StrangelyBrown

This is horseshit I'm afraid. There was no reason not to play a back 4. If Baz was incapable of playing with a 4 then McCarthy has played with a four for most of his career. If it was about height then play Stephens at right back - he's filled in there plenty. Playing 4 at the back doesn't necessitate a target man. Tonda has done well, but let's not reinvent history - he should have switched to a four way sooner.

Do you think he identified the problems quickly enough? For me they were so blatantly obviously only someone with deceitful eyes would claim otherwise and frankly I didn't buy into the "height" bullshit. Don't get me wrong I think he's doing well and I do wonder if he's getting less interference now we're getting results??

Imagine if he'd also switched to a back 4 a bit quicker... The most promising thing for me is that a number of players actually seem to have improved. When was the last time we had a manager who made players better?

Glad to see an Azaz masterclass. Wonderful passer of the ball. Yes he's inconsistent, but if he was any better he wouldn't be playing for us! Big shouts out for Larin for leading the line so well, Leo for a much better 2nd half, Harwood Bellis for another very composed game and Matsuki for 2 very nicely taken goals. I'm starting to like this team again!

7 wins from 12 needed. The hope is going to kill me

I'm not sure that's true. We're on course to get 69 points - Tonda is on 1.75 points per game.

8 wins needed now from 13. Still doable but we love to make things hard for ourselves.

I don't disagree, watching his presser yesterday was comedy gold, but like you very glad he's not out manager.

The criticism of Jones is about him being a twitchy mentalist. You can't go around making claims about being the fittest man in the world and the best manager statistically and say bizarre things about staying in Wales with a girl from the valley and not expect a bit of criticism. The man is a walking box of frogs.

Interesting post that backs up what a lot of us were saying without analysing the stats - i.e. a back four gives us an extra body in midfield and therefore control. It also highlights a weakness of our over reliance on stats/data - you have to have data to see trends and therefore react whereas using your "deceitful" eyes you can fix problems as they happen.

The fact that we've only had 2 managers who've managed more than 50 games since Claude Puel is pretty damning. Yes he's doing well so far, but the comparison is against a whole load of dross.

Based on needing 10 wins from the last 16; we're well on track with 2 wins out of 10 and 8 wins needed from the remaining 14. We've only gone and given ourself some hope... We all know how this goes 😂

Blimey amazing turnaround. Hats off to the manager and players for turning that around. Not sure what he was thinking to begin with though!

So very Saintsy. We give ourselves a chance in the league and then our dickhead manager fucks it up. 3 at the back incoming and us stuck in the championship forever...

From what has been said something seems to have happened that now everyone is trying to move on from - I guess we'll never know what it was.

I don't think the model is the problem. It's the execution of the model. SR have proven themselves to be incapable of making the model work.

Makes you wonder why we signed Quarshie and not a decent left back and let Bree go out on loan. I don't think "we" had any intention of playing 4 at the back despite Still wanting to.

Possible, but unlikely given the run we would need to go on. Having said that we've made a good start - I thought we needed 10 wins from 16. 1 down with 15 to go.

This is a stretch, but I've got a feeling the back 3 is Rasmus' fault and he's now been told to butt out and let Spors and Tonda get on with it having fucked up most of our season.

Fair play to Tonda - he got it right today. Very strong performances across the whole team and a deserved MotM for Azaz. Big shout out to our fullbacks who were both incredibly solid. Hopefully Rasmus' back 3 is behind us now.

I wonder if there is something in his contract about extra payments if he plays X number of Championship/PL games which is why we haven't seen him and why the club refuse to sell/loan him to an English side?

Maybe thats why Bazunu and Manning got a pass for so long - their xDoSomethingNotShit stats were really high

Not a lot of point until the club think again about structure, autonomy and this ridiculous over-reliance on data to make decisions.

How many chances did he have and what percentage of shots did he score? I agree his output has been prolific but he's required a heck of a lot of chances to achieve that output. In the PL chances are harder to come by which is why I think he'll never be good enough to make the step up. You could argue that he makes those chances with his movement etc, but equally you could argue that the team has been geared up to try and take advantage of his pace and movement. A more natural striker would have scored a lot more with those chances and I suspect this is what SR thought Archer would be. For me it's time to move on and start building a team for tomorrow.

It's properly broken now. So Rasmus how do we fix it ...