Lallana's Left Peg

I concur

Anyone just watch the live stream of Puel's press conference? He got asked about developing young players and selling them, selling VVD in January etc. He brought every single question back round to talking about the next game Sky journo was getting nothing from him and joked is this going to be what Puel says in response to every single question he gets about selling players and after consulting a translator Puel then answered by talking about the next game Think he perfectly understood what was being asked and just instead decided to wind them all up.

He was superb last night and agree with the views that he has shone in the squad rotation system which has given him more games and cut out the mistakes. His ball out to Bertrand for the first goal was great as well.

Would be surprised to see Puel move away from his rotation policy for this game, despite the temptation to given it's a Quarter Final. Can see the pros and cons of both but when it comes down to it he's been consistent in his selection policy and in what he has said since he joined. The only thing that undermines it at the moment is the awful form of Long and Jay Rod. They are costing us.

Boufal ad Davis injured? Weird team. Hope it pays off.

You should be allowed to support (or not) the team however you want. There is no wrong or right way to support a football team. I'm certainly not against booing or showing disgust at a performance. There was no lack of effort last night, just a distinct lack of quality. Hard to know who to level blame at in that case. Not inclined to boo personally if I think the players care, and I think they all did last night. Most of the frustration, I think, comes from the lingering concern in the background that maybe this is the season some sort of normalisation occurs and we limp meekly back into midtable - 5 years ago that would have been a very acceptable future but after continually losing our best players it does smart a bit when you think what could have been. So when you think this may well be our last shot at Europe for a while you feel the club aren't embracing it the way the fans are. That is the problem - the performance in isolation - it happens. The performance in the context of resting our best players in a competition we may well be heading out of - very very annoying.

That's a bit racist pal.

Not sure what we're playing these days but it feels like a 4-1-2-3. Whatever it is the opposition have worked it out.

You'll get grief for doing this straight after the game and your post history but you have a point - to a degree. I understand the need for rotation but depending who is on the pitch we play like strangers at times. I don't know if that is a quality thing or a coaching thing but it's happening. Ignoring individual form were there any combinations whatsoever tonight? I didn't see any. Just a lot of football that seemed like players were hesitant over what do to as they didn't know how the player they were looking to pass to would react or move. It's playing with fear and I hate seeing that. As for goals it's been the fear all season - not enough goal threat in us as a team. Getting to the point where it feels like set pieces are the only way we will score. I blame the recruitment more than anything else - Redmond as a striker isn't working, Jay Rod deserved a chance but he looks well off it and Long has started the season badly. At times like this you need goals from midfield but we don't have that in us either. A lack of goals will kill us.

No-one as far as I am aware. But I wasn't implying you did either. I'm just stating that even though its not a surprise that doesn't make it any more acceptable.

But that doesn't make it right just because it is normal. Our Chairman's comments clearly make it impossible for us to do anything other than sack Black. Doing anything else would be in contradiction to them.

Not sure if its officially released but take a look here: https://southamptonfc.com/ It's mile better already.

Nothing wrong with a drink (or even getting ****ed). As long as the player is hydrated and ready to perform in training on Tuesday then no harm done.

Yeah I have no doubt that Puel's diamond is more mature than an Adkins diamond given his experience etc. But I think it wold be wrong to say no matter how well he understands it that he can eliminate its weaknesses. It is quite clear that it is a narrow formation that the opposition can expose specifically when you a) lose the ball, or b) allow a team to switch the play quickly and create overload 1 vs. 1 situations in advanced positions. Quite clearly there are strengths to the formation as well. But the weaknesses the diamond has will exist no matter who is the Manager because some are just inherent in the formation regardless. It is the same for any formation so I am not having a go at Puel for playing a diamond. For what it is worth I find the formation very attacking and enjoy watching it. Defensively absolutely nothing comes through the middle (as you would expect) but out wide there is so much space (again, as you would expect) and it's ok Puel fanning out the strikers to mark the full backs when we don't have the ball but we only do that when we get chance to reset and get into position. When we lose the ball upfield any team with competence can break well and create something so it is just the balance of how many men or how far we commit the team forward to ensure we don't become easy to break on that concerns me in general. That is not to say we can't take a risk but its just about balance and decision making. This can be developed as long as you have players who have tactical intelligence (which I think we do).

Sunderland are certainly awful. Watford less so (but certainly a team we should be beating at home). More on Arsenal below. Long periods? No way. They dominated possession and chances. When we lost the ball they would attack far too easily. We didn't deserve to lose and we created the better chances but the way we'd lose the ball and it result in a dangerous counter for Arsenal was very bad. I'm pleased to see that has stopped, but then it would do so against the last three teams we've faced as we've had more of the ball. I'm saying its hard to judge progress because of the standard of opposition we've faced. I would certainly say we've played better against the three teams we just beat than we did against Sunderland. As I say, October is the month where I will judge real progress with the new formation. I'm just not getting carried away with the three wins, just as it wasn't appropriate to get carried away with the poor start to the season. Some formations have inherent weaknesses no matter what the standard of player and understanding that exists between them. We saw the diamond under Adkins when we were one of the best teams in the Championship and teams would constantly find space down the wings and we would constantly find ourselves in 1 vs. 1 positions while defending - it's dangerous. Also because the diamond means we have lots of players concentrated in small parts of the pitch any switch of play can cause us problems too. That's a formation thing, not a quality thing. We have to accept weaknesses in a formation as long as we experience the strengths of it. I want to see how many strengths we experience when we play very good opposition. In the one game we've done that (Arsenal) we've had less possession, conceded more chances and looked unorganised in transition. That's where I want to see most progress and I can't judge that until we play a half decent team again. And, in the interest of fairness, we also saw some good things against Arsenal.

The last three games have seen us play awful opposition so it is hard to judge progress - certainly the end of next month will give us a good view of where we're really at. We've looked better defensively (shape wise) and things are little more coherent going forward. The balance feels better. Any half decent team will continue to exploit us with 1 vs. 1's out wide and in transition on the break - some of the opposition we face in the next month will be the biggest test of this.

I'm on the 17:20 out of Manchester to Malpensa.

Was in a queue when I tried to log in at 9am. Closed browser and tried again 5mins ago and got straight in with a 30min session. Ticket purchased - ticket number 4719.

I think we played really well. I thought Swansea were poor but I don't think that's the reason we played well. I was impressed with everything we did bar the finishing, but I don't think it is a day to dwell on that too much. It could have easily been five or six. I didn't like the way we handed the initiative back to them after we scored but that happens so much in football it's like an accepted thing. I was mostly impressed by the players mental resoluteness - it could have easily been one of those days but I aside from the frustration in front of goal it didn't stop us from remaining focussed at both ends of the pitch. I spoke to someone recently who had a stint in the medical science department at Man Utd in their Academy. Apparently when you look at the stats of playing twice a week versus once a week then the increased chances of injury are far higher than most perceive so that is why a lot of Managers rotate. You also have to factor in fatigue which will impact a players performance as well if they play twice a week (depending on the amount of running their position demands). Rotation comes at a cost of momentum, cohesion and understanding on the pitch but over the course of a season it has massive benefits in terms of injury prevention. You just have to balance that against the overall quality of your team and the opposition to determine what to do each time. Some you'll win, some you'll lose.

The big question is...has the move come too late for the first data release in FM17? **Calling MLG**

Partly, but don't forget one of the teams that got to the final last season finished below us in the league and the other finished 7th in La Liga. I'm not saying it means we're likely to get to the final but I'd say true odds would be far better than 100/1 even considering that odds will come in should be get our of our group and then lengthen when 3rd place teams from the CL enter. Of course none of this is relevant if we don't start to perform as we did last season.

Always feels a bit raw posting immediately after a game but ignoring the poor officiating at the end these are my initial thoughts: 1. My biggest concern is how easily we lose the ball in the final third and how often it results in a chance for the opposition the other end. That can be easily sorted and I am surprised it already hasn't. 2. If these are the formations we're going to persist with can anyone see who is going to get us the goals to allow us to even get near a Top 10 finish? Our most natural finisher is one who is not suited to our formation while the rest are all quick but do not have the touch or goal threat to take advantage of the positions their hard work gets them into. 3. It was a better performance than our previous three which bodes well and overall I am not too disheartened but there are still some fundamental issues to address which unless they are will result in a bit of a meh season. I don't know Puel well enough to know whether or not he will address them. 4. Romeu was immense as he should be in a game like this. Davis and Clasie are lost in this new team. Tadic will frustrate but we know that is the sort of player he is. Interested to see where Boufal fits in. 5. Puel told us the diamond works because it gives us more possession of the ball which is important as you work harder when don't have the ball and with loads of games this season we need to save ourselves. Well I have not see us so bad at keeping possession when the other team actively seeks to take it off us since we've been back in this league so lots of work to do there (teams that sit back and allow us to have possession are a different situation altogether). It's progress but not to the point that I know which way our season will go. Lets get a good confidence building win on Thursday and go from there.

Every time we lost the ball Arsenal carved out a chance. We're so easy to counter on. We do not have the right balance between attack and defence in transition. The reason we lost this game is because of a poor piece of officiating. But in terms of the bigger picture the ease with which teams create genuine goalscoring chances against us is very worrying. It needs to be fixed because we aren't taking our own chances.

It's a weird method for him to find a way to call football racist. And, for what it is worth, Saints Academy regularly miss out on good prospects to top London clubs and as a consequence we focus on those who are smaller and less physical (but have other attributes that are appealing) for development. So to then be criticised for developing them because the bigger clubs took the more physically impressive players (many of which who are black) is ridiculous. And if you look at the black players we have developed...many of them were small as well.

I think we have done some good business. Clearly Wanyama and Mane wanted to leave, whilst everyone else of value and interest to other clubs has signed new deals. We have signed some good young players on long term deals too. I wouldn't get too caught up in the net spend argument - we would have increased our wage bill considerably and I bet we are on the limits of FFP in that respect. I do believe the board have invested all they can into the team. My only concern, and it has been alluded to earlier in this thread, is our new formation and whether or not our players are suitable for it. I am not impressed with it thus far - most notably the lack of chances we create and I've never seen us look so vulnerable when we lose the ball. I remember when Adkins played the diamond a few times in the Championship and it wasn't great - and that was when we were one of the best teams in the league. I am sure the team will get better at playing it but when I look at our players I don't see players who naturally fit it.