CanadaSaint

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?

I think the answer is in your second line.

Yep.

Leaving aside the needless insult aimed at those who see it differently to you, don't you think that we were set up to absorb pressure and attack on the break rather than use the full backs to supplement our width in a more attacking style? And if not, where do you think it has broken down today?

Forget the purple patch at the start. Koeman's starting line up, with Yoshida in over Soares, surrendered the home advantage and left us to attack on the counter, if we could get hold of the ball. He picked a "pinch a point" away team with no overlap attacking width on either side. As much as I like him, Koeman's starting line-up decisions are beginning to really frustrate me.

I'm a little surprised about the Yoshida decision too, because I would have thought that picking the Wanyama/Romeu tandem would have given us the defensive cover to be more aggressive at RB. Especially as we lack Bertrand's attacking contribution on the other side. It almost looks like LVG has picked a home side and RK has picked a counter-attacking away side. But it's only the starting line-up and it's a squad game these days.

Is it my imagination or have the referees seemed rather slower to pull out the yellow cards this week - as though they've been told that early yellows should be given judiciously because they create problems later in the game?

I agree with much of your post. Yes, JWP and Davis "help us maintain high ball possession" but the problem is that they don't have the talent (at least as a duo) to enable us to "control the game" in the sense of getting the result our possession arguably deserves. Sure, a lot of our offense is based on width but, if anything, that should make it easier for advance midfielders to create things because they have a little more space and often time. There were numerous opportunities yesterday for one of them to deliver a dangerous pass but they lacked the skill, vision, confidence or mindset to do it. I certainly don't agree that shooting isn't their role in the team, because the high ball possession (and our width) gives them numerous opportunities to do exactly that - especially in and around the "D" on the edge of the box (see Blind's goal for United yesterday and Grealish's goal for Villa today). Instead, they often turn and look for an easier pass option - one that usually negates the pressure we've just built. I really don't understand how JWP can strike a dead ball so well but offers little of that in open play. It's going to be interesting to see how Koeman plans to fit Clasie in. Many of us have felt that he'd play in front of two DMs, although our Dutch friends don't think he's suited to that role, and are adamant that he would be better as one of those DMs. Koeman's decision to not go with Wanyama and (the very effective) Romeu yesterday could be an indicator that he sees Clasie as a DM, but then why did we buy Romeu? Hopefully, all will become clear in the next few weeks, but I do really like our squad - just not a line-up with both Davis and JWP in it.

Nice enough guy but I'd rather saw-off my own testicles than follow a team he manages.

It's bemusing that the creative limitations of the Davis/Ward-Prowse duo were there to see from the first minute - and yet they finished the match. I'd say they cancelled eachother out but they weren't really doing anything to cancel.

I don't think the Davis/Ward-Prowse duo is very effective - for me it's either/or, definitely not both. I'd be inclined to pull one of them for Romeu, whose passing has been impressive. Mané could create some havoc against a fairly ponderous back four - him on the right,Tadic on the left. But that involves a lot of changes. I really like Koeman but some of his starting line-ups have been head-scratchers.

Trust me, I get that. But the Celtic fans could make a similar argument to the one we make - "just think what we could achieve (in Europe - their only real competition) if we kept our best players instead of flogging them off as soon as a good offer comes along". They will never forget 1967, nor should they. I'm not saying that we should all just smile our way through times like that - I sure can't. I'm saying that we could do without a lot of the nastiness and vitriol aimed at players, management, the board and the ownership that always seems to emerge on here from certain posters whenever we hit challenges that are (for a club like us, in today's game) absolutely inevitable. Some of the stuff that was posted last year was sickening. And here we are again this year, after a very successful year, with many of the same people posting the same ill-informed, blame-culture drivel. Of course, it won't change but there's no harm in wishing it would.

That's probably more like it. The one thing that Levy seems to do well is make others pay for his own inadequacies. The PL would be better for his disappearance.

Have to say that I've been really impressed with the Celtic fans who have visited our forum. No resentment, no bitterness, no lashing out at their club and its management - just an acceptance that this is a reality they have to deal with. And then good wishes to the departing players. There's a lesson for us in that but I doubt it will be heeded.