saints were favourites to win the title that year? Yes or no?

No, not having this for an accurate assessment. Adkins was a dead man walking from the start of the season, Di Matteo got interviewed early on and Cortese made it clear Adkins was a goner. Saints had an appalling start to the season, lost 8/10, but Adkins was turning it round on his own. Not saying he’d have been better than MP, he wouldn’t have been. But in the 11 games before he was sacked, Adkins team scored 17 points. He’d got the team playing alright and they were doing well, draws against Chelsea and Arsenal in his last few games plus an away win at Villa. We were unbeaten in 5 league games when Adkins got the gun.

I didn’t get any sense of urgency from the players that they’re fighting for him. It just looked like disjointed stand-off rubbish to me. I can’t see Ralph turning this around this time, just a matter of time until he’s gone. May as well rip off the plaster now and get the process started.

It’s dopey. There’s an argument that the club didn’t want to stand in his way to play in La Liga, which may be the case. But from a footballing pov he should’ve been around to support and nurture Lavia. Lavia was never going to play 38 games, he’s 18 playing in the most combative position on the pitch. We deliberately weakened ourselves by letting him go, he would have been absolutely ideal to play a support role.

Hopefully City give Haaland a rest. If we keep it to single figures I’d be surprised.

I honestly don’t. Forster is better than Bazunu. Romeu is better than AMN. I also think, as long as he’d not have played not every week, Romeu would have been massive this year In working with Lavia. Lavia was never,,ever going to play all 38, it should’ve been a one year crossover. Livramento isn’t here for months, so we’re down him. Billy Ketchup is an upgrade, we’ll see about collect a car. Mara has promise but looks like a Long replacement, which is a low benchmark. I hope for better from him certainly. we have no first choice striker replacement for Broja. Effectively Che Adams is this years Broja. Not good enough. Edozie on the wing and Lopez at left back may be good long term but not expecting them to rip it yet, too young. We’ll see though, Lopez looked ok today but no difference to Perraud. and we still have Elmo, Diallo and Djenepo far too close to the first team, so we clearly haven’t signed anyone much better than them. Positives: ABK is decent, Lavia is excellent. Jury is out on all others and how much they’ll affect us, though Joe Aribo is a step up so I’d include him. im not sure yet if our squad is better, no we were gash last year. Overall level, maybe.

Our failure to sign a striker is a massive fuck up. It’s undeniable.we can wax on about how good the actual signings are, but the lack of a striker addition was reallly bad. A few days before the window: the club said we were getting a striker, Ralph said he was very confident of getting a striker. Then we didn’t. So, we lost Long (no great loss, maybe replaced by Mara) and we lost Broja (big loss, replaced by nobody). So now, we’re playing second striker Che Adams as a first striker. Bad mistake. And we’re playing Adam Armstrong who runs around a lot but, bless him, isn’t very good at scoring at this level. Add that into the fact that Ralph is playing the likes of Djenepo, A Armstrong, Diallo and Perraud, who he previously didn’t rate, and it’s doesn’t add up to a contented dressing room.

This Saints team looks like it’s being led by a manager who has given up and is going through the motions. In previous years under Ralph you could tell what we were about. High press, high energy, and players drilled to work for each other and play quick crisp passing football in tight spaces. We broke quickly and played high up the field. Thats gone. Now we sit back, our defenders sit off and don’t attack the ball, we are ponderous in possession, and we don’t break quickly. I don’t know what we are any more as a team, we don’t have a style other than boring and fragile. Life under Ralph has always been highs and lows, but we’ve been in a low slump for many many months now, and I reckon the manager is close to losing the dressing room.

He needs a fucking rocket up his arse based on todays performance. I lost count how many times he gave the ball away, notably for Everton’s second goal way up the pitch. He is a massive downgrade on Romeu, let alone Lavia. No energy, no control, no precision, just ambled about giving it away. Not impressed if that’s what he’s about.

Not sure why I’m bothering doing this as most of the lot out there were hopeless. But vote away anyway, if you like.

Another dreadful half of football. I remember when under Ralph they used to call us the entertainers. Fucking dreadful now.

Pretty dire game so far. AMN looks weak, not a patch on Romeu.

No Salisu at least hopefully means no dopey long throws. Hopefully collect-a-car is up to match speed. Good to see Mara forcing his way in, let’s see him justify the spot.

New Cdm or Romeu, whatever, the point is we’re one short. Keeping Romeu just for one more year would have given us a strong 3 on the books. Also, he’s a known entity, you know exactly what you’ll get. Playing Diallo as a starter in a central midfield two was always likely to be a disaster, and we haven’t really got a good way around it now.

Getting rid of Romeu still strikes me as a crazy move. Lavia is 18 and was never going to manage to play every game. JWP and Romeu especially looked floored at the end of last season as there was no backup for them. And we never had the option to play 3 strong CMs together, eg Liverpool away. We haven’t solved that problem as evidenced by Diallo just not being up to it.

Pretty sure I read somewhere that Saints did the same with Mark Hughes. Now that was money well spent.

No chance, they’ve got enough dough as it is.

Left of a line from Liverpool to London is a massive catchment area to be exploited.

AMN getting chucked under the bus by the manager here. https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/21895156.hasenhuttl-explains-exclusion-arsenals-maitland-niles-southampton-squad/ “We have with Ainsley a lot of work to do also because he has to adapt to our game and this is something that takes time a little bit,” Hasenhuttl said, speaking after the match. “We see also during the week what we ask him to do and especially in the midfield position it takes a little bit to understand how we want to do it. “It doesn’t make sense to throw someone in who isn’t ready for what we want to do. When he is ready and on the level we think he has to be then he will help us for sure.”