Post-Match Reaction: SAINTS 3-0 Norwich City

[Dark Munster]

Cheers guys so slighty worse than last season then but not a million miles off. Hopefully yesterday will kick start our season.

Yes, but after 11 games we were W8 D1 L2

 

I suspect we may be a million miles off that pace this time.

 

The good news is we had a shitty second half to the season, so we'll have time to catch up then.

[John Boy Saint]

How is a different game relevant here ?

I assume you watched the game yet choose to not offer any comment contrary to my opinion ?

 

Unless it seems that you didn't watch the game so your opinion is based on nothing .

 

The happy clappy section of this forum want to believe we have turned a corner but the only reason we were able to dominate to this extent was due to the extra space . Norwich didn't know how to react at losing a player so early and pretty much played with no game plan .

 

A better test will be West Brom . We have improved a touch but our defence ( our weakest since promotion ) was untested by Norwich.

Tadic was effective because Norwich stood off him , same as Prowse . JRod could shoot on sight because Norwich were poor and stood off him .

 

Its way too early to think we have turned any corner or the ridiculous statement of ' our season starts now ' . Lets just see what happens in the next game and go from there .

Oooo-errrr!

 

I was at the game too with a very good view of the whole field, just as doddisalegend said we were better than Norwich from the off.

When they went down to 10 men, Hoolihan was sacrificed and a defender brought in to plug the gap in defence, so the game plan from them became play for the draw and hope to hit us on the break now and again with the pace of Redmond and Jerome, which has been our soft underbelly in the Newcastle and Everton games from our own corners especially. The thing with Norwich is many of those players have been together for while so they know each other's game, and whilst they are not the household names of the big teams they do work as a unit which is often as effective and solid as a team of Millionaire players.

 

Managers always talk about playing against 10 men is often more difficult than 11, just look at the mighty Barcelona (who at times will make most football fans drool with their style of play) v Chelsea in the CL semi, Chelsea lose Terry, an influential player to them, through stupidity and Chelsea dug in to hold on against a team with players capable of opening up any defence in the blink of an eye. As I said in my initial reply, on the same weekend Stoke went down to 9 men with a half and a bit to play Tony Pullis who is a ruthless manager decided to go for it but Stoke dug in and kept the loss down to only 1-0 and not the avalanche of goals they should have conceded.

 

I have watched enough Saints games in person over the past 30+ years to know how adept we are at blowing a chance when the odds are stacked handsomely in our favour, add to this our less than swashbuckling performances so far this season and faffing about in the final 3rd. Without doubt on Sunday the players had space to shine a little more than they possibly had of if it had been 11 v 11, and they hadn't taken off the tenacious Hoolihan but they had a full compliment of defenders on the pitch protecting what we have been shy of hitting the back of this season, but still Saints had to get through a fully manned defence and one slightly more determined having lost a team mate.

 

I think anyone who thinks we have turned a corner after 4 games and an indifferent start, by beating a 10 Man Norwich is indeed living in cloud cuckoo land, but to say that our players only shone all over the park just because they were missing a midfielder is a bit negative, which was my point. It would have been interesting to hear your thoughts if Ruddy hadn't saved that JWP free kick in the first minute, and at 1-0 down Norwich had gone down to 10 in the same circumstances, and we had gone on to batter them.

 

Just as an aside a few numpties are back on Yoshida slagging, especially when he had the ball in acres of space and Jerome sprinted in Maya's blind spot to nick it off him, if you went to most other grounds in the land the home side fans would have screamed Man On! as one. We as fans just sat and let Jerome sneak up on him without squeaking a peep.

[kermitsaint]

Except I was at the game and it was one way traffic even before the sending off we were much better than Norwich.

We were better yes . We started very well but its naive to assume we would have played the entire game that same way . We have often struggled to contain aggressive teams due to our defensive fragility.