Legod Third Coming

He does say he plays with three up. That's his view so anyone calling for 4-4-2 is asking for a cut in our striking power... believe it or not!!!

Are you people seriously naive? Every football club has a press officer who accompanies the manager with the press... The Newcastle one was heard and quoted ensuring that Joe Kinnear calling the media a bunch a cunning stunts would not be published... funniest thing I have read or heard ever that was.

Why do you assume that we will get worse and others better? It is just as reasonable to suppose that we are all as good as we are. In which case, we will finish the season safe. We might even get better - don't you think the defence has got better? The midfield too? Yes, we're not scoring goals and no we don't have the world's best players. We have some good ones though and more to come back - Morgan and Holmes to name two key ones we appear to miss badly. In any system, the best players are most likely to win - that's obvious, look at the Premiership and there is no debate as to who is top and why. What we have is players who want to learn, want to improve, want to play and want to win. They and their coach will need support and time to get things right. That much we surely know about football? In time he and they might not be up to it. But at the moment they're both proving just good enough. And for now, that's all we need.

We do, but they are both on loan!!!!!

I know exactly what Paterson was thinking: "I'm 20 years of age, never found myself in this position before, look at all those passionate faces, mustn't let them down, must make sure I...oh ******... I let myself, my team and my fans down..." Hard being an apprentice sometimes.

I think they came in the box marked football fan handkit - sadly, a batch were issued in more recent times and have been found to be missing the requisite belief, hope and optimism that were once at the heart of the kit.

Then you have my pity...

This is where we really miss Morgan and Holmes, both understand the value of a well hit long ball - and are bloody accurate.

It's a perfectly valid example and one we can follow as a model. Or would you rather we adopted the Argyle model?

I like the way we're playing football. I like that we appear to be building a team of predominantly young British players. I like that we have a manager who comes and visits the fans and talks to us - about anything. I like that my team plays with its heart and soul. It seems unfashionable these days. But amongst all the anger, vitriol and despair, I ain't losing any sleep. I look forward to going to watch my team. For the first time in five years. And yet people will slate me for it. I pity them. Among all the heartache and despair in the world right now, finally we have something and some people to be proud of and believe in. Shame others don't see it that way.

If you bother to listen to JP and the players, the vast majority of them have trained the way he plays from their Academy days. Maybe, just maybe that's why he is here and why he might need to be given a bit more time and opportunity to develop a team and build a successful future. Er, like Wenger has at Arsenal maybe? Or we could try throwing money at the problem. You got some?

Why is that? Because so many people seem to have been crap here and excelled elsewhere.

You didn't come to Charlton then?

There is a real misconception that the manager/coach has tried to explain that we do not play 1 up front. We play 3 up front - two wide men and a centre forward, and another forward just behind the 'spearhead'. For me the initial observations are really sound but ignore that the spearhead striker needs to be able to hold the ball up and play in his colleagues. And that the striker in the hole, has to play close to the spearhead striker. Watching our team, it would be pointless getting to the bye-line because theres is no-one on the penalty spot or at the far post waiting for the ball. They just don't gamble on getting into the box. What we need is an Alan Shearer. No-one complained when he used to play with another striker just off him.. who was that again...

What that list shows is that we have had simply too many managers since 2003 and that, really, none of them were given the requisite time to establish whether they were any good or not. I feel enermous sympathy with poor old Paul Ince for the same reason. He might or might not be a great manager - I bet we never find out though. Since the advent of the internet and football phone-ins, the whole bloody world is an expert on football management. And we're some of the worst. We wouldn't have Delap - now look at him. We wouldn't have Fuller - now look at him. We wouldn't have Telfer - he played in the Champions League! Wigley was a minute from beating Arsenal at Highbury and then who knows what... Sturrock has taken Plymouth to the brink of the play-offs with (as DD is keen to tell us) a team of plumbers. Redknapp won the firking FA Cup for Pompey and taken them into Europe... All this posturing. All it proves is we know bugger all about football. And it won't stop any of us spouting off... you have to laugh.

Magnificent! To me that is the spirit of Southampton...lol

Different teams are set up and play different ways. It's not true to say that every team coming to St Mary's sits behind the ball. Yet time and again we can cut through them easily, but have no cutting edge in the final third. This is not down to systems but talent, in my view. Better strikers move into the space more effectively - drag defenders wide and out of position and create the oportunity to score. We battered Birmingham for 60 minutes and scored one goal. We battered Norwich for 80 minutes and scored two. We battered Wolves with ten men and couldn't score at all. There is a pattern here... If teams play with ten men behind the ball, our swift and accurate passing style should and often does open them up. Away from home, in my view, we've simply had more luck. Reading were unlucky not equalise although they didn't deserve it - but there we should have been four or five up at half time. Our finishing is lacking. Having said which, I'm not downhearted. Early in the season our defence was shocking and JP has now fixed that. The midfield now looks soild too. Perhaps in the next few weeks the final third will click and then we'll be away.

£5 to edit - and they say there is freedom of speech...

I live in hope my old son. If you don't it can be a dark, dark place....

For evil men to succeed it is necessary only for good men to do nothing. Do not despair SoG. The arguments about the board are firking irrelevant if you go along to watch a team in red and white play. We have some good young footballers who play for their shirts and one another - they deserve better than some of those who would rather dissect the club's management than bother to watch the team. We got relegated. Well that happens. Now we're fighting for survival - like 70 other football clubs. If you can't enjoy that, then what are you alive for? When the chips are down, that's when real men stand up, not bottle off for a nice shopping spree with the wife and wait until the glory days return. All me and my old man ever wanted was to see our lads give 100%. That's what they're giving. Sometimes it's exceptional to watch. Sometimes agonisingy close to being brilliant. At other times it's infuriating. That is football. But anyone who thinks they go on the pitch to entertain and not to win needs to go back and ask for their surgeon to remove the other frontal lobe and do us all a favour...

Hallefirkinglujah. Now selling in the club shop, perspective glasses...

I'm afraid this theory will be blown away in January. Those who are staying away because of the Chairman are few - I have no truck with them. That's their view and that's their choice. The majority, however, will come flooding back when we start winning. People want to be associated with a winning team - look how full the KC Stadium is this season. And if we could somehow tempt them in now, we might have the money to bring back our goal-scorers!

This is our massive catch 22 situation. No crowd equals no money equals no striker equals no crowd equals no money... I think JP is trying all the options he has and has created - Peckhart, Paterson, Robertson, McGoldrick, BWP - but what we really need is our two most succesful strikers back. At first I wondered whether John and Rasiak would suit this system, but they will because they both hold the ball up so well and are incisive in the box!

Which is not - contrary to some of the complete cretins on this forum - the fault of the guy coaching and sending out the team... We cannot afford the wages of the people who scored our goals last season and the season before. Someone talks about ST holders being in denial - in fact it is the berks who keep asking for a change in tactics or coach/manager who seem to be in denial. Of course, perhaps they think we can appoint Harry Potter and he can cast a financiamous charm over the club, or maybe a scoriamous spell can transform our youth strikers with 20 games first team experience into Robinho... Time and again we carve teams open at will - Reading, Charlton, Birmingham... we simply then miss the goal. Against Norwich, a team with a striker would have won 8-0 not 2-0 - we missed so many chances it was comical. This is not about 4-4-3, 4-2-4, 4-4-2 - its about finishing. Plain and simple. Check the stats - we have more shots than anyone - but they're going high, wide, handsome or straight down the keeper's throat... Lowe needs to find the cash to bring John and Rasiak back - 15k more fans attending would sure help.

For me, we have to learn to finish teams off when we are dominating. That's about finishing. And we have had so many shots but scored so few goals, it tells its own tale. Even at Reading to only be one goal in front at half time was lamentable. We could easily have lost that game in the second half. At Charlton, we could easily have won but again we could not finish. Even early in the season against Birmingham we could and should have been 4 up by half time and instead we scored only one and lost. Our build-up play is really good. But in the final third we have delivery from James and now Skacel but no natural finisher. If Jan can resolve this, we're away. Because we do finally look like we can defend and for me that's always the basis of a successful team.