saintant

We will not get the best out of Sulemana in our current possession based approach. He is lightening quick and needs some passes out in front of him to enable him to use his pace. At the moment in our system he generally receives the ball and finds himself in a standing start so always has to beat an opponent to get forward. Stick some longer balls in behind and watch him go.

He'd struggle with the pace of the game.

They're moving the ball quicker than we do 🙂

All sides miss gilt edged chances so there's a need to create as many as possible so that the inevitable misses don't prove costly. I don't think even on Saturday we really created enough opportunities. 90 minutes seems a lot but it can flash by so spending large chunks of it passing meaningless balls with little or no positive intent means we are eating into the time and wasting a lot of it through our own stubborn approach. We need to take care of the time we have the ball because it is precious and not doing so often leads to a desperate last gasp effort as the clock ticks against us. More pro-action less reaction and we'll put teams under real constant pressure and score goals as all the good Saints teams I've ever watched managed to do on a regular basis. Every version of us that I've watched that has involved slow, methodical build-up play has been poor and I think we're headed down that road now. Play with intensity and purpose from the first minute to the last unless you are leading by 3 or 4 goals when you can take your foot off the gas and play the meaningless passes because you've done your work.

This is it in a nutshell. We are much better when pressing to win the ball high up the pitch or when playing on the counter. The high press should be easier to maintain now with the 5 subs rule. Both these systems generally lead to more entertaining football - who wants 70% possession if most of it is spent in our own half passing sideways and backwards? - not for me and I doubt we'll ever truly master it.

He'll need to get fit before he even entertains the idea of staying fit. Hope the club and medical staff know what they are doing.

It all sounds very familiar even down to picking out individual fans for stick. He really needs to stop this trait - he is very happy to give the three fist pumps when we win so he should be ready to accept the other side of the coin as well.

I didn't say any of our players lack courage so you have misconstrued my words. I actually said what I believe constitutes being courageous in respect of professional footballers. Ours are coached to play in a certain way that RM believes in so I get that they are expected to follow his wishes. The suggestion that RM can destroy careers by not picking players who ignore his instructions strikes me as a slightly ridiculous notion - surely if a player is any good he'll simply end up with another club?

Very disappointing game and even quite scrappy in parts. Bad as both sides looked today we are light years behind them but locked into a project that has a low percentage of ever working. How long do the owners give it? I'm guessing probably at least this season as they will not be ready to admit to yet another glaring error.

Soft option by Adams who should have been aware enough that they were buying time to bring on subs - nobody injured so ludicrous decision to meekly throw the ball to their keeper who launches it and they score. Players need to be told in no uncertain terms that this attitude is unacceptable - where is the winning mentality? Would Rotherham or any other side have given us the ball back in that situation? Of course not.

Where is the courage in playing so many simple short passes under no pressure? Courage is playing difficult incisive passes, courage is running with the ball and breaking the lines, courage is making runs that are hard to track. Courage wins matches and gets fans off their seats and buying into the project. We need more courage.

RM is clearly happy to watch the side play many many passes sideways and backwards just for the sake of claiming we are possession based. If we cut those often pointless passes by half we would instantly become a better side. The danger is, the longer it is allowed to go on, the worse it will get as it becomes the norm for the players and we lose the ambition on the pitch to be incisive and forward thinking. Ok we created chances yesterday but the most popular consensus seems to be that we spent far too long fannying around with the ball in no-mans'-land. We have pace to get in behind but refuse to use it because there are few passes into space for the wingers to run onto and the likes of Sulemana then get frustrated and feel they have to take on the opposition single handedly to contribute to the game. For a possession side our movement off the ball is pathetic - players should be buzzing all over the park to find pockets of space - they should be coming short, going long, running into the channels but it's not happening resulting in far too much short negative passing. Good sides playing against limited opponents like Rotherham will continually batter them relentlessly until they are like a boxer on the ropes then pick them off. Our current tactic is to play too much tip tap football which, like yesterday, gives the opposition some respite and the time to regroup, it basically lets them off the hook. Tactical changes are needed but there are no signs that this is recognised within the club.

So you want to ignore the abject results and claim without them we'd somehow reach 100 points! Time to extract your head from the sand so you can observe what's really going on.

If they had no player injured Che should have informed the ref we weren't going to give the ball to Rotherham. We're far too compliant and should be standing up for ourselves in such circumstances.

It's a good post but you say the first 25 minutes was excellent. Surely 25 minutes out of 90 is not good enough?

I'm not certain the ref has the authority to tell us to throw the ball back to them when they put it out to make subs and nobody is injured. That seems mad to me. Maybe they put it out to get an injured player off and had a sub ready which is slightly different.

On the flip side if Stoke should have had a penalty we got an extra 2 points and then proceeded to toss them away today.

Did their keeper roll the ball out so they could bring on subs? If so Adams was stupid to give it back to them and even more so if it led to their equaliser. He needs to be told this was a mistake.

Is this really what happened? If so which numpty decided to give them the ball back?

I agree. Much as he's a nice guy and I'd love to see him succeed I'll be surprised if he turns out to be anything other than a mid table Championship manager - he doesn't demonstrate in his words or actions that he has the tools to become one of the bright lights in the game. I think what we've seen so far is about what we'll get. It's a hard job and I don't think RM is ever going to excel at it. Hope he proves me wrong but the signs aren't good.

To be fair I think Boro were in a bit of a false position and they'll soon be above us. Rotherham, on the other hand, candy from a baby is how it should have gone.

Maybe time to accept we are at about our level with the players and coaching set up we have. I think if we were all that in the Championship we'd have demonstrated it in numerous games by now. We're average at best.

Let's remember they are taught to play this way in every training session and it's not going to change anytime soon.

That stat proves the process is working. The result is unimportant.

My guess would be that the half time chat was along the lines of 'keep the ball, pass them to death and they'll tire and allow us to pick them off.