Sheaf Saint

Quite a decent lineup with the glaringly obvious weakness of Long as a lone striker. Given that his only strength is his ability to bother teams playing a high defensive line and that Palace will obviously not do that, I fail to see the logic of picking him.

I couldn't watch the game today (luckily for me, it appears) but I've seen a couple of comments from people being p!ssed at how Tadic celebrated his goal. What did he do exactly?

People need to take their red and white tinted specs off and watch it again imagining it was an oppo player on our keeper. If Austin wanted to get his foot out of the way he could easily have done. It's so blatant on watching the replay that his action was deliberate and I find it hard to believe that even with a massive bias, some people can't see that. It was shocking and cowardly, and proves what many have long suspected: that Charlie Austin is a bit of a c*nt.

I don't think we have a poor squad. There are one or two positions where we could do with upgrades, but overall I believe we have a group of players who are capable of much better performances than they have been dishing up. I think that our squad evolution and investment over recent years was all geared towards signing players to play a particular system, and both Puel and Pellegrino have tried to get them playing a different way and it just hasn't worked. You could argue that a professional athlete should be more adaptable, but I don't believe our decline is the players' fault. A new manager who understands the demands of the PL and knows how to get the best out of his squad would be doing much better with what's available to him IMO. The football wasn't great under Puel, but at least we were creating chances, just failing to take them. This year with the same group of players we are not creating enough chances let alone taking them, and that can only be down to the system they are being asked to play. We won't improve under Pellegrino. We have failed to win the games we should and need to be winning against the teams around us, and that is because he hasn't set us up right. I understand the need for a defensive strategy against the top 6 sides, but we need to be fully taking the game to our opponents at home against our rivals, and the fact that we are still being ultra defensive and only playing one up front in these games is unacceptable. Time for a change of manager.

McQueen is on the bench

He's a f*cking disgrace to the shirt if he meant that. Which he quite obviously did.

Have you cracked open all of your Christmas booze already this morning?

I have no evidence to confirm this of course, but perhaps the reason he was popular with the players was that he didn't push them overly hard in training??? Just a thought.

You have a point, but surely you cannot deny there are also some serious deficiencies in our squad? It's quite obvious that the first-choice players we have in some positions are simply not good enough and need upgrading. Specifically Forster, Redmond and Davis. We also badly need a striker who is capable of being a target man in the way that Austin, Gabbiadini and Long are not, and who is fit enough to play every week.

I've just seen the goal and the pundits' analysis of Forster and the wall. Absolutely shocking. There's no way a keeper who has been regularly selected for England should be organising his wall so badly and then not actually being ready when the ball is hit like that. Inexcusable from him and the coaching team.

Koeman quite obviously did with the players he signed from the Dutch league (Pelle, Tadic, Martina, Clasie).

It's OK, he's only on loan. We can regain the title when he returns in the summer.

Great. We desperately need to find a way back into this game, so we're bringing on Redmond

This is f*cking painful to watch.

Absolutely dreadful stuff. We've got nothing going forward and Leicester look like scoring every time they get near our box. I'll be very surprised if we don't concede again, and we don't show anything to make me believe we can get back on terms. Utterly f*cking crap in every possible way. With the run of fixtures we have coming up, I can't see any way that we can avoid being out of the bottom 3 come the new year.

F*cking disgraceful defending. Not one player even tried to get near Mahrez and close him down. P*ss-poor from the entire defence there after a decent start for us.

Lemina hasn't scored for us yet has he? A top corner screamer from him (or even a scrappy, tap-in) would go down a treat.

With Cedric's shooting ability, I highly doubt it!

https://twitter.com/SouthamptonFC/status/940869941280026625 On this day in 1997, Franny Benali scored his first and only career goal in a 2-1 win against Leicester. I was listening on Solent and genuinely thought they had made a mistake when they read out the scorer. I would ask who we have in the squad for tonight that is long overdue a goal, but it probably applies to pretty much our entire midfield and defence, with the exception of Yoshida.

Nope. No chance it was accidental. He knew full well he wasn't going to get to that and he's clearly still looking down at Virgil's ankle long after the ball has gone. Dirty little c*nt who deserves to be taken out in a VVD/Romeu sandwich.

I saw this on Twitter earlier but I must confess I Know nothing about him. Can anyone provide an assessment of his prospects?

I'm not so certain. Vardy is a snidey little c*nt and VVD had him in his pocket the whole game up until that point. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if his actions were deliberate.

VVD to take one for the team by taking him out? I expect the odds on that are better than evens. However, I expect any clued up ref will be aware of the possibility and might be looking to punish anything that looks like retribution overly harshly.

It wasn't. It was more of a dig at the general view that has been posted by a number of contributors to the thread previously.

Another start, another goal. And with slightly better luck could have had a hat-trick, against one of the teams that will undoubtedly be challenging for the CL spots come the end of the season. But yeah, he's too slow and clearly only Championship level