Hodgey

So for the 2nd of only 3 matches Hampshire amassed a huge 1st innings score. Have I got it wrong - was Surrey a blip and our batting line up strong ? good to see Organ positively involved, and a massive score for an out of nick Dawson. Crane has to be disappointed with no wickets there on a worn pitch (all be it still a decent batting surface)

Need to be brave and push the back line up again - they were far too deep Vs Burnley giving out midfield too much to do. Of the back 3 Bednerak was least incompetent so he keeps his place. forster kwp. Bednerak. Salisu. Perraud armstrong. Rom. Jwp. Redders Adams. Armstrong And give minutes to Diallo, Tella and Tino as 1st choice subs. Hopefully we can Nick a 1-0, you never know what you’ll get with our lot !

Both Rom and JWP look a bit jaded. As others point out they play every week as the reserves are not good enough. Not only that but they often play 2 Vs 3 and with Ralph high press demands. Rom has a good few years left in him, but we do need some rotation to give them a couple of breathers.

Think that game showed where we thought we might be. A very forgiving batting track and our batsmen were found wanting against a decent bowling attack (but we’ll face better). 6 for Dawson, 27 Gubbins, 17 Organ all very disappointing - the rest all got in and out. Positives were Brown shoring up the collapses a bit, Weatherly making a decent score in the second, but overall that batting line up looks a far cry short of a championship run. Then again I said that last year and we almost won it. Comparing our batting line up to Surreys is frankly frightening.

I don’t get it - what do footballers do in training all week if they are so uncomfortable using their weaker foot. Adams should be shown the 50 odd chances spurned by him by his refusal to use his left. You don’t get that extra second in the premier league so you might as well use your left.

Season about to start - alsop and McManus on loan so what are our predictions ? I still think we are an opener short - weatherly and Holland deserve another shot after last year but I’m not convinced. Middle order looks stronger with Brown, Gubbins and Donald fit, and tail that can wag. Bowlers will fancy early green wickets (esp Abbot, Barker and Abbas) but think they might all be too similar when teams dig in / flat pitches. Expecting big things from some of our younger players this year - can Prest and Currie kick on ?. Organ has been very strong in friendlies - genuine all rounder ?. Think we will still struggle in T20 despite couple of useful additions, but after last year aim must be championship ??

It’s not beyond us to find a centre back better than Jan/Stephens for c £10-15m, our strategy and scouting has improved. A striker better than the championship quality we currently have however is a huge ask - especially with the budget we have. We can’t afford to write AA off - I’d give him the next 8 games to see what he can do alongside Adams, Broja is clearly off. I have my doubts, but we can’t go into next season with Adams and a totally inexperienced Armstrong. If we can get him to anything like the player smashing them in for Blackburn that’ll be enough - and we can look for a young prospect / youth for a genuinely Prem Quality striker and give them a year or two.

I don’t care if I get proved wrong. That team is a joke, 9 changes, a right back playing centre back, Smallbone and Djenepo. After all that goodwill built up too. fantastic chance to win something, nah let’s try and get 8th place and another million instead (which is still unlikely). People wonder why some call us a nothing club…

He’s played well recently, but we need a modern gk who is comfortable on the ball, and comfortable off his line, he has improved here but looks unnatural. We can only have one of McC or Forster as number 2, McC has new contract and I can see Forster having a good few years at a slightly lower level as no 1. Good news is that with Forsters wages freed up we should have decent capacity to find a quality no 1.

On paper that looks like 2 average championship sides playing. It’s an unnecessary risk - let’s hope he doesn’t have to make early subs with his strong bench. More so I’m not keen on giving players 3 weeks off - they’ll lose match fitness.

Not too bothered by this news - we’ve trod the buy exciting young gk path a lot recently with Lewis / Gunn / Gazzaniga etc and I don’t see us having much success in coaching them to be better. I know it’s not in line with our strategy but for this position we need to buy at prime and have an older back up, gks develop much later and it’s really tricky to give them game exposure. The only young gk I can ever remember us improving was Flowers 30 yrs ago (and even he had a very ropey period which in todays game would have been dropped).

Dorchester - I absolutely don’t believe they can’t put a competitive team out, and to be clear I completely disagree with it and if it was up to me all games would go ahead unless over 13 registered squad players had Covid/isolating, I agree with you. But - the rules are that if less than 11 outfield players and 2 gks from the first team squad (25) are available you can postpone (MLG may well correct me here). That’s the case with Newcastle unless anyone can prove differently (and as they can’t name affected players due to privacy you can’t). I’m pissed as it certainly means we have a much lower chance of 3 points, and I want Toon to go down as I hate the thought of them proffering from blood money, but they are not cheating and anger should be directed at the PL.

It’s not cheating - they’re just using the illogical and idiotic rules the PL introduced. Would we do any different ? If we had the chance to postpone 2 winnable games when we had a load of injuries to key players and had a warchest to spend in Jan (plus effectively have a mid season break for the rest of the squad) we would do the same. I don’t even think the PL have done this to favour them - just sheer incompetence. Ultimately I think it’ll be a Burnley or Watford who feel the effects of this most (hopefully) - feel very sorry for Burnley who have lost 4 games through no fault of their own and will have to plough through those games without spending their way out of it.

So after the last few weeks with 2 goals and an assist is JWP still useless and cant even take set pieces anymore, or are we accepting that he is one of our best players ?. Fair play to the whole team - like everyone I’ve accused them of being bottlers but the last 2 games they have 2 monkeys off their backs - playing with 10 men and coming back in the 2nd half. Very pleasing

Looks like 5 at the back with Valery and 2 attacking full backs. Expect Armstrong to be a 3rd central midfielder so we compete there. I’ve no issues with this until I see a forward 2 of Long and Armstrong. Absolutely no need to play 2 up front here if he thinks Broja needs a rest and Adams not ready - just play another attacking midfielder.

I’m with St Clark on this. What on earth is the point in having a 3rd choice keeper you have absolutely no intention of playing. We’re utterly brassic, that keeper is never going to progress, so if you want somebody you’re never going to play, that might as well be a nipper. Caballero decent tonight - but he really isn’t better than Forster or McCarthy.

On the Tino front - he started great, but only started due to a promise in order to get him. That’s not fair on anyone, since then Ralph has backed himself into a corner, everyone can see Tino needs a break but that is ultimately admitting you were wrong, and he played KWP lb as he feared losing one of our better players. Dropping Tino should be an option - he’s been poor the last few games so in a meritocracy someone else deserves a chance. Now I think our right sided n 10s have been awful so I’d argue he deserves a chance there, but if arrogant Ralph doesn’t think so then he has to drop him. Basically this is going to end with all 3 full backs losing confidence. Tino from either being dropped or continually beaten by wingers, KWP for being dropped for a rookie and then failing on the wrong flank, Perraud from being judged worse than an out of position right footed full back. Utter mess

Yesterday the spine of the team was a 40yr old gk training with a l1 club, Bednerak, an out of sorts JWP, Redmond and a young Chelsea loaner. That spine belongs in the championship. Even with a fully fit side there isn’t a great improvement. Anyone expecting anything other than bottom 6 was always going to be disappointed. That said Ralph is currently making it worse - dropping KWP was a mistake he’s yet to rectify, he’s got no idea who his best cfs are , has acquired a load of sub par no 10s. On top of that we’re still dealing with dreadful recruiting decisions which Ralph has compounded - Djenepo ?, Perraud (won’t play him), Walcott (ridiculous signing) and 3 of our top earners are rightly not in the 1st team. It’s a mess and the brief for this season was to find a new goal scorer, a left back and centre back - failed on all fronts so far. Newcastle and Leeds will overtake us as both will have far superior teams second half of the season, leaves us in a dogfight with Burnley, Norwich, Watford and possibly Brentford (although I suspect they will be fine). Do I think Lampard would do better ? Maybe, my worry is that the players have lost faith in Ralph’s system - in which case a change is needed. I’d re-evaluate after next 4 games as Ralph deserves a final stab at putting it right - but 2 wins/performance uplift required.

He needs a strong number 2 to say ‘sorry Ralph - but I disagree’, surrounded by inadequate yes men, I’d even go so far as to say he’s been given far too much power. We’re never going to fire him as we can’t afford to - also can’t see us attracting anyone better so we’ll continue to squander chances and tire/ get figured out 2nd half. Just got to hope we’re better than 3 others each season. Also aside from JWP I’m struggling to think of a player he has improved.

McCarthy is the new whipping boy, and I do agree he’s at best bottom 5 keepers in the league, but some of the criticism is ott. The first - yes a top keeper might have claimed or pushed wide but it was far from easy, the second he had no chance - not sure who blames a gk when a striker is shooting unopposed at him from 5 yards. Meanwhile he made a world class save from Barnes and did very well against Vardy for the 1 v 1 - didn’t go down early, rushed at right time and made himself big. He’s had a few bad games but yesterday wasn’t one of them.

Che will always be held back by his inability to use his left foot, he’s also poor in the air. He can be very instinctive (on his right foot) and should be good for 8-10 pl goals a season. I’d put Armstrong in the same bracket (although he can use both feet, he’s a little blunt in that he always shoots no matter what). In itself that’s enough to stay up - but it requires a tight defence and goals coming from elsewhere - which is a problem for us.

I get it’s a free hit. But 3 up front suddenly against Liverpool is a bit mad - wonder if this is Ralph’s subtle way of showing that our no 10s are all sub par. Not sure playing strikers there is the answer but in his defence he’s got a load of championship options throughout that attack so is trying to find a solution. Feel that Tella sub was unfair - can’t have done the lads confidence any good and is setting him up to fail.

Give the decent volume of criticism I watched JWP carefully yesterday to see if any of it was justified. So it wasn’t all good - corners were average and a couple of times he gave the ball away in dangerous areas. But overall I thought he was excellent. I saw more forward than sideways passing, including a superb cross field ball on a sixpence for KWP. Great technique and shot for a very good save, good free kick finding Adams head for another excellent save. A couple of crucial tackles and interceptions, and hard running and closing down throughout. I was looking out for the much accused slowing everything down and square balls, and he did a lot more of that in the 2nd half which was sensible as we were being overrun. In injury time he bought a cheap foul from Villa reducing pressure further. I know this is one game, but I think this was his performance level throughout last year. So my position hasn’t changed - he is a massive asset to this team and we should do everything we can to keep him. BTW even the goal came from his forward pass to Adams ! (Although it was a bit of a long ball)

Looks to be a combination of things to me 1) throwing out the 4222 playbook 2) buying in a couple of quality youngsters from other Prem teams 3) promoting a few youngsters who are talented enough and ready for the step up 4) playing a few older players with experience Well done the club for finally sorting it - did take far too long though. Hope they can challenge for a place in the top league

Also people thinking we will reinvest the whole amount in the squad - what’s that based on ?. Given we have a £75m debt to repay and can’t make ends meet outside of that - why do you think we would reinvest the whole amount ?. So let’s say it’s £50m - and we reinvest £30m - removing loyalty bonus / signing on / agent fees etc how are we going to upgrade 3 positions ??. Then the increased jeopardy of us going down (even if our scouting team miraculously spot a bargain in January, how long before that player gets up to speed ?). I can see an argument for selling in July (but not one I personally think will help us) but in January ??.