Midfield_General

Stoke claiming that the PGMOL have apologised and said it should have been a pen: https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/23837440.pgmol-tell-stoke-penalty-southampton/

Whenever I think of Stoke I think of Cameron fucking Jerome. He’s not playing, is he?

Well that was a pleasant surprise. Actually looked like a football team, with a shape and a defence. Thought Bednarek was excellent. Good positioning, calm under pressure and some good interceptions. Bazunu didn’t have a huge amount to do but couldn’t do anything for the goal and his distribution was superb. All three goals really well taken. Nice to see Adam Armstrong starting to thrive and look confident. It might be his level but if he keeps this up there’s no reason why he can’t have another 20 goal season, and I never thought I’d be saying that. Not perfect by any means - we still gave the ball away way too much and looked weak in the tackle in midfield at times - but it felt pleasingly back to basics, which it needed to after the car crash of the last few weeks, and damn it feels good to win at home. Leeds were shite, mind.

Might be a few other lines from that sketch that will come in handy watching us at the moment. As Smallbone slowly knocks the ball square five yards for the hundredth time with no urgency or pace - “Faster! Faster you bitch!”

If I could give you an extra like for the team talk, I would

Lads. He’s on a £10m a year pay off for the next four years and he’s already turned down two Champions League clubs - Lyon and Rangers. He is not coming to the Championship. I think the sooner everyone accepts this, the easier it will be to take when we appoint the Man City ladies youth coach to replace Rusty.

No no no, they’re the problem, didn’t you know?? Not Martin or SR or Wilcox or the players - no, it’s all the fans fault that we’re an absolute embarrassment.

I don't believe you There's no way you've got any mates

Russ Meyer had the right idea

All in all it’s not been a great week for people called Russell

Why? It was Holgate’s fault for allowing the chance in the first place but a competent keeper still saves that. He’s fucking rubbish.

The thing is, we’re now not scoring any goals either. After the Norwich game it felt like ‘OK, this might be a rollercoaster and we’ll concede a lot but we’ll also score for fun, it might at least be a laugh’. Now - we’ve scored 1 goal in 3 games, and we look absolutely lost going forward. We’re not out scoring anyone playing like we are at the moment. We’re barely creating anything.

I blame the fans

I’m not sure how we/ he’d get on in the Prem is something we need to worry about too much at the moment, to be honest.

Embarrassing. Again. That’s it.

Perhaps a bit fairer to say that patience is finally running a bit thin after years of shit being served up and swallowed. Enough’s enough and all that.

The table we’re ninth in? Yep, that’s the one. Ninth isn’t an automatic promotion spot, is it. And it’s weird that you don’t mention the L column - that won’t make it go away btw.

Yep. Expectation levels in this job are much higher than he’s had in the past. He can’t just win a few, lose a few here and expect to be given a pass. Rightly or wrongly (rightly, in my opinion given our squad and resources), the expectations from the fans are to be challenging for automatic promotion if not winning this league. That means winning most games. That’s what he took on when he took the job, that’s the performance expectation level he’s going to be held to. Contrast that with what he’s actually delivered so far and his complete lack of track record to point to, and it’s not difficult to see why people are already questioning whether he’s got the ability to do it.

Potter's already turned down Rangers and Lyon, both regular Champions League qualifiers. He ain't coming to the Championship, unfortunately. He'll wait it out for the Premier League sackings to start around November/ December time. My money would be on Everton if they suddenly get an injection of cash from the takeover. Perfect sort of club for him.

Still fuming, so let's have a proper deep dive into that interview 👆

“The transition to defend from playing is not quite there” We flood the entire team forward like an under-9s team with literally all ten outfield players way into their half. We leave our entire half as a vast empty space and then get surprised when they hit a basic through ball to two quick players who have been told just to stand there and wait for it. We ask Championship level players to play suicide passes in our own six yard box when we’re being pressed by a team who know that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We concede directly from our own fucking kick-off, and regularly from our own corners over the course of several games. Not once does he change it in-game. That’s not “not quite there”, that’s rank incompetence. I liked him when he came in and am not an advocate for knee-jerk reactions, but from watching us so far, set up the way we are, I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion he’s actually a fucking idiot. It’s ages since I’ve been this angry about Saints, and that includes throughout all the shit we’ve all had served up over the last few years. I’ve reached the end of my tether with this procession of clowns. Why can’t we just get a manager who does the basics properly. The Championship is full of them. Any one of them would have a great chance of promotion with the resources we’ve got. But no. No, we get this stupid, preening twat, who has never delivered any real success anywhere, ever, playing his stupid, ten-up-front cubs football, getting smashed and telling us it was alright actually because that’s what he wanted them to do. Fuck off.

"They did what we asked them" God help us if that's what we asked them to do. "Proud of the players" Jesus Christ. Awful, clownish comments to go with an awful, clownish performance. Show that you've got the basic competence to set up a football team with a defensive shape and the concept of a midfield, and show that you understand the basics of how to get results using the relatively immense resources you have available in this league, or fuck off mate.

Oh my god. If that's 'what we're trying to do' then god help us. What I'm seeing is absolutely embarrassing, schoolboy levels of disorganised shit that any manager should be fucking ashamed of

Yeah but he missed out: 5. We'll get humped 5-0 by some probable mid-table also-rans and consider ourselves lucky it wasn't eight 6. We'll concede basically every shot that comes in on target 7. We'll defend like a cubs team with ten players in the opposition half for corners, and fail to respond in-game even when the problems are basic and glaringly obvious to everyone, including the opposition's manager

He hit a shot on target against one of our keepers, so it was always going to go in.