CanadaSaint

I'm struggling to understand the modern game's preoccupation with tall keepers, and - with Forster and Stek - we're fully bought into it. The advantage of height is the ability to be strong in the air, but the holding and blocking mayhem in the box these days has made that a rather redundant skill for keepers. They don't seem to come for crosses anywhere near as much. The disadvantage is that the higher centre of gravity makes it harder for tall keepers to get down to low shots. For me, that's a weakness of both Forster and Stek. Shay Given was the reverse - too short to dominate his box but able to make great reaction saves.

Very true. I still think JWP will come good but one thing that really frustrates me with him is his tendency to under-hit his forward passes (when he makes them). He has normally picked out the right ball but time and again the receiver has to check his stride, stop running or even come back to the ball. It's a momentum-killer we can't afford if we want to attack before the defence is set. I thought we played pretty well today, against admittedly-poor opposition, but the slow build-up and failure to take chances will hurt us every time.

It's hard to shake the feeling that not all is right at SMS at the moment. We used to "play for eachother" all over the park but there's been little sign of that for several weeks. There doesn't seem to be any leadership on the pitch - nobody taking responsibility, nobody trying to make things happen. Just a succession of "passing the buck" plays.

We have become very uni-dimensional up front. The running off the ball and quick ball-movement are gone, and the out-ball to Pelle - once used sparingly - has become our only means of launching attacks. Very worrying.

Same gain. Caulker marking space, Cedric - again - not anticipating the ball over the back, and Stek beaten disappointingly-easily.

Agreed, but lose both of them at the same time and we get very lightweight in a vital area. I think they're both on the verge of suspension.

As much as I like the guy, there's a stubbornness about Koeman that infuriates me. I'm okay with Yoshida as cover in central defence, but how many more chances does Koeman need before he realizes that his lack of pace kills us when Maya's played wide? City must have been salivating at the thought of a Sterling/Maya match-up. JWP blew his marking assignment a number of times today - mainly with ball-watching, and compounded a poor performance with several bad midfield giveaways. He's going to be fine but for a smart kid he seems to be learning very slowly. Mané is what he's always been and probably always will be - a tremendous instinct player whose game falls apart if he needs to think before he does something. Koeman should have addressed the "silly bookings" issue long ago because it's been a problem for some time. We don't have the squad to be able to lose players like Pelle, Mane, Wanyama and Romeu. Thank god we signed VvD. I just wish we'd signed Vardy when we should have done, back in 2012.

http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/585922/Southampton-Ronald-Koeman-blasts-Memphis-Depay-Manchester-United

I enjoyed that article and all the others that cast our club in such a good light, but there's something even more satisfying about this one, given the source: http://www.thisisanfield.com/2015/10/fsg-witness-merits-southampton-model-liverpool-look-progress/ Sure, we may not be on the same planet as Liverpool in terms of size and stature, but there is an implication behind the article that the route to success may involve much more than just throwing money around - even for a club like Liverpool.

I posted the rather sweeping comment after last week's game that I thought fitness was an issue, but after watching today's game I'd like to revise it. I think Wanyama's fitness might be an issue. Last week I thought his second half drop-off was due to his first half yellow card but today he didn't have that excuse, although he did take a knock. Maybe I'm seeing something that's not there but he seems to me to be a much less effective player after half time, and the drop-off in that "powerhouse" element really hurts our defensive midfield. I'd still pick him every game, of course, but I'd like to see better second halves from him.

They really need to reconsider this "penalty and automatic red card" thing because it's such an extreme punishment. It was meant to cut out the deliberate professional foul but it's gone way beyond that. Coloccini's challenge wasn't that far from what used to be viewed as "shoulder-to-shoulder with the ball within playing distance", and the keeper was well-placed to collect it anyway. Now they're a goal down and a man down in a very big game. And it's Madley again.

I guess we just have different recollections of how we played against most clubs outside the Top 6, and that's okay.

From my recollection it was indeed used sparingly that season, mainly against "the big boys", and that IMO was because Pochettino knew that it wasn't sustainable with then-current fitness levels. Our results against those big teams were very good but we dropped a lot of points to the 'lesser' teams when we weren't playing the press anywhere near as much. That's the dilemma I think Klopp will face - not an inability to play his press but an inability to play it consistently this season, especially after Europa excursions. On Sunday, for example.

People may be expecting too much, too soon from Klopp, just as they did of Pochettino when he went to WHL. Preparation for an intensive pressing game has to start with pre-season training. It's very difficult (and injury-risky) to try to develop the necessary fitness levels after the season starts, and the challenges are magnified by European commitments. I can see them coming at us hard in the first half and we might have to hang on, but as the game wears on I think we'll start making progress. Whether we're still in it at half time, and whether we can take the initiative in the second half are the key questions. Substitutions might end up deciding this game - almost like last week against Leicester, but with the boot on the other foot.

Thanks, Rut. Just for clarification, it's the first Sunday game to be shown live on NBC's over-the-air network "where no cable or satellite subscription is required". That's another indication of the incredible rise in the popularity of soccer, and especially the PL, in North America. God, how I'd love us to play well and win this one.

One of our larger problems is that both Wanyama and Romeu are yellow card machines. I don't have a issue with "taking one for the team" but I have a big issue with some of the utterly stupid bookings both of them take all too often. We are on the verge of losing not just one of them to suspension but both of them, so I suspect that Ronald is trying to be very selective about putting Romeu out there. With hindsight, i think he might regret not putting him on for a tired-looking Wanyama who lost effectiveness the moment he was booked, and who never seemed to get over his first half knock. The entire point of playing the ball around at the back is that it draws the opposition out. It normally serves us well and I hope we keep doing it, but not against sides playing like Leicester did in the second half. Our problem yesterday wasn't the generic concept of playing out from the back but failing to adjust when it was clear that playing the ball over the top was our best response to their pressing. Especially if Mané was the lethal outlet he's more than capable of being. Unfortunately, Mané had one of his headless chicken days and some of his decision-making was ridiculous.

It's ironic that many of the comments on here are exactly what we used to read on other teams' forums after we'd out-worked them under Pochettino - "we were dire, subs were dreadful, x, y and z should never play again, the ref was biased" and so on. And that used to p*ss us off because we were never given any credit. So my first thought is to give Leicester the credit they deserve for a tremendous second half performance. They truly were excellent all across the pitch, and they will do this to many more teams this season. My second thought is that we might be worryingly short on the fitness front - we couldn't track their runners, we couldn't match their off-ball movement, and we spent most of the second half chasing shadows and losing ground to them. Sure, there were some individual errors but that wasn't the reason we ended up being lucky to get a point. We won't come up against a Leicester every week, but I think that we might need to improve our fitness levels if we're to reach this team's undoubted potential.

That's what fitness and work rate look like. Leicester are a Top 8 side this season and more teams will be "Leicestered", just as we were. It wasn't that we played poorly, it was because they out-ran and out-worked us throughout the second half. Props to them and Ranieri for his half time adjustments. And people can take the p*ss out of Vardy all they like but there are few strikers harder to keep out of the game than him. He was just like that with Fleetwood and that kind of aggressive running works at this level as well.

Great point. I've posted on here several times about the need for football (soccer) to remedy its rather cavalier attitude towards concussions, but it's still a far less dangerous sport than either American Football or Ice Hockey. Add that to the far lower relative cost and it's a recipe for a continuation of the sport's meteoric rise in popularity over here. The question is how can Saints best ride that wave? For me, the route to progress for a club like Saints is not to rely on achieving it through TV exposure of our games because the American psyche is all about supporting a winner, and we're not going to be able to compete with the big boys on that front for the foreseeable future. But we could become a very fashionable club for Americans by opening a few (largely self-financing) satellite academies in major cities and raising our profile and popularity in that way. I'm not sure it's about unearthing gems for our own use so much as being seen to be contributing to the growth of the sport, helping young players to develop, and creating hope that a career in professional football may be down the road. In some ways the Southampton "brand" is more about doing that really well than about actually winning things, so we'd be playing to our strengths. But I'm off thread topic. Again.

The sport is at the starting end of a generational shift in North America. Two hitherto-unthinkable things have happened in the last five years or so - there are more American kids registered for soccer than (base)ball, and there are more Canadian kids registered for soccer than (ice) hockey. The third major element is the fact that many major U.S. universities now offer soccer scholarships, which, in turn, breaks down parental resistance to a sport they never grew up with themselves - a sport which, until recently, offered no prospect of a cheap education for their kids. There's no point in expecting too much too soon. It's very much a long-term strategy, so Krueger shouldn't be beaten-up for not delivering big results in two years, although the short term mentality of many contributors to forums like this pretty much ensure that he will be. If I were him, I'd think about opening up some (potentially self-funding) satellite academies over here because that really would garner some Saints-focused attention and could act as a feeder for down the road. When it comes to Krueger, I'd prefer to focus on the fact that, under him, the Club now operates in a way that draws admiration from all quarters, at home and abroad. It has developed an infrastructure that will serve us for far, far longer than his term of office. And all this has happened because he has the trust and confidence of Katharina - something decidedly lacking under his predecessor, to the point at which she may well have been ready to sell-up to god-knows-who. His speaking style may grate on people, he may never convince the saddos who think that nobody from North America understands the game - because they're from North America, and he will never, ever please some no matter what he does. But he's clearly doing a lot of things very well beyond the sight and hearing of those on here who are slow to think and quick to sneer.

Yes, back in 2012, and I wish we had signed him when it looked like we would: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?35473-saints-to-win-race-to-sign-Jamie-Vardy&highlight=vardy

Sure, I'm disappointed about today and frustrated at some (quite a few) of Koeman's recent starting line-ups, but the quality is undoubtedly there IMO. Koeman is still assessing how best to fit it together - and having to contend with injuries in key positions while he does so. To suggest that it was a "wasted summer" is ridiculous in my view, and I have a feeling that this thread might make a reappearance next Spring - not in a flattering way.

I think Koeman is still assessing his (new) squad, and I'd be surprised if he makes the Yoshida-over-Cedric choice again. Maya gave us little going forward and (in a moment of sick irony, considering that he was picked to strengthen us defensively) dropped a major defensive clanger that cost a goal. Clasie will take a while to adjust but gives us a CM option we don't have right now. United were not placed under enough pressure there, in front of Wanyama and Romeu - hence their long spells of possession. Bertrand will be a major upgrade on a young player who's still learning. I'll stick with my pre-season view that we'll have a weaker first half of the season but a much stronger second half.

Not much point now getting p*ssed off about the result and the no-overlap starting line-up, which I thought stripped us of one of the biggest advantages we had over United. Not much point in gloom and doom about the next 6-7 months. Put Bertrand, Soares and Clasie in that team and we're a match for anyone IMO.

Fair enough - that would have been better as your first post. I see it differently. United recognized their own vulnerability and acted to minimize it. With more overlap in our full back positions, at least on the right, we could have placed the same duo under more pressure because of the extra man they needed to worry about. As we saw at the end, United don't cope well with that kind of pressure. Having picked both Wanyama and Romeu, we could - and should - have been more courageous with the RB selection. Opinions, eh?