Tommy Mulgrew

Scoring for fun and conceding few; whatever next? What are the possession and passes per match stats? That is what really matters to a Saints-led SR group team. Or maybe we are merely a few weeks behind Goztepe in learning the fast-tempo PB way.

Maybe DM did not express himself as well as he might have done. Perhaps he meant that occasionally we progress up the field rapidly, not leaving the oppo much time to re-set, and create plenty of chances to score and, more often, we seem to take too many sideways or backwards passes, thus allowing the oppo to get back into a formation that is difficult for our players to penetrate so we recycle the ball back to the CMs, CBS or GK and start the slow, plodding process all over again. That is boring, predictable stuff and we often seem to concede a goal while doing it and struggle to score ourselves. We all, surely, want to see much more of the former way of playing possession football, with slick, incisive passing and movement towards the oppo’s goal. The variation in our play does not, to me at least, depend on how the oppo team sets out to play against us. I do not know whether it comes from RM or from our players being good at playing occasionally and bad frequently or some other reason. I’d like to think that RM does not want us to play crab-ball and draw in preference to play incisively and win more often. Our players certainly want to win, score goals and not concede. The unbeaten run is great but how much better it would be if we could have converted some of the draws to wins? Given our advantages in £s and players over most of our Championship opponents, that is surely what we should be trying to do.

Why isn’t this thread on “the Muppet Show” forum?

Mine was a right old crone.

My mistake: you’re obviously his big sister.

You sound like Russ’s big brother; or his mum.

And humble, too, by all accounts. Top bloke. He’ll soon rival Maya Yoshida in my estimation if he stays another year or two.

Can’t complain about four goals but no doubt some will. We relentlessly destroyed them and they resorted to petulant strong-arm tackles late in the game. Nice almost backheel from Edozie; well taken chances by SA and SM, who were in the right place at the right time; ditto Charley, who I thought was just about offside when Smallone shot his pencil. P2 is by no means out of reach.

It’s on Dazn Canada and I’m in Canada at present so I’ll “turn up” a bit later. Hoping for a goal-fest. 3:1 to Saints.🤫

But, in our team, Bazunu has almost as many touches as Bednarek, who is consistently among the most frequent touchers of the ball we have. No jokes please.

So boring, frustrating and unsatisfactory. Slow, ponderous build-up play that almost guarantees 10 Coventry players behind the ball waiting for us to recycle the ball back into our half again and again. Possession for the sake of it and no goal threat whatsoever, except at the wrong end, where Manning leaves acres of space for the opposition to run into. When are we ever going to run at the opposition and make swift incisive passes to forwards running into spaces? If we continue playing like this we shall not get promoted in a million years.

Where’s Alexy - you know, Lawy innit - with his pressy summary? He’s never here when you want him to be and always is when you don’t.

Last sentence: why do you (and some others) continually have to be so aggressively antagonistic against many of our players? They play for the team we allegedly support.

1:1 after extra time and we lost on penalties. Good competitive game. We played Russball and did it well.

I wonder what our equivalent stats are and whether the conclusions that could reasonably be inferred from them match our empirical observations/collective wisdom.

England women showing how to get the ball in the net: four goals before half-time.

Baldwin of Notts County should be our top priority in January!

CA and AA to knock them in like Lambert and Guly in our Championship season, CA to carve them open like Lallana and SC to control the midfield with pace, grace and elegance like Schneiderlin. Now that would be satisfying.

What about the game v Liverpool last year? His save v Salah was world-class.

At present, I think that I am the one being ground down.

I see that Reading and Tranmere won. But Ballard was injured early in the first half for Reading and went off. I hope it is not a serious injury. Just seen the DB thread; suspected ACL … ouch. Hope he fully recovers from it.

I’m with Charlie. Maya is an excellent man by all accounts, with a genuinely laudable character and personality. He has over 100 caps for Japan, more than 90 while a Saint. He was in the team of the tournament at one of the World Cups in which he has competed while a Saint. (He could even be described as the Bobby Moore or Bobby Charlton of Japan: he was the Japan captain for many years and captained them to their best World Cup performance.) He had well over 100 EPL appearances here. He is a consummate professional and I believe he was one of the fittest and fastest players of his time at St Mary’s. A thoroughly admirable role model for any young player, surely. And one of my favourite Saints players of recent years.

Entrup was one of three subs, (as was Danso), who came on in the 89th and 90th minutes and played 7 minutes of extra time. Sakaria remained on the bench. We must have learned a lot! What a waste of time and money. None of the players had a double-barrelled surname so it truly was a wasted journey. One was called Posch and another Tah, though. Why do we wait until a year after RH has gone before we are interested in Austrian players?

“Scouts will be at Austria v Germany tomorrow.” why?

And he thinks GB is MOTM, too.