Whitey Grandad

Are you sure you're in the right place? I'd like to hear Puel answer anything. In French even. This rotation malarkey might work in a slower league with fewer top-quality teams, France for example, but the Premier League is notoriously fast and unrelenting. There are no easy rides here.

To be honest I'd be disappoined with 10th in the Championship.

But the rotation obviously hasn't worked. But the talk is all about individual players and not about achieving a team. What we have is a group of individual talents who are constantly having to adjust to different arrangements. It's a bit like having an orchestra who have never played a particular piece before and are having to read every note before playing it.

I thought they all did that?

Results would seem to indicate otherwise.

It just shows that stats can be misleading. Yoshi has at least one mistake in him every game. Is there a stat for 'gets turned inside by Matt Phillips leading to a goal'?

The lack of goals and slow play is down to the constant rotation in my opinion. Midfielders are constantly having to pause and look for the forwards and any runs they might make. Up front there is no instinctive understanding between the forwards, the player making the cross doesn't automatically know where the attacker will be, no rapid interchange of positions to pull the defence around. This is not helped by playing only one up front even when we're at home. They always used to say that the best strikers operated in partnerships but we don't have one of those. We end up with very few 'team' goals and rely on set pieces or flashes of individual brilliance from Boufal or Bertrand sometimes or even Clasie. The defence had been ok earlier in the season but changing 3/4 of the back four against WBA was asking for trouble. Instead of being a linked chain across the back small gaps develop which are exploited by quality players. Yoshida getting turned for their equaliser being an example. He was slightly out of position and got easily turned by Phillips who then had a free uncontested shot on goal.

Hmm, that went well didn't it? Surely of the three games WBA at home was the one that we should have planned to win?

There's a balance to be struck. It's perfectly possible to get physically fit without playing a game but that's not the same as being fully match fit. Mental sharpness is an important factor too and you won't maintain that whilst you're sitting out a game. Against West Brom we changed three of the back four and that is absolute lunacy. Pulis kept most of his team the same. Two home games in three days should not have been a problem.

Booger. Wish I'd watched it.

Might be the best save he has ever made for the club.

Large squad with quality players? Some might disagree. What you are describing is a group of players and not a team.

Playing an extra game is better than any amount of training and the more games the better. Following the argument that resting between games is good for a player would mean that after a six week layoff they should be red hot and raring to go in their first game back. There's obviously an optimum period between games but twice a week should not be a problem. There's a significant difference between home and away games too.

The converse is that we have rotated against teams that haven't and we've lost.

Rotation means we never play our best team. Nothing beats a settled team and playing the same group of players together breeds confidence and understanding. How can anybody ever get match-sharp if they don't play regularly? There's a big difference between being fit to play and being match-fit. This constant rotation is demotivating our best players and is leading to constant underachieving.

Yes, I agree. The situation reeks of mismanagement.

We don't actually have a first team, or if we do we don't play it at the moment. We go into every game with several changes from the previous.

That's how I see it. Did anybody ever find out what the team instructions were at half time up at Hull?

If it's team captan it doesn't matter who they choose since they'll be rotated out from one match to the next.

I know it's only one game but against WBA at home ther were many occasions when a ball was driven across the box and there were no Saints plays in there. None, zilch, zero, whatever you want to call it. Watching other TV games recently I have sometimes counted 6 attackers against 7 defenders, Arsenal being one example.

But if they've been told not to do that?

Oops. Getting serious now.

All very true but I have come to the conclusion that the players are playing the way that they have because they have been told to play that way. Safety first every time. Don't attack or try anything adventurous because we might give the ball away. There is an interesting piece in The Times this morning bemoaning the rise tof tippy-tappy football: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-death-of-proper-defending-came-about-0gz3q9klf These quotes in particular: Pep Guardiola best exemplified a shifting landscape when he said he “doesn’t coach tackles” after Manchester City’s 4-2 defeat by Leicester City last month. “I’m sad, because if everybody plays the same, if everybody takes it from the back and passes and passes then it’ll become the most boring game you could watch,” Moyes said. “You don’t want football to be predictable. You want different styles, different ways of playing.

Most companies operate with some form of debt (loan) as due most individuals.

Worse than woeful. To be honest I'm surprised that you have only just noticed this but it's hardly surpising when the team is instructed not to be too ambitious and always to hang back in case of counter-attack.