StrangelyBrown

COYS!!! I hope we make a confident start.

Our biggest problem imo is our complete inability to defend - we've gone from being hard to score against to being woefully inept. Bednarek has played shockingly for months now and still keeps his place in the team. vestergaard looks a shadow of his former self and looks like he needs a rest. This combined with Bertrand's form being iffy means we are soft as shit at the back. Yesterday this was exacerbated by JWP and diallo having crap games. I lost count of the number of times we stood off their attacking players and let them come onto us. In contrast their defenders were all over our attacking players and limited our chances. I know he may not have many options, but if Ralph can't see this then he needs to go. Bednarek should have been off the field at half time and yet somehow he played the whole game...

Has the myth that Walcott makes us look a better team now been dispelled... He's been utter dogshit today

Bednarek and vestergaard have been horrific so far. Neither deserve a place in the cup team right now.

On paper there isn't one player of theirs (in their best 11) that I would rather have than the respective player in our team (in our best 11)... There can't be many teams in the premier League who haven't got at least one better player than one of ours. In my mind that makes them pretty shit as we're not exactly brimming with top quality in every position.

Thank goodness for that! Should have had far more than 3

No football brain whatsoever...

Not sure what Walcott and Ings have done to justify starting this one... Walcott again making poor decisions and Ings looking half hearted and playing for himself again.

Clear and obvious error.... I think not

Now this is the Redmond we've been waiting for!!

Surely Redmond should now realise that playing the ball forward is a good thing???

With premier League football being a game of fine margins I'm convinced that all of our problems boil down to the players being completely knackered and some key decisions going against us at exactly the wrong time. Our high intensity game needs players to be at peak fitness and mentally sharp which is being hampered by not having enough good players to rotate, a loss of confidence in officiating and a packed schedule. Where Ralph is letting us down is in his complete failure to recognise this and sticking to his guns in the vain hope that we will ride this out. IMO the solution was staring us in the face when we played Chelsea - let the opposition have the ball, defend well and look to nick a goal on the break. Building some confidence by grinding out some results would have helped us reset. Instead we've gone back to the lacklustre possession based football that relies on sustained high energy that we simply don't have. What's worse is this isn't unique. The only side who are successfully managing to keep up the energy levels required to play a high intensity press without changing tactics are poor brave Leeds (who in my opinion will get found out next season when the world realises there isn't anything special about them).

Ralph should get sacked for this. There are no excuses.

How do we think that not creating any chances is going to result in turning this around. This is fucking appauling football. No urgency, no quality, no character, ...

FFS bednarek and vestergaard need to take a long hard look at themselves for that one. Piss poor defending

I don't know what happened to McCarthy post covid but he seems to have stopped saving the ball which was the big reason I used to prefer him to Forster. Forster organising the defence makes a big difference IMO. Also having someone who can play a good long ball straight up to the forwards makes a heck of a difference in contrast to the relentless dithering slow build up from the back that has characterised McCarthy in 2021. I'd rather have a better keeper than either of them, but right now Forster deserves his place.

Well done saints. Something at last to build on! Work to be done though, but hopefully we'll put a bit of run together (ignoring city). Some real positives in the second half. Forster gives us a bit of quick decision making at the back which was sadly missing with McCarthy. Stuey gets better and better. Kwp definitely improves us. Diallo much better in the second half. Minamino looked much better on the other side when he switched. Thought the ref was decent today even if you could argue that he should have sent a couple of their players off.

Minamino looks like he has literally no understanding of his position. Really underwhelming performance. Diallo looks like an accident waiting to happen. Adams literally has no confidence. So what is hassenhutl going to do I wonder??? It better not be Redmond on for Tella!

Now that's what I call a strong starting lineup! I've got a much better feeling about this. COYS!!!

I've defended Redmond in the past, but that performance redefined shit for me. Ings was also abysmal again - just playing for himself. I'm just not sure who we play instead of him? Positives were Forster, Tella (who has to start next time), JWP, Djenepo and for once us growing into the game in the second half. We keep coming up against sides who do the darker side (diving, niggling fouls, etc) so much better than us (Everton, poor brave Leeds, Wolves, Leicester) - although I hate saying so it's time to become a bit more nasty and to take more opportunities to win freekicks - we're far too honest at the moment.

Strictly speaking according to the daft new laws that was denial of a clear goal scoring chance by not playing the ball - a pen and a red card. But to be fair those should never be given as they are a joke. Although Che may have been offside...

IMO it's because our game is entirely reliant on energy and everyone following a highly detailed game plan. Less time between games means less detail and time to practice. Less time means less recovery. Unfortunately as soon as our players have to think for themselves and we have to deviate from the game plan (i.e. when someone gets sent off) we go to pieces.

That was incredibly disappointing. We had more than enough of the game to lead at half time, but what is more disappointing is how easily we gave up the game once we were losing. Surely we need to go back to the approach we took against Chelsea? Let the opposition have a bit more of the ball and play a counter attacking game. It's easy to get bogged down in the relentless "bad luck" we've had with decisions, but we were masters of our own downfall today. What on earth is wrong with Ings - looks like hes going through the motions?

Anyone who tells me that there isn't an agenda against us needs to look at the some total of decisions that have gone our way and those that have gone against us. Since that iffy penalty against Brighton I swear we haven't had one borderline decision go for us. If there was no cheating at least one would go our way...

Its got 0-0 written all over it!