Sheaf Saint

Given that there is no actual leader of the group, I doubt that somewhat. It's interesting that you are criticising their methods as being ineffective, but their actions have prompted you to start a thread on an internet forum which in turn has sparked an interesting discussion on the subject. I would say that means their campaign has been successful

If he was expecting Bednarek to head it back to him then why on earth would he decide to rush right out to the edge of his box like that? If a keeper comes that far off his line, he has to be absolutely confident of getting the ball. I do take your point about not letting the ball bounce though. It was a terrible miscommunication between the two players, and the fault lies equally with them both.

No it was definitely Palace I was thinking of. I don't remember the Villa one though.

Didn't Forster do something similar away at Palace a few years back?

Are you forgetting about Shane 'Forrest Gump' Long?

One of the most prized talent spotters in British football? Have they actually seen his transfer record FFS?

This does not surprise me in the slightest. There were very clear warnings that the Gao takeover was not a good thing for the club. If she is taking legal action against him then it perhaps shows that she had more concern for the future of the club than many have given her credit for, but it's disappointing she couldn't see / didn't heed the warnings. Will be very interesting to see how this plays out. But when the team is performing as poorly as it is, a boardroom battle is the very last thing we need.

Aside from the baffling defensive lineups, the biggest problem I can see is that the players who seemed to instantly improve after Ralph's arrival last season all appear to have regressed badly to their old selves. Redmond, JWP, Hoj, Bednarek - they all seem to be playing well below what we know they are capable of. Manager has to take a large slice of the responsibility for that IMO. The only players who have really given a decent account of themselves so far this season are Romeu, Ings and Djenepo in his brief appearances (bloody typical that as soon as we unearth a player who looks like he might actually be a PL quality attacker, he gets himself injured straight away). Everyone else has been sub par.

No positives to take from that. Not one. Chelsea thrashed us without even having to break sweat. Pathetic.

He's got to roll the dice and try something though. We clearly won't get back in this game with things as they are.

I would love to know what Long has done in training to convince Ralph he was worthy of a start today. Baffling really.

What's happened to the Nathan Redmond who won POTS a few months ago? He's regressed badly this season. In fact, all the players who improved after Ralph came in seem to have gone backwards this season. Particularly JWP.

Edit: wrong thread

Massive deflection. Can't blame Gunn for that.

Valery doing very well so far, making Ralph's decision to change the entire shape of the team at the last moment rather than draft him in last week even more puzzling.

FFS. Gave the ball away cheaply and got punished again. No way back from this now. Chelsea will keep it tight and protect their lead, safe in the knowledge we don't have anything like the quality needed to break them down, and probably score a couple more on the break.

Wow. You really have got it in for him, haven't you! He may be far from being a top quality keeper, but I really don't see that McCarthy is a better option right now. There's very little between them IMO. They will both make some decent saves now and again, then have occasional brain farts and let in silly goals that they should be saving.

Well that puts our failure to beat Spurs last week into perspective. They've conceded 10 goals since then, and we couldn't create any genuinely good chances against them with only 10 men on the pitch.

Seeing Neil Ruddock on Celebrity Masterchef and realising that my earliest memory of watching Saints - seeing him smash in a last minute penalty for us against Newcastle at The Dell having only just recently signed for us - was over 30 years ago!

I couldn't get past the first episode of that - didn't even finish it. It just seemed like they were trying to cram as many SF cliches in as they possibly could, the visual aspect of it wasn't that great by today's standards and the acting was poor (I know, I know - if good acting is what you're after then perhaps sci-fi isn't really for you, but this was especially bad). It was essentially an even worse version of Nightflyers. At least that had some very good visual and musical effects. There's a recent film on Netflix called I Am Mother, which I thought was very good. Again, not groundbreaking in terms of storyline, but a very well crafted suspense film nonetheless.

He had/has good short-distance acceleration to create space for a cross though. Never seen that from Elyounoussi.

It's very telling that McCarthy and Bertrand are the only players from from our current squad that anyone has included.

Yep. Utterly dreadful. Probably the worst of the lot in recent years, and there have been some stinkers in that time. The only meaningful contribution I can remember him making was an assist against Derby in the FA cup last season. Hopelessly out of his depth in the PL, and seemingly not even good enough to play regularly in Scotland either.

In summary, it was just as it was against Bournemouth last week. Our opponents defended well and we didn't.

He was going full tilt and it was just too far in front of him.