captainchris

We have to adopt a slightly different set up and put Thomas in at right back or Leeds will exploit this well known weekness....

Thomas before James any day of the week - what is James doing in the side?????? He's weak in personality, aggression, skill and is meak. Why is he continually in the team???

Reinstate the Echo immediately. The Echo is pretty poor and the editor is rather pompous and amatuer, however Saints need the paper and so do the supporters. I often completely dissagree with what the paper says about the game and the Saints issues but I do order it every night to keep up with the latest news on the club. I have certainly lost a tiny bit of respect for NC over this. Think again Saints - a bad move - what ever the detail of the reasoning!

As I predicted - Bart is conceding less goals - consistantly - the figures do not lie.......

Helloooo - that was last year.................5m you are joking???????????????? If we were to sell and IF he ever wanted to go and IF we did consider it it has to be 10m or no thought even. Bur even then..........we are o a mission here and AL is a very important part of that plan. IF you take his goals away this year where were we be now? Money can't buy a player of his tallent and 5M wouldn't buy you his socks!

As another poster said there can no room for sentiment in the pursuit of success plus for all his granted loyalty there is no evidence to suggest he is a marvelous coach. Sorry but sentiment is one thing and respect is another but neither = a job at Saints......

Funniest quote of the night !!!!

Agreed. At least we will learn some more about Bart. He could still turn out to be a great keeper. He looked really good before his injury a few years back - was it at Newcastle in the cup - can't really remember...

How would it have been different? Encroachment means it's got to be re-taken anyway whatever the outcome!

I think you are having an affair with Davis which is turning into a love affair and love can be blind! So 29 defenders are all useless and Davis is the unlucky one - I rest my case.... I agree James is a weak link and this was shown again on Saturday but yet again the ball comes comes bouncing out after another 'save' from Davis on Saturday and the opposition score for the second! Davies will have to make a few saves in any team he plays for. I don't know how to find the statistics but it would be so good to see how many goals we concede reletive to shots on target, it's high I tell you. To answer your other point. I have seen only one goalkeeper this year at St Mary's that looked worse than Davis and that was the MK Dons Fella. The rest looked at least as good. Anyway, we are so much better resourced than those teams and should expect a better standard from our goalkeeper. If we expect it from our defence we should expect it from our goalkeeper. He's a good close range shot stopper granted - the rest of his skills level you can forget - it's ponderous and lightweight................... I think you are having an affair with Davis which is turning into a love affair and love can be blind! So 29 defenders are all useless and Davis is the unlucky one - I rest my case.... I agree James is a weak link and this was shown again on Saturday but yet again the ball comes comes bouncing out after another 'save' from Davis on Saturday and the opposition score for the second! Davies will have to make a few saves in any team he plays for. I don't know how to find the statistics but it would be so good to see how many goals we concede reletive to shots on target, it's high I tell you. To answer your other point. I have seen only one goalkeeper this year at St Mary's that looked worse than Davis and that was the MK Dons Fella. The rest looked at least as good. Anyway, we are so much better resourced than those teams and should expect a better standard from our goalkeeper. If we expect it from our defence we should expect it from our goalkeeper. He's a good close range shot stopper granted - the rest of his skills level you can forget - it's ponderous and lightweight...................

Your implication that my comment on Davis is simply a technically uneducated 'easy option' is as far from the truth as you could be. On the contrary, my annalysis was taking all the technical abilities of our current and in addition all the other Davis era defences into consideration - were all those defences poor? The statistics show that over his period in goal we have consistantly conceded more goals than most of our rivals, perhaps apart from one year. Take note on Saturday, it's uncanny that Davis is conceding goals when the ball actually goes quite close to him - if you are annalysing games as closely as you say, you will notice. Also many posters have agreed over the years that Davis is weak in commanding his area. These things do have a knock on affect. More players are needed to guard his six yard area which leaves less defenders to mark and guard space which forwards can and do exploit. I can easily have a technical/tactical opinion on the team defense, however there are more than enough posters already making those points some of which I would agree with. My points are to balance the argument and broaden the thinking, it's not personal and it may not be the majority opinion on here but it's logical and thought through.

All but one poster doesn't mention Davis. Interesting...... I am not alone in thinking that his performances are starting to draw some attention and not entirly positive. We have been conceding an alarming number of goals now for a number of years certainly all through the Davis era. We have had several complete replacements of of our defence in that time and little change in our leakage of goals throughout. Not all those defences have been entirely to blame. We do not concede that many shots on target but we are conceding a high percentage of those shots as goals. Many of the goals are being scored in the centre portion of the goal - too many goals are scored from outside the penalty area and in addition Davis is slow to command inside even the six yard area. We all agree I think that Davis is a great club captain and has - in his time put in some very good performances but we can't pick any players on sentiment or past peformances. Anecdotal annalysis of performance is a risky option. The overall opinion on the current defence is fragmented and sways with results - hairs are at times being split in pursuite of the answer to conceding goals - some of the reason is the very option most people are choosing to ignor - mostly out of loyalty I fear.....

After ten minutes you could see we had a problem, mainly in midfield .i.e Brighton were controlling it and bursting through at will. Tactics should have been changed there and then. Why do most English managers only change tactics towards the end of a match and never during the early 'sparing'?

The Echo were at a different match. KD as man of the match! I know we were poor but he didn't have that much to do. A couple of saves - one very good save. BUT he is not as good as he's made out to be by a lot of our fans and the Echo. That is almost hysteria on here about KD which has no real foundation this year. He often concedes reletively soft goals and Brighton's third yesterday was fairly typical going into the middle half of the goal. Apparently (according to the hapless Echo he has kept two clean sheets in sixteen league games and I think we conceded in most cup games too. I't not all the fault of the defense. After all this is almost an entire new defense. I just think less hype and more analysis of his performance and less blame on the back four who don't always have a bad game like yesterday.....

Sorry but 'hoofball' it was. The ball was in the air far too much as it has been for most of the time this year so far. OK we are a big strong team now and have bossed games mostly physically but we were always going to struggle against a team that played football against us and that's exactly what happened today. We have to keep hold of the ball and work it to dangerous positions before 'crossing' it from the half way line like we did today - monotonously.............

100% agree. He was out of position many times and is far too Show Boat Harry. Very innefective performance. We are leaking too many goals - 451 with a change later in the game to 442 ?

I have NEVER seen so many deep predictable crosses in any game. It was obviously our tactic which we didn't change. We would be there at Christmas and still not score with that sort of play!!! Papa looked lively. We MUST get the ball on the deck more. Brighton played more football and deserved the victory on the day. I'm afraid to say Davies has to look at himself too. Too many shots going in the net from outside the box towards the centre of the goal ! The third in particular was not a special shot.......

Great win and agree with most posts on here about our class players. For one player that is not quite up to rest is James. He is struggling if you watch him closely and must share some of the blame for Rovers first goal. He had every opportunity to be there before their scorer but didn't make it. Lacks pace and is a bit lightweight.........

It's a relief not to have to engineer being next to a radio all Sat afternoon!

What did he say? I don't subscribe to Sky. Would rather watch Saints in the flesh with my money.....

That short video just sums up how high Ron used to jump. I have never seen anyone jump like that sinse..... Awesome Ron. We had many great players in those days but you were just the best centre foward - certainly in this country....

Didn't Drew say quite publicly that, the time had come for him to move on. He did elaborate on this at the time in an interview that was published. He basically said it was time for him to seek further challenges. Whilst the money was undoubtedly needed I am sure his career did indeed need to take the next step and achieving this with Saints looked a million miles away at the time. Also dare I say that as someone else mentioned who would we drop to bring Drew back in? This beggers the further question (puts on his helmet!) If he's struggling to get in the Wolves team and we can't decide if he would get our team now - how good was he? He looked good for us last year but we were very poor both as a team and in most cases, evidently individually!

It wasn't so much the system that turned the game Saturday as the personel change. If Antonio had been on the pitch instead of PW at the start we may well have won by a wider margin with the same 4-5-1 formation.....

Continually selling our best players got us into this mess in the first place. To repeat that exercise would not be the best advice would it!!!! If they're under contract keep them - we can afford to so why would we contemplate selling them - I ask you!

I thought L J struggled a bit today against MK Dons. He didn't come under a lot of pressure but was stretched to compete with a very average wide player. His first two free kicks in the first half in great positions were both short of their intended targets. Thinks this is his level, hes not going to be able to stay in this team for long and not in a higher league for sure.