The Kraken

Koeman has just had a 10m euro payoff, for an already wealthy man I can’t see him doing anything other than a project he really wants. Saints isn’t that, imo.

The club isn’t skint, it just has to spend within its means. IIRC Ralph is on a pretty decent financial package. I’m very much in the camp for keeping Ralph, but given the salary I think it’s not unreasonable to suggest that we couldn’t attract some relatively decent names if a change was made (I hope we don’t, Ralph has his flaws but I don’t see many others getting a significantly better tune out of this squad).

“Luckily the club is run by people like me” 🤣 Wow.

Ok, go on, which part of the film ages it?!

I reckon Ralph was planning on 5-3-2 as he said he had to reshuffle because ‘Ibra’ got injured and couldn’t play.

I hope poor old Justin has calmed down by now, the silly little sausage. He’s just far too angry than is necessary.

Still remember him whacking in a long ranger against us at the Dell, it absolutely flew in. Such a sad story, RIP. Great reaction from the Leeds fans.

You’re brave booking. 2021 looks almost certain to be the first calendar year I’ve done zero days of skiing since 1999, which is a stretch I’m disappointed won’t continue. But I’m not looking to do anything next season either as there’s just too many unknowns. Austria in lockdown is not a good look, and the ski forum I look in on has slightly worrying tales about lift restrictions, on-slope/on-lift mask requirements, and other general resort number minimalism (goodness knows what the apres scene will look like). Good luck to you 🤞

I think he knows he made a mistake but sounds like Diallo injured threw a spanner in the works. I’ll claim my prescience medal from pre game when I thought 3 at the back was ok but 2 in the middle / 3 up top was dodgy, sounds like Ralph’s pre match plan was definitely Diallo in there to beef up midfield and that’s where the week of preparation has been heading (whether that was 2 at CB or 3, who knows). Said it before, we’d have lost this game 99% of the time anyway so can’t complain too much, just disappointing to play right into their hands. And, to be fair, too many individual bad performances and errors anyway. I carry on saying ‘in Ralph we trust’.

That was Alpine tbf.

Ralph Hassenhuttl said: “We did a mistake which you shouldn’t do against such a team, changing the shape and what you know very well, then try against this team and it didn’t work. We changed at half time…..to more oriented defending and what we always do.”

KWP deserves a chance too, he’s a really good right back.

Yes he was hence why before the game I was surprised we didn’t have him in. But yeah, looks like a late forced decision to line up as we did. Smallbone was the only other CM option we had.

Interesting that Ralph says Diallo was injured so couldn’t play. I said before the game he would’ve been my choice to play so it looks like the lineup was really not one we planned for.

Yep, fair play Ralph, he’s owned that one and he changed it at half time as it clearly was the wrong option.

Personally not suggesting Djnepo and I don’t think anyone else has.

I think people might be suggesting that playing Adams Broja and Armstrong against Liverpool is not as defensive as you’re making it out to be, and there were other options that would have set us up better (or at least more defensively).

Under Ralph I don’t think there’s any chance of doing a Puel! As you say, it’s all semantics, 99% of the time we lose this game whatever formation. I just think this one played right into their hands and the game was over too early, formation was a significant part of that IMO. End of the day, we got what we expected, but after any 4-0 loss it’s right that questions are asked of our set up, whoever we are playing.

Personally I was expecting zero points but a bit of a better performance. Formation not great but individual player errors more than played their part.

Playing 4 at the back or 3/5 is not the big miss for me. I don’t mind going with 3 CBs at all, especially against top sides. For me I thought having 3 up top was the bigger mistake, or Che as a 10, whatever we want to classify it as. I think having Diallo in there instead of one of the top three would have set us up a little bit more solidly. We’d have lost this game whatever happened, so we shouldn’t die in a ditch over it, but imo 3 up top was too cavalier and gave them every opportunity to play through us. The fact we changed it wholesale at HT says Ralph knows it was a mistake too, he chose to go back to a more settled formation.

I don’t mind 3 at the back but 3 up front was a bit daft, we really needed someone like Diallo in there to support the middle. Think we’d have probably lost this game whatever formation we put out, but this game was gone far too early, we just got played right through us.

Some interesting spelling of names going on there.

Liverpool eased off when they were 5 up against Man Utd, hopefully they show us the same sort of mercy.

🤣🤣

My stream just went down. As it’s 3 that’s likely a good thing.