Saint86

Mike Dean / lee Mason - the 9-0s

Haven't read every page... but i'm yet to see any poster not lambasting the referee, let alone defending him? The TP pen that is right in front of his face is criminal. With the legal shenanigans going on re financial affairs, its about time things like this get legally challenged. A ref and VAR ref making this kind of mistake can only be Corruption or Bias. No one is that inept. Needs investigating - its almost certainly a key decision in our season - cost us in a 6pointer relegation scrap.

Yes. Fair. But I would have just settled for having Taylor on at left back vs fatawu when it was still 2-1... Ideally at 2-0 given we knew all about him from last year 😢

Fatawu played against us for Leicester last season, scoring a hattrick at the king power... We know everything there is to know about him. We left manning and fraser to get absolutely rinsed by him when we had a far better quality defensive left back sat on the bench.

If they're not going to sack him, at least get him some proper quality support on the bench re tactical setup and defensive coaching. We were good for most of the game with 11men, really should have been out of sight in fact...and then he's just utterly shat the bed. Taylor absolutely murdered us decision wise, but Martin just has to be better - he needs to react sooner, and he needs to not completely shit the bed with his changes. What is even more frustrating is that Martin has shown that with a bit of prep time, he can get his teams setup right. The playoffs vs West brom. The final vs Leeds, Newcastle first game, even today and vs Ipswich etc... But he gets out coached tactically by the other managers in the games and it's a real problem. They react well and he doesn't and makes a mess. That and we are getting bad luck.

Yes I agree. I've never been more certain that a ref had it in for us than today. He's done us dirty. Death by a thousand inconspicuous cuts.

We lost because of that corner setup. Forget everything else. That corner setup has cost us 4 points vs Leicester and Ipswich. Not only that but we didn't make the change to stop fatawa after repeated immediate warnings and threats where he ripped us open. Who watched that out of all of us and didn't immediately see it was a problem. Taylor was on the bench, but we left manning and fraser to defend against that whilst we were cut apart - needlessly.. And just like Bournemouth first half, it was obvious and he didn't react until the game was effectively over. Yes. Taylor has just done us dirty. But Martin has helped.

What I can't even begin to fathom, is that we had a proper left back on the bench... But we left fatawa to absolutely murder manning and fraser at fucking full back? Last year was bad enough... But to watch that happen repeatedly this game and not change it is just shocking.

The only thing I will say in his defence is that Taylor basically ensured we had to take off all our key players with the yellow card noncery in the first half. We get the blatant pen on onuachu and we win regardless. We have just been bent over from minute one by the ref. But that's all I am going to offer him. The final goal is a carbon copy of the Ipswich one... It was unforgiveable in that game, it's absolutely unacceptable that it has happened twice.

Agreed. Should have been allowed the corner, they were passing it around 40yards out at walking speed when 7min ticked by. The bias on fouls and yellows all game. The non penalty. Just a joke. Every little decision went against us this game consistently. The corner is a carbon copy of the Ipswich set up though. Zero excuse for that. Sackable offence to concede two goals like that in the 90+6 etc minutes to Ipswich and Leicester. Shocking. Furious actually.

The club absolutely need to make a formal complaint about Taylor's performance this game.

Match fixing. here we go. The exact same foul not given on onuachu minutes before. Joke. This was going to happen since the first half. Taylor was always going to do us.

Wow. Wow. and then more wow....

Saying that, this is a game for Onuachu to score from a corner...

Fernandes off worries me, he's been involved in everything good so far this game - offensively and defensively. Leicester just bringing on more pace

Taylor's bias in this game is beyond a joke. Appalling referee. I hope we complain.

Think saints need to seriously need to make a complaint about Taylor based on this first half alone. Dread to think whats going to happen second half if this noncery carries on.

Clear foul on dibling, and ball didn't go out and they gave a free kick. WTF is this.

Shocking refereeing from Taylor so far. Completely unfit to be a top flight ref. Error prone, clear bias/harshness, and inconsistent.

clear foul on dibling not given, then never a foul by downes. And if we're being consistent, that was just a foul on downes where the leicester player came through the back of him... joke ref.

Clear ref bias from the ref here. 2 yellows for us, one wasn't, and one was immediately after what should have been a foul on fernandes. Awful ref.

Surely its inevitable that if Leicester score, Vardy will score? Even you must know that Lighthouse. It is written 😄. (May or may not happen in the 95th minute to deny us our first win, and Vardy may or may not foul our best player (Dibling this season), injuring his achilies and putting him out for the rest of the season before he then demands a move to Liverpool - i'm not bitter against Vardy or anything).

What, worse than the last time we lost to the worst football team i've ever seen visit saint mary's? Hopefully not... Reading our forum and their's, its a wonder this isn't being called the graham potter derby...

Objectively, just no 😄. You can't just ignore Ipswich (£8-10billion net owners pumping money into them to build a team in the 3rd tier and then doing the back to back promotions). They were in the championship with us last year... they got 96 points and finished 2nd? 😄 There were 4 teams on 87+ points - that's more than any other season going back to 2014/15 (at which point i stopped checking tbh - but i'm confident its a trend that would continue for the overwhelming majority of seasons). So which one of the top 3 are you ignoring to make us part of an exclusive 3horse race? Leeds would get automatic promotion most seasons with their performance. We were far and away the worst of the relegated premier league sides and we then gutted the team of pretty much all talent.. so we were never favourites for top 2 (regardless of people's ignorance of how good Ipswich were going to be), plus the playoffs are always less than a 50% chance.... So if anything, Martin should probably be getting praised for getting us promoted, not beaten round the head for missing automatics. Specifically on your point about the tactics/defensive play: "an unheard of amount of goals for a promotion chasing team"... okay, so we were more attacking and less defensive, but still got the job done... we let in 6 more than Ipswich who secured automatics? We also didn't even have the most goals conceded of the playoff sides last season (your "promotion chasing sides"), and indeed looking back at previous seasons there are sides with more goals against than us (Reading came 3rd with 64 against, villa and west brom both finished in the playoffs with 62 and 61 against for example - so no, its not unheard of. If anything, your point raises the question of whether Martin be praised for getting promoted with his style of play over the more typical sean dyche / calderon / BFS styles that succeed in the championship - a devils advocate rhetorical question 😛. In Martin's favour - in each of the past 10seasons, our goals scored would be at least 2nd best - and more generally place us as top scorers (ditto Ipswich and Leicester - i.e., tough league last year), and goal difference wise we'd generally have finished in the top 3 or 4. So being overly critical over goals against in a successful season isn't really the biggest deal? Its also been said to death, but a significant proportion of our goals against came in the first 6 matches when we had massive squad turnaround and a drastic transition in style, take just 3 of those games out of the equation and include the playoffs and we were nearer to 1 goal against per game over the course of the season 🤷‍♂️. So given the previous 3 horse race arguments falls a bit flat on the actual evidence of last season, it comes back to the fact that fundamentally its a case of people not liking his style as opposed to him underperforming per se 🤷‍♂️. In the premier league, people dislike that we're not changing it "enough" (matter of each fans opinion) to stay up - and i guess many would rather give some Sean Dyche / BFS style football ago than continue trying with Martin's stlye - although there are no guarantees that would work either.

This 100%. Especially if you consider the complete turmoil that we had at the start of the season re player sales/arrivals and change of style, let alone the state of the dressing room morale and so many players not wanting to be here. Some people may not want to hear it, but Martin did a good job with us last season 🤷‍♂️. It was an incredibly competitive league with that top 4 chasing 2 automatic spots, and at the end of the day we got promoted. Within that, we beat Leeds 3 times over the season and justifiably so as were the better side on each occasion, the play off final was a very professional performance given the occasion as well. As for the 5th best team in the league... We played West Brom 4 times in the league/play offs, winning 3, drawing 1, and ending with an aggregate score of 7-2. We outplayed Ipswich both times we played them as well, those particular results were down to luck as much as anything else - not dissimilar to the draw against them this season. In summation - For people to sit here and take away last season from Martin is extremely harsh imo. Although I don't think there are that many seriously doing this. As for this season though, he's struggling (although perhaps justifiably so - given the damage PSR to the squads of relegated and promoted teams (i.e., our squads have been gutted by relegation and we're not even allowed to spend the same as the club that finished 17th last year). If there are managers available that have clearly evidenced themselves as being of a higher ability (i.e., the Potter rumours), the club may well pull the trigger and i doubt many would seriously argue 🤷‍♂️. However, if that doesn't happen, i take it to mean there; Ether isn't anyone better available, That the club think relegation is inevitable and there is an understanding in place that Martin will be our manager next season regardless of what league we are in, That the club think he's doing a reasonable job and has a chance of keeping us up... Also, do we know what SR's season expectations formally are this season? Are we under an "attempt to avoid relegation" mandate, or "avoid relegation". If its the former then Martin won't be sacked unless we fall well adrift - and even then it might hinge on how the dressing room is.