Midfield_General

In another season - one where we're doing alright - that would feel like a pretty decent result. Didn't fold after going a goal down early, defended pretty well (aside from the goal which was poor), carved out one or two chances and hit the bar, rattled them a little bit in the last 10 minutes, and by keeping it to 1-0 stayed in with a puncher's chance right to the end. There are plenty of teams who'd take a one goal defeat from City away if it was offered. When you're where we are though, unfortunately it doesn't really mean much. Even if you go in fearing the worst and expecting a drubbing that doesn't come, a respectable defeat is still just another defeat and another week with no more points on the board. Honestly, they didn't really need to get out of second gear and regardless of how many pretty little little triangles we managed in meaningless areas, they just pinned us back or held us at arm's length to get the three points without expending too much energy. If it felt like the positives from that respectable defeat were something that we'd learn from and build on, then maybe it would feel more significant. But unless we use this to work towards a settled team, and get wins from Everton and/or Wolves, it doesn't mean anything. I want to take some encouragement from it, but really all I feel is relief that that fixture is out of the way and we haven't been pumped by 6 or 7, which I thought was on the cards when they scored from their first attack of the match.

I was looking at the last relegation squad and what was noticeable was how many players we had that season for whom playing in the Premier League for Saints that season will probably be the peak of their career - ie they got a lot of game time but have since been proved to be lower level players, and in hindsight just were never good enough for that league. Players like Diallo, Mara, Lyanco, Caleta-Carr and Elyonoussi, plus some of the more borderline ones like Perraud. That got me thinking about the reverse though - which players have we had in recent years who looked average for us, and no-one really cared when they left, who actually went on to prove they were decent players that we maybe just couldn’t get the best from? Tadic feels like the obvious one. Felt like his best performances for us had tailed off and there were plenty who weren’t sad to see him go, then he tore it up for Ajax in the Champions League the following season and is still playing at a high level with Fenerbahce. Lemina appeared to be a complete waster but seems to have done alright and is now captain at Wolves I think. Hojbjerg maybe? Never really looked that special for us but went on to look an important player for Spurs for a few seasons when he had better players around him. Who else has proved us wrong to an extent?

His Blackpool side beat Liverpool home and away, went to Newcastle and beat them, beat Spurs, went away to a Wigan side who were decent at the time and beat them 4-0, and also beat Wolves, West Brom, Sunderland and Stoke. They went down, but got 39 points which would have kept you up by a mile in any recent season.

Would be the perfect absolutely disastrous fit

FFS. One less top replacement option now available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c98dyp82n3zo 11 Premier League victories under his belt. I reckon he could have been tempted. WAKE UP SR.

In a season full of increasingly weird statements and decisions, this Smallbone thing is starting to look like one of the weirdest. I've got nothing against him as a competent, tidy enough Championship midfielder, and he played Armstrong through for the play-off winner of course so he'll always have a tiny bit of Saints history for that, but who, who has actually watched him play at Premier League level, looks at him and thinks "I feel so much better when he's on the pitch", let alone actually vocalises that thought, and let alone a professional manager? I don't doubt that Will's a great lad to have around the place. The more limited players usually are because they know they've got way fewer options elsewhere, so they have to try and hang onto their places in as many other ways as possible. But beyond that it's so hard to see any form of rational justification for that sort of glowing tribute. He doesn't really run, doesn't tackle, doesn't win headers, has got a reasonable eye for a pass but isn't exactly Pirlo, doesn't score many, doesn't really track back. It's baffling. It's Elyonoussi all over again. Even if we mere mortals can't see it, what would his stats show that RM Is so impressed by? It can only be racking up short, safe, sideways passes to drive up that all-important possession %. I literally can't think of anything else. JWP had his limitations but had something of a trump card in being worth 10 goals a season from free-kicks. Aribo will also never be the greatest but he has had some good spells (he was excellent first half against Leicester for example), is increasingly getting stuck in and winning physical battles, has good close control to retain the ball and can play out of some really tight situations. I just don't see what Will's 'thing' is meant to be. I do think that maybe RM is running out of ideas now that his only style of play has been found wanting, and now he's falling back on 'the lads he can trust', so those are the ones he's bigging up ahead of the inevitable backlash when he puts them in the team over better players. Trust to do what though, I'm not sure, because the ones who seem to fall into that category (and we all know who they are) are the ones who have been proven time and again not to be up to the required standard. Very odd indeed.

Just watched the press conference. RM: "We just have to keep on doing what we're doing". "It's the last thing they'll be expecting! Over the top lads!"

Sadly I think it will be more a case of turning round, bending over, closing our eyes and taking it like a bitch.

It’s an interesting question though - No-one could argue that they weren’t successful with Brentford, and from the perspective of a club the size of Brentford/Saints they’ve had perfectly adequate financial support from Dragan, so why have they not been able to replicate that approach and success here?

True. Another way of looking at it is that as it stands we could get out of the bottom three by winning one game. That's how poor the four bottom teams are this season, not just us. Obviously we won't, but it's nice to dream.

Telling the coach driver to get to the Etihad early so he can get a cheeky selfie sat in the home dugout

RM's tactical plan for City has been leaked online. "Doing precisely what we've done 18 times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time!" Give it up for Melchett Martin and his Suicide Saints.

I’m not sure Pep Guardiola will have the tactical nous to work out how Russ ‘Keep ‘Em Guessing’ Martin is going to play, or how to counter it.

It’s such a bizarre concept that it’s almost surreal. It’s even more surreal that anyone other than the person spouting it wouldn’t just dismiss it as madness. A football manager who wants to be defined by an approach that loses every game. I build these amazing cars. They do everything except start. I build these amazing planes. They do everything except fly. I build these amazing football teams. They do everything except win games of football. Admire me! It’s almost Orwellian.

Our policy on recruiting managers is just generally odd. We have no problem spunking £6m in fees and four years-worth of wages on players like Wood and Edwards who can't even get in the match day squad, or £8m plus wages on a striker who's only fit to play 20 minutes a season, but god forbid paying a fraction of that for a manager who might actually make us competitive in the Premier League, with a prize of £100m if he finds a way to come fourth from bottom.

Exactly. Jimmy Case. Three European Cup winners’ medals, four Division 1 (Prem equivalent) winners’ medals plus one each for winning the UEFA Cup, European Super Cup and League Cup. Paid thirty grand for him and he bossed the midfield for years.

I was at that game too - I would have been 13 for that one. It's burned vividly into my memory for two reasons. One was that we were at the very back of the very top of the uncovered concrete family stand, what felt like miles up into the freezing night sky on a Tuesday night in February and it was to this day the coldest I've ever been at a football match. It was brutal. I remember my sister's boyfriend was wearing a Campri ski jacket (as was the style at the time) and we found out that you could unzip and remove the arms so we did that and turned the arm sleeves into makeshift ski hats as a desperate attempt to stave off hypothermia. The other was that Matty scored those world-class goals and destroyed them single-handedly - I'd never seen an individual footballer that good before. When he put the second and third ones in we soon forgot about freezing to death and looking like twats and just watched in awe. What. A. Player. Peerless.

Alan Shearer and Paul Rideout as twin centre forwards with Rod Wallace on one side of them and Matt Le Tissier on the other. That’s just a ridiculous forward line. Teams have won the league with far worse than that. I was at that game as a kid, and watching that footage just brings home how much more fun the football was then before the massive influx of money ruined it. We were never going to win the league but we and teams like us could afford to compete and keep it interesting each week. Powerhouses like Liverpool or Man Utd could come to our ground and get a hiding if we were on our game. Cheap tickets so kids and families could actually afford to go. Standing, rowdy crowd so there was a great atmosphere that made it thrilling to be there, whoever we were playing. Fairly regular bragging rights over the big boys so kids wanted to support their local team. Being able to actually keep good players for a decent chunk of their careers. Compare that to ‘the product’ now where every single thing is about money, and the people responsible for running the game seem hell-bent on turning every league in the world into an uncompetitive procession where only one or two of the same teams can win it and everyone else is just there to line up with ten behind the ball to be hammered by them. £50 a ticket to sit in a half-silent ground full of tourists and obediently watch on every week hoping you can keep the score down to 3 or 4 against. Watching an exciting young prospect have a great game and knowing that it all it means is that in the next window he’ll be bought by someone who will triple his wages to sit in their reserves. I’m genuinely amazed we still get 30k plus turning up every week for that ‘experience’. What a bit of skill by Matty to set up that third one though. Jumpers for goalposts, isn’t it? Marvellous.

Latest odds according to Gambling.com: David Moyes: 2/1 Rudi Garcia: 11/4 Kasper Hjulmand: 3/1 Rob Edwards: 4/1 Daniele Di Rossi: 11/2 Frank Lampard: 6/1 Ralph Hasenhuttl 🤣: 7/1 Graham Potter: 8/1 https://www.gambling.com/uk/news/next-southampton-manager-betting-odds-3685700

Pahars in 2022?

Yeah looking very good so far. Good to see him fit and back playing again, lovely player.

Yeah, only a second or two beforehand though, and by backing in and making him shove him off him he was giving the keeper something other to deal with rather than just focusing on the cross that was about to come in. Not clear cut by any means, but you have to wonder whether that would have stood if it was the other way around with a Wolves player backing into Ederson then ducking out of the way.

Re Wolves - linesman gave it offside too even before the VAR told the ref to look at it. Ref overruled both to give it but even though he went to the screen he gave it so quickly I’m not even sure they showed him the bit beforehand where Silva backed into the keeper. I thought Wolves looked like they should have had a direct free kick on the edge of City’s box before City went up the other end to win the corners that led to the goal too.

Is barging the keeper not considered interfering with play now?