The Kraken

I always thought we’d miss Forster unless Bazunu turned out to be true class. He isn’t that. There are better keepers than Forster but, at our level, he was good. Price was obviously a massive factor in losing him, but right now I’d have him as our number one any day.

Can’t disagree with this, at this point in time. The summer recruitment policy seemed to largely revolve around getting in the Man City recruitment manager and buying a bunch of nippers from Man City that he knew. As it’s looking so far our best signings this season are Billy Ketchup and Joe Aribo, who perhaps didn’t come from a Joe Shields recommendation. We also fucked up not bringing in a striker that the club, the manager and the fans all said we needed. Also, we spent a lot this summer, but from what I’ve read over the past year or two, that money has been sat in our account since a Covid load undertaken when Gao was in charge. So, have SR actually put up any money themselves? Far too early to pontificate on the merits or otherwise of SR, but let’s just say that the jury is out.

I don’t want to slag off Bazunu, he’s young and will make mistakes. In the last few games though, he hasn’t made enough big saves. He’s let in goals that certainly Forster wouldn’t have conceded. He made some solid saves today but I’d say all of them were those that you’d expect a top line keeper to make. There haven’t been many (if any) “wow, how did he save that?” moments since the season started. Today I thought his positioning was poor for the Cancelo goal and the Mahrez goal. His lack of a midfield shield does him no favours, but he’s not standing out at the moment for me. On performances I don’t see him as being better than McCarthy, which is a sad indictment.

I’d be happy enough with party members electing their own party leader, if there was a rule that there needs to be a general election if a new leader is required. For all the talk of “you vote for your MP and not the PM”, that’s not true for the vast majority of voters. Also, more importantly, changing a PM is never just changing one person at the top, it’s a root and branch change throughout cabinet and beyond. I vote Labour these days but I was never a fan of the way Gordon Brown engineered his way into the PM seat, I thought it was underhand and he should have been seen to win an election. For all Johnson’s faults as I see them, he was elected on a manifesto. Getting Truss is the worst possible example to use, but it reinforces my belief: new party leader = new election.

Sick of playing with a bunch of misfits.

Not to repeat other threads but…….Look at the performance and not the result. We we’re never going to win this game; it’s how the team stands up to adversity that counts. Our lot folded today. Compare that performance to other better games under Ralph’s tenure at top sides away (including drawing away at Man City). This was nowhere near that, we were utterly abject all over the park and looked a complete shambles. The players are culpable but the lack of team spirit and organisation suggests a much bigger problem.

As has been said, it’s not the score line. We were something like 22-1 before the game, we were never going to win and keeping it to 1-0 would have been very good. More obviously, it’s the manner of defeat that matters the most. Compare it to some of the better Ralph performances away against top teams under his tenure, and this is a million miles away.

15 losses from our last 21 league games. Super run of form.

He’s doing very well. The step down to the Championship helps, as does the fact that he’s most often playing in probably his natural position, wide left or wide right in a front 3. We never did that with him, he’s not a central striker and he wasn’t given as much licence to bomb forward when played wide. Good luck to him, bet he’s fucking delighted he’s not with us right now.

I’m only doing this cos I said I’d do it all season.

Like you say, don’t expect any points from this, but… I expect our team to be well drilled. I expect them to make the game as difficult as possible for City. I expect them to get into the opposition, not consistently stand off them and let them play. I expect more than 1 shot (off target) in 75 minutes. I expect City to score, but they should have to work hard for their goals, not be gifted them by a series of mistakes and piss poor play. Except, I don’t expect that. Under Ralph, this performance is everything I expected.

Djenepo and Elmo brought on. Fuck me.

I know this is Man City, but any defensive pundit would tear our performance to shreds. Utterly useless, not drilled properly, too many individual rickets.

Fair play to Bazunu, that was good.

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.