saintbob40

A novel suggestion but lets try and play the team that got us promoted.......so Kelvin (championship team of the season and the other two are crap), Fox (championship team of the season), Cork in with SRL to start. And bring back Billy Sharp FFS.... NA and/or Cortese have managed to destroy a successful team and the team spirit that goes with it in the space of a couple of months. Perhaps they thought that it was their own work rather than that of the players that got the Saints promoted last year . Looks now like it wasn't......

What did they ever do for us......

Cork is back in full training and has to start as part of a solid middle three. NA has a habit of taking his time with players coming back from injury but I do not think we have any choice. JWP isnt ready yet.

Cork is our most underated player. He is calm in possession and plays with a measured authority doing the unglamorous things most fans dont see but which make a huge difference to the effectiveness of a team. If he had played against Man U and Man City we would have at least drawn these games. Likewise I think we would have beaten Wigan. So the difference between bottom three and mid table. That said I don't think he is hairy enough to be the missing link.......

Well BFS got the fixture list right for starters... and WHU are a nasty, cheating set of fouling bastards. However I think our morale has been impacted by the loss of Sharp and Hammond and the demotion of Kelvin and Fox. We have then brought in quite a few foreigners who may turn out ok but are still adapting to the UK both culturally and in a football sense and.... some linguistically. Then to cap it all the ever present Cork has had two injuries one after the other. We have seen revolution not the evolution we were promised and thus far it has not worked.

JWP isn't ready. Physically he is not developed enough and he is not great out of possession. We miss Cork in a big way.

Weirdly we appear to have spent 20 mill or so and ended up with a worse team......

Game for big men with big shin pads. They will try and bully us and kick us off the park.

FIFA is still in the process of trying to frustrate an investigation into bribery and will inevitably do 10% of what they should do on this occassion as well. Looks like the football family is pretty disfunctional to me. Whilst we tend to beat ourselves up on such matters, the UK is probably one of the most advanced in the world terms of how it deals with racism. Something we can be very proud of.

So no correlation between the two?

The lack of a defensive screen in front of the back four is the main issue. The defence is left exposed too often. Also we don't keep possession or dicate the pace of the game very well. The problem is at centre mid..........

Cork and Morgan are sorely missed. They win the ball and keep possesssion. JWP is not ready and Davies wasnt good enough last time he was in the prem. To put them in a 442 is/was footballing suicide.

Does that make Dean Hammond Pete Best?

Is Morgan fit to play ? If not paper thin in centre mid and our two midget ginger ninjas will get steam rollered.

Interesting posts about ball retention....sorry sideways passing. I guess Spain and Barcelona are pretty crap as well. If we had kept the ball better we wouldnt have been knackered and lost games in the last 20 minutes v Man U and Man C.

SDR best game for the Saints . Cork MOM hope he is ok . JWP good first half but gave the ball away a number of times in the second half by trying too many Hollywood passes. He is also too lightweight to play in a 442. Gazza good distribution and shot stopping but fumbled the ball a few times from crosses. Chaplow touch of an angry blacksmith as usual.

JWP...the boy king. Funnily enough he gets 5s or 6s in the Sunday papers but gets much higher praise when reading this forum. Are we making the mistake of looking at what he could be (which may be a top, top player by the way) rather than what he is currently. He needs managing very carefully and still has a lot to learn.

Morgan and JWP in the middle in a 442 would be disastrous.....paper thin.

will he **** in my garden and go in the bins?

Davies is struggling to adjust from pub league to premiership and I am not convinced he is up to it . He wasn't previously before he moved to Rangers so why now after a few years of mediocrity? Squad player for me at best.

Cork in for oneof the ginger ninjas. We need his calm authority on the ball and his industriousness off the ball. Somebody needs to do the hard work that most fans never notice, otherwise we will get stuffed by a very average Villa as well. Also Ramirez to start. then we will win........

We are too loose in midfield. That is the root of our problems. Look at the possession stats from each game and also look at the number of shots each team gets to have.

MOTD........ scarier than Dr Who when I was a kid in the 70 s ............

Midfield crap without the ball. Don't close down dont track runners. But the defence will take 100% of the blame as usual.

Ok .......judging by the twitter discussion between Billy Sharp and Cork yesterday, Cork was at that time heading North and had passed Nottingham some time ago. I am aware that the reserves are playing Newcastle away tonight. Working on the assumption that Cork is playing in the reserves game, it is difficult to conclude that Cork will also play some part in the Arsenal game the following day. Accordingly, I think NA has IMHO ballsed up and we will run out of steam in the midfield again at around 4.30 pm tomorrow. Next time with crayons and pictures......