mrfahaji

Can hardly blame 'Arry for that though - it was an impossible job from the start, just keeping them up last season was a miracle. No doubt his squad is down to the bare bones as well. The only thing I can say with certainty is that none of their current troubles can possibly be down to Redknapp...

What an utterly flawed and condescending post.

My friend has suggested it's rather like Pokemon - you have a Hooiveld and when he evolves to the next level, he is a Hoedt.

I know it's a bit childlike, but I actually like the crests to have a bit of colour. There's something quite fresh about our badge. It's possible that some tweaks could work, but as the badge has been fairly unchanged (save for the football 'head') since I started supporting Saints, it would be shame for me if it was suddenly 'streamlined to make the brand more globally appealing'. Just writing that sentence makes me feel a little queasy.

Are you saying that Henry is a good coach? What evidence do you have for this assertion? Also, isn't it Martin "bite yer legs" Hunter?

You clearly weren't at the Sunderland home game then. Mane could not be bothered. I thought he was injured he was that disiniterested (only when we used all our subs and didn't take him off, did I figure he wasn't!) I have never suspected that Mane deliberately played badly to try and force a move, and even in that game, he still looked lively when he got the ball, but his overall performance was poor due to the fact he couldn't be ar$ed to run around, so to say "Mane never played badly" is simply not true.

Not sure that's true... Nevertheless, perhaps a more telling observation is the positioning of his feet when he starts to dive (pic 1) and where his knee (pic 2) or feet (pic 3) end up. Looks to me like it's virtually the same horziontal position - i.e. despite 'diving' he didn't actually cover any extra distance by springing across the goal. He just fell down, like the robot in the GIF above.

Haha, that's a brilliant mix up.

I mentioned during the game on Saturday that I think it is a myth that Nathan Redmond has lots of pace. I could be wrong, but while he clearly has quick feet, and is fast enough to take on a defender, I don't recall many games where I've seen him outsprint anyone to the ball (as we frequently see from Long, for example). More of a hypothesis than claiming anything as fact, anyone else either agree, dispute or interested in such a theory?!

Funny you say this, I commented on Saturday that it was the worst home Premier League performance I recall seeing since 0-2 at home to Arsenal under Stuart Gray. I figured I was probably forgetting quite a lot of other terrible matches, and ultimately Arsenal were quite good back then, but it still says something.

That's actually alarmingly similar to how Forster dives...!

He created one of our best openings through his skill in the first half. We didn't have many in the box, and his pull back didn't quite manage to pick someone out*, but just afterwards we mentioned that when he gets the ball you at least edge forward on your seat thinking that something might happen. * I do sometimes wish players would just leather it across the face of goal if there's no obvious pass on. Boufal admirably tried to pick out someone on the edge of the area, but it was a bl00dy difficult pass, and of course if it doesn't come off, it's an easy clearance for Watford and maybe even sets them up on a break. At least if you put it across the face there's a chance of a striker OR a defender turning it in, the keeper coming out and spilling it etc. I'm not saying always aimlessly whack it across, but perhaps when nothing better is available. Not only did Boufal not manage to find the target with his pass, but he also waited for an age to deliver (waiting for our players to make runs) - put it in quickly, defenders are panicking and anything can happen.

After having the weekend to let the dust settle on this defeat, I'm still struggling to find any positives. Even at 2-0 down, if you nick a goal there's always a good chance of a frantic finish, but I said to my friend that I simply had no optimism of us getting a goal, we were that utterly awful. Watford did a job on us. They were excellent and executed their gameplan to perfection. However, they didn't actually create that many chances. I can remember a goal mouth scramble in the second half, and when they hit on the break at 0-2, but it's telling that Watford were so much better than us yet somehow our defenders played "ok" - Hoedt and Stephens weren't obviously brilliant with heroic blocks, last ditch challenges and towering headers, but yet they also didn't do a lot wrong. Because Watford controlled the game without being all over us. That's why it's so disappointing that we were so inept. When you lose 2-0 at home to Chelsea because, despite playing quite well, you're just not as good, you can accept it. Even last year against West Ham, when we lost 3-1, I remember people getting angry at the performance, yet we still created chances, played decently at times, always felt in with a chance, and were undone by a couple of long range shots. That wasn't the case against Watford. We had a 15 spell at the start of the second half when we improved, but then Silva changed it again and it went back to normal. It feels pointless giving individual ratings. Although certain players were conspicuous by their absence, when your front SIX players all play badly (even Romeu), it suggests there's something worse afoot than just individuals having an off day. It's easy to criticise the attacking players because we don't score, and while I found Redmond's decision to shoot from an impossible angle rather than playing it across goal infuriating, I can't remember too many times where our attackers had the ball, had good options, and yet still did nothing with it. It didn't really surprise me that Boufal didn't play well, and that dropping Tadic didn't solve all our problems like many thought it would, because we could play Ronaldo up front and still wouldn't score. Persisting with Davis as DM is a strange one admittedly, and we've seen before that Davis and JWP rarely works as 2 of the 3 in the middle. I don't think Shane Long should be our starting striker, and if he was a permanent fixture in our team all season I'd be concerned, but when we are struggling he at the very least puts defenders under pressure and can turn nothing into something with his pace. Taking off Gabbiadini may not have been a sound decision, but bringing on Long was. As Lord Duckhunter alluded to earlier, Puel's side may have been boring to watch, but they stuck to a style of play. We don't even keep the ball well now. Too often we seemed to 'dink' it forward, around chest/head height to our forward line. It's not incisive, but it's not safe either. Gabbiadini, Boufal, Redmond, JWP, Tadic - one thing they have in common is that they can't hold the ball up for toffee, and aren't going to win 50-50 balls. So what do we do? Chip balls up to them at awkward heights to fight for. We also have no movement - Watford constantly sent two defenders to shut the man down, and yet we couldn't take advantage of the extra man/space behind them. One final mention - I said earlier that you can't single out individuals after such an inept team performance, but once again we lost a game on account of two long range strikes that Forster couldn't get down to. They were decent hits, but Forster doesn't move his feet, and/or doesn't 'push off' his feet to get any distance. He basically falls down and reaches, he doesn't dive. I think Gomes would have saved both of those shots. For all our ineptitude outpitch, if we don't concede those goals so easily the game still could have worked out differently. This was easily our worst performance of the season so far, but you can only write it off as a 'bad day at the office' if it was a significant drop off from other games. We haven't exactly been scintillating so far. I was sat quite near the Northam, so maybe I just had a skewed perspective, but I actually thought the atmosphere in the first half was decent. Although I agree with the argument of the supporters 'lifting' the team, that insipid performance really drained the energy yesterday - I don't recall many games where at (only) 2-0 down I felt devoid of any hope. That's a problem.

Well you've inadvertently hit the nail on the head there.

Wow, you sound slightly unhinged. You said he was one of our best players vs Watford, and I argued he wasn't, while acknowledging that the entire team was bad.

Oh my god, how can anyone genuinely think this?! There might be mitigating circumstances for why he was anonymous/terrible, his performance doesn't necessarily mean that he won't ever be good either as AM or somewhere else, and it's true that the entire team were bad, but his contribution was nevertheless pathetic.

That's a fair criticism, but given that Redmond also does that and has recently been poor, I'm not sure Boufal could be do any worse. It's also entirely possible Redmond will play well tomorrow, because he has done on occasion, mainly Jan-Mar last season. But on current form, I'm willing to see what Boufal can do with a run of games.

No, but beavis17 was implying that DJ Toast wanted to replace Redmond with someone "sideways" thinking. Boufal wouldn't be classed as that.

Boufal?

Clearly, you're right I was skim reading it and then I came across the "how it works - in detail" section, and in that passage it doesn't mention expected goals anywhere, just an example of goals for/against. I wrongly assumed that "in detail" meant it would include the full extent of the calculation, rather than simplifying it!

Interesting as a quick read but not particularly insightful once you've read how it's calculated. I thought it was going to be a comprehensive statistical analysis of their performance. Instead it's just whether we scored more than the opposition while they were on the pitch. So if a player was on the pitch for the first half, covered every blade of grass, made two goalline clearances, set up 5 goalscoring opportunities and won a penalty, then subbed (due to injury, ha) but it was 0-1 at HT and 2-1 at FT, his contribution would be a negative one. Hmmmm.

I think attacking midfielders/wingers are prime candidates for subsitution though. Either the game isn't really going for them, so the manager tries a different attacking player, or the team are winning and the talented-but-lazy tiring AM can be replaced with a more defensive minded player to shore things up. It might be a bit odd if they get subbed EVERY game, but you'd expect one of these scenarios to arise over a 4 game period. I expect Gabbiadini and Tadic have similar statistics, as do similar players at other clubs.

Hmmmm not sure about that. Pellegrino has stuck with the same team every game, except replacing JWP with Lemina when he joined. That strikes me as someone who at least thinks they know their best team. That may change in due course, given recent performances and new players joining, but up to now it certainly does look like Pellegrino knows his best team - even if the rest of us don't agree with it! And Puel did know his strongest side, he just rotated a lot. The only time there was a noticeable change in our strongest line up was when JWP went to the right and swapped with Tadic, and that worked well for a while.

Quite! Although actually I think he's quite strong in one-on-one situations... To be honest, although it appears from my comments that I'm backing the Yoshida "horse", I can see the argument for Stephens too. I just don't think the logic of his argument against Yoshida stood up. It may also depend on the defensive partner. I'd be happier putting Stephens alongside van Dijk than Hoedt, because apparently (obv we will see) Hoedt isn't the quickest across the ground, in which case we probably need Yoshida alongside him, as he is quicker than Stephens.

So you're taking 'the last 5 years' to assess Yoshida - who joined as a 24 year old and over recent seasons only managed the occasional game, sometimes not even at CB, while at the same time acknolwedging the argument that CBs need games... haven't you just explained why Yoshida struggled before but is now looking like a decent player? I'm not saying there isn't merit in the argument to give Stephens game time, especially alongside someone else, but for the last year, Yoshida has demonstrated that he is more than a capable back up (several MoM performances as well), and to ignore that in favour of his occasional appearances in prior years seems odd.