The Kraken

Yeah I noticed watching last week that the pitch is the worst I’ve seen it at st Mary’s, very brown and a bit bare in places.

0-1, penalty

Given Ralph’s comments I can’t see us deviating from three CBs at the back. I think we won’t be too far off the starting XI from last week. Hopefully Elmo out, Bednarek maybe dropped for Lyanco given the situation there. If we went 4 at the back, we’d have to play Djenepo at LB and it would be a big weak spot which is the main reason I think we won’t do it. If it is a 4 though, it needs to be a very solid one, so: Bazunu KWP - ABP - Salisu - Djenepo JWP - Lavia - Romeu Aribo - S.Armstrong Adams It won’t be that though.

McTominay is on close to £100k a week and has three years left on his contract. In addition to what would be a massive transfer fee, we simply aren’t paying that.

Criminal eh. Lets consider that when Adkins took over in league 1, Saints had played 6 league games and lost 4 of them. Saints were in the bottom 3 and 8 points off top. Under Nigel, Saints won 27 games out of 40. We won 13 of our last 15 games. If that’s criminal, lock me up. In our Championship season, hardly anyone in pre-season called us for direct promotion. If you did, well done, it was far from the common perspective at the time.

I bet you do. What a silly billy, again.

Just a shame he’s such an utterly shameless cheat.

This is one of the dimmest things I’ve seen on here in a while, and it’s a low benchmark. If I’m to believe your supposition correctly, there are significant numbers of Portsmouth fans who masquerade on this board as Saints fans, and make negative comments about the team. Also, there are significant numbers of Saints fans who want us to lose only so that they can say told you so about something. I’m not sure what the something is though. Rightyho. Play up Pompey and down with all of our new signings forever, cos I knew 3 at the back has looked rubbish since July.

Elite development squad. Edit. Already been answered, thought I was on the past page, apologies.

Like you say, we’ll agree to disagree about the approach taken so far. My opinion is, it’s been a poorly executed integration as the formation has been utterly awful. Using a Valery/Stephens approach was also imo clearly dreadful. Let’s go 4 at the back, bin off Bednarek, use ABK and Salisu as a pair, and play our best players. No need for patience, play the best players in positions they know.

We didn’t lose 6-0, that’s just a made up scenario. And let’s just say I don’t agree that 4 debut players losing by a big amount makes much difference to the 3 players on debut that did lose. Ketchup isn’t someone making a top league bow, he played more than 50 games in the bundesliga 1 and 2, 22 last season at top level. It’s a daft thing to say Saints were protecting him while playing two debutants who have barely played at all at the top level.

You’ve answered your own question then, I feel 👍

Has anybody stated is as fact? It’s just a suggestion made by some who were there.

Yeah we’ve played 3 at the back quite a few times before so I’m not going tin foil hat about it yet. It could very well be just another daft Ralph innovation, I thoroughly accept that. I just find his negative comments about it after both our games more than a little bit odd.

That’s what he said then, yes. His comments after each of the two games in the league seem to contradict it though.

I don’t know, I’ll be honest, but I thought they played 4 at the back last season.

Ok, I’m more convinced that this isn’t Ralph’s idea. Worrying. Hopefully the message has got through to whoever.

I did raise this on another post I made today. I haven’t made my mind up on it yet, but I find the whole thing a bit of a conundrum. I’m not convinced it’s Ralph’s idea.

Good job we only started 3 debutants then. Phew!

We lost 4-1, how much trouble could there have been? We were comprehensively beaten. Also, Valery has played far fewer games in the past two years than Billy Ketchup. It’s a nonsense of an argument you’re making. Especially as Valery was so shit that he was replaced at half time (by Jack Stephens Ffs).

There’s a middle ground to what you’ve stated. Not changing from last week would have been foolish. Changing it to todays line up involved 4 different players starting, but I think you’ll struggle to find many who watched the game who would say we started with the ‘correct’ line up or formation. Our last twenty minutes or so of today was the best we’ve looked so far. I think people are encouraging more of that type of lineup and style. It certainly was worlds away from the first three-quarters of the game, which was fairly abject. We didn’t have a shot in target in the first hour.

Honestly, I can’t remember someone being so utterly ineffective for us in quite a while. And it’s a really low benchmark. Elmo was terrible today.

You seemed to quote yourself there, so @Matthew Le God, explain yourself please.

I’ve said this before……we sacked Alan Pardew after 3 games and that worked out just fine in the end. In fact the biggest flaw was sacking him and not having the incoming manager ready to replace him until another 3 games (defeats) after that. If we are going to get rid of Ralph it needs a succession plan in place to ensure the switch happens quickly.

I’d say we are much better equipped this season to play variations of that than we have been before. Take Liverpool away last season; Ralph wanted to play a solid 4-5-1 but Diallo got injured in the build up, due to lack of other personnel we ended up with some sort of 3-4-3 system and got utterly humped. With the option to play Lavia, Romeu and JWP in the same side with a 4 at the back, it allows us a bit more solidity than we’ve had before without persisting with the awful 3 centre back arrangement.