Will Still

[benjii]

3 hours ago, Badger said:

This is bollocks isn’t it ? Still has had since July to iron out some of the “scar tissue” left by Lego. And to exorcise the demons of passing it out by the GK and backs. 

It's complete bollocks. Out of the starting XI yesterday:

- Macca: played a handful of games under Martin but was never a long term first choice and it's a tiny part of a long career.

- Jelert: never met RM.

- Edwards: never played under RM, I think.

- Wood: barely played under RM.

- THB: yep, that's one.

- Welly: played about 5 or 10 games under RM?

- Charles: hardly played under RM.

- Jander: never met RM.

- Scienza: ditto.

- Armstrong: yep.

- Archer: barely played under RM.

 

It's cowardly rubbish to blame Martin.

[Toussaint]

I just don’t think SR will ever appoint a “my way or the highway” type manager. They want a coach that will do what he’s told by Spors and potentially Rasmus still has something to say, either way it’s the SR way.
 

So we have to employ a malleable “coach” who’s grateful to have a relatively big job. We are now in a situation where Still, Spors and  Rasmus are all football “theorists”, who have never played the professional game. We can’t be surprised that we find ourselves in the situation we are. I don’t care if Still stays or goes, the “coach” is only one part of the problem. 

[saintant]

5 hours ago, Saint_clark said:

I'm honestly shocked at how fast so many people on here have turned against Still. I see a lot of steady improvement in this side game on game. I don't want to be chopping the manager every 10 games. 

Agree entirely. We played some very good football yesterday and there are clear signs that Still is getting a tune out of the squad. If we'd had a half decent big powerful centre forward playing yesterday we'd surely have claimed all three points and there would have been far less criticism on here. The simple fact is that we did not win because we missed some relatively easy chances - nothing Will Still can do about that. A good performance other than putting the ball in the net.

[Smirking_Saint]

33 minutes ago, Toussaint said:

I just don’t think SR will ever appoint a “my way or the highway” type manager. They want a coach that will do what he’s told by Spors and potentially Rasmus still has something to say, either way it’s the SR way.
 

So we have to employ a malleable “coach” who’s grateful to have a relatively big job. We are now in a situation where Still, Spors and  Rasmus are all football “theorists”, who have never played the professional game. We can’t be surprised that we find ourselves in the situation we are. I don’t care if Still stays or goes, the “coach” is only one part of the problem. 

I see this sort of crap bandied about too much and its complete shite

Still isn’t malleable as far as tactics go, Martin certainly wasn’t

Its just bollocks

Still’s failings are Still’s failings, nothing more

[Wade Garrett]

1 hour ago, Toussaint said:

I just don’t think SR will ever appoint a “my way or the highway” type manager. They want a coach that will do what he’s told by Spors and potentially Rasmus still has something to say, either way it’s the SR way.
 

So we have to employ a malleable “coach” who’s grateful to have a relatively big job. We are now in a situation where Still, Spors and  Rasmus are all football “theorists”, who have never played the professional game. We can’t be surprised that we find ourselves in the situation we are. I don’t care if Still stays or goes, the “coach” is only one part of the problem. 

Dragan is an onion for letting these charlatans piss his money up the wall.

[Lighthouse]

1 hour ago, Toussaint said:

I just don’t think SR will ever appoint a “my way or the highway” type manager. They want a coach that will do what he’s told by Spors and potentially Rasmus still has something to say, either way it’s the SR way.
 

So we have to employ a malleable “coach” who’s grateful to have a relatively big job. We are now in a situation where Still, Spors and  Rasmus are all football “theorists”, who have never played the professional game. We can’t be surprised that we find ourselves in the situation we are. I don’t care if Still stays or goes, the “coach” is only one part of the problem. 

That’s literally the reason everyone wanted Martin sacked.

[Badger]

35 minutes ago, Smirking_Saint said:

I see this sort of crap bandied about too much and its complete shite

Still isn’t malleable as far as tactics go, Martin certainly wasn’t

Its just bollocks

Still’s failings are Still’s failings, nothing more

Wasn’t Martin just following the template laid down by Wilcox ? 

[Toussaint]

3 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

That’s literally the reason everyone wanted Martin sacked.

 “possession possession possession” was the mantra then. 

[The Wyvern]

40 minutes ago, Wade Garrett said:

Dragan is an onion for letting these charlatans piss his money up the wall.

Just makes me wonder, someone like Solak who’s done what he’s done, from that part of the world, you’d think he’d be the last person to fall for all this BS. 

[Weston Super Saint]

1 hour ago, Toussaint said:

 “possession possession possession” was the mantra then. 

Which was "His" way.

[Lord Duckhunter]

2 hours ago, saintant said:

If we'd had a half decent big powerful centre forward playing yesterday we'd surely have claimed all three points and there would have been far less criticism on here

If Portsmouth had a better centre forward, they’d have beaten us. It’s so easy to hide his failings behind other excuses. We had it last year, it was so hard for a promoted team to stay up (how’s that line going). With our wage bill, our squad, we should be higher, that’s on the manager, nobody else…

Edited yesterday at 17:58 by Lord Duckhunter

[Toussaint]

22 minutes ago, Weston Super Saint said:

Which was "His" way.

Was it not the Wilcox thing, is that not why he recruited Martin and was the quoted as saying that was the way he wanted Man Utd to play? 

[benjii]

3 hours ago, saintant said:

Agree entirely. We played some very good football yesterday and there are clear signs that Still is getting a tune out of the squad. If we'd had a half decent big powerful centre forward playing yesterday we'd surely have claimed all three points and there would have been far less criticism on here. The simple fact is that we did not win because we missed some relatively easy chances - nothing Will Still can do about that. A good performance other than putting the ball in the net.

How many good chances did we have in the second half? I can think of one.

[Smirking_Saint]

2 hours ago, Badger said:

Wasn’t Martin just following the template laid down by Wilcox ? 

No.. Martin was appointed because his philosophy matched Wilcox’

[Jack]

3 hours ago, saintant said:

Agree entirely. We played some very good football yesterday and there are clear signs that Still is getting a tune out of the squad. If we'd had a half decent big powerful centre forward playing yesterday we'd surely have claimed all three points and there would have been far less criticism on here. The simple fact is that we did not win because we missed some relatively easy chances - nothing Will Still can do about that. A good performance other than putting the ball in the net.

Problem is we don’t have a half decent big powerful centre forward, so there’s no point playing your wing backs and fizzing in crosses 6’5 in the air for nobody to get on the end of. Surely it’s the manager’s job to realise your approach isn’t working and change it. Our only threat was Scienza getting on the ball and running at them, surely we’d have been better off getting either our new skilful 10 and/or new skilful winger on the pitch to try and create something through the lines, rather than leaving 5 defenders on the pitch with nothing to do. 
 

Second half was dross and we let the game pass us by. Unbelievable that we didn’t change anything. 2 wins from 10 - just squeaking past newly promoted Wrexham who are shit, and Sheff Utd who are joint bottom. Awful stuff. 

[The Kraken]

3 hours ago, saintant said:

We played some very good football yesterday and there are clear signs that Still is getting a tune out of the squad.

Not all that clear to me.

We played great for 20 minutes before half time. I found most of the rest of the game extremely frustrating to watch. This squad is performing far, far under the sum of its parts. And I don’t see much evidence that Still can coach them into something better.

This season is such a massive advantage for a relegated side. No matter how much effing scar tissue we’ve supposedly got.  Still is wasting the squad he’s got, not getting anything out of them. In fact he’s neglecting the talent he has got.

I can’t go along with your cheerleading whatsoever I’m afraid.

[RedArmy]

46 minutes ago, Smirking_Saint said:

No.. Martin was appointed because his philosophy matched Wilcox’

That’s the same thing. 

[Lighthouse]

There’s a difference between appointing someone who matches your philosophy and appointing a yes man.

[StrangelyBrown]

2 hours ago, benjii said:

How many good chances did we have in the second half? I can think of one.

At least 2: jander's horror miss and Scienza chipping the keeper.

[saintant]

3 hours ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

If Portsmouth had a better centre forward, they’d have beaten us. It’s so easy to hide his failings behind other excuses. We had it last year, it was so hard for a promoted team to stay up (how’s that line going). With our wage bill, our squad, we should be higher, that’s on the manager, nobody else…

Absolute bullshit.

[saintant]

2 hours ago, benjii said:

How many good chances did we have in the second half? I can think of one.

How about chances in the first half? Or don't they count?

[sadoldgit]

5 minutes ago, saintant said:

How about chances in the first half? Or don't they count?

Not to mention hitting the post and not getting the rebound home as it bounced along the line in the second half. We had enough chances to win the game comfortably during the game. Charles also burst through and missed a good chance in the second half.

[Danwulfe]

I'm really not keen on Will Still. He needs FM26 to drop so he can come up with a gameplan.

At the moment it's all about blaming everything else other than taking responsbility. That said, it's not his fault we missed the sitters.

[Wade Garrett]

8 hours ago, saintant said:

How about chances in the first half? Or don't they count?

No they don’t count because we didn’t score any goals.

[Killers Knee]

12 hours ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

With our wage bill, our squad, we should be higher, that’s on the manager, nobody else…

Or, we could be simply overpaying crap players.

[CB Fry]

9 hours ago, saintant said:

How about chances in the first half? Or don't they count?

Your going overboard about a nil nil draw against a bottom third Championship team is getting embarrassing.

Swansea were absolute dogshit and we still couldn't beat them with one of the top 3 best resourced squads in the league.

2 wins in 10 matches (1 at home) is fucking dreadful.

[Charlie Wayman]

8 hours ago, Danwulfe said:

I'm really not keen on Will Still. He needs FM26 to drop so he can come up with a gameplan.

At the moment it's all about blaming everything else other than taking responsbility. That said, it's not his fault we missed the sitters.

Of couse it is! Strikers out of position, caught on their heels or panicking when the ball arrives is about mental attitude, as much the responsibility of Still as physical coaching.

Where are the sports psychologists in his set-up if he doesn't understand the need??

Edited 15 hours ago by Charlie Wayman

[ally_uk]

Underwhelmed. Still has all the charisma and enthusiasm of a wet dishcloth.

This five-at-the-back nonsense — I get it, we’re supposed to be more solid defensively. But surely against “weaker” opposition, we can take the shackles off and actually go for it? 

The signing of Downs still baffles me.

And if we extend Ross Stewart’s contract… we’re absolute tits.

That lad in the under-21s keeps banging them in — I’d rather see him on the bench than Downs. What’s the harm in giving him ten minutes?

Matsuki can’t even get a look in. Thought he was one of the few bright sparks in preseason — even scored a banger against Norwich.

We’re not getting promoted this season.

I'd be tempted to explore the loan market now to bring in a centre forward. 

[Dman]

Rohl back in the running for Rangers job after Muscat (and Gerrard) turned them down. 

If we let Rohl go into Rangers, when he was clearly our first choice and its clear that Still isn't cut out for it, then I have to question the sanity of this club.

[Dman]

10 hours ago, saintant said:

How about chances in the first half? Or don't they count?

Of course they count, but lets be honest, they were created through the quality of Scienza - Not due to any real tactical set up or game plan. 

Essentially, it was a case of pass the ball to Scienza and hope for the best. The other 10 out there still looked as clueless as they did in every other game we've played this season. 

[Dman]

34 minutes ago, CB Fry said:

Your going overboard about a nil nil draw against a bottom third Championship team is getting embarrassing.

Swansea were absolute dogshit and we still couldn't beat them with one of the top 3 best resourced squads in the league.

2 wins in 10 matches (1 at home) is fucking dreadful.

When you actually reflect on those wins, its even worse. Scraped past wrexham and beat an incredibly poor (who everyone has been beating) Sheff Utd, which on another day could have easily been a draw - which you'd argue on balance would have been a fair result. 

I don't think it can be understated at how poor this season has been to date. 

[musesaint]

THB is a massive part of Saints reverting to Russball when we’re under a bit of pressure. He seems programmed to backwards and sideways passing and can’t break free of that. The very rare times he passed a ball forward on Saturday he either overhit it straight off the pitch or passed it directly to the opposition. Not sure what’s happened to him, even allowing for the disruption caused by his pre season injury. 

[Willo of Whiteley]

I wouldn’t be opposed to not going up this season and building on what we have.

We still have two years of parachute payments after this one so financially should be in a better position to blow teams out the water.

It would be (should be) mental for us not to be automatics this year given how much better our squad is (in theory) to the 99% of the teams in this league but I honestly don’t care.

[Dman]

4 minutes ago, Willo of Whiteley said:

I wouldn’t be opposed to not going up this season and building on what we have.

We still have two years of parachute payments after this one so financially should be in a better position to blow teams out the water.

It would be (should be) mental for us not to be automatics this year given how much better our squad is (in theory) to the 99% of the teams in this league but I honestly don’t care.

Apart from the 3 teams that come down this season. Every season we stay down it gets harder. 

If we don't go up within the next 2 years, we become a Swansea / Stoke etc. 

We should be doing absolutely everything we can to get promotion this year. 

[Miltonaggro]

39 minutes ago, Dman said:

Apart from the 3 teams that come down this season. Every season we stay down it gets harder. 

If we don't go up within the next 2 years, we become a Swansea / Stoke etc. 

We should be doing absolutely everything we can to get promotion this year. 

And Solak should be banging heads together on this. 

[danjosaint]

1 hour ago, Dman said:

Apart from the 3 teams that come down this season. Every season we stay down it gets harder. 

If we don't go up within the next 2 years, we become a Swansea / Stoke etc. 

We should be doing absolutely everything we can to get promotion this year. 

And there's a chance 2 more established clubs could come down this season if promoted ones keep picking up points as they're doing 

[East Kent Saint]

So Potter and Dyche out of the running to take over at Saints !

[hypochondriac]

1 hour ago, Dman said:

Apart from the 3 teams that come down this season. Every season we stay down it gets harder. 

If we don't go up within the next 2 years, we become a Swansea / Stoke etc. 

We should be doing absolutely everything we can to get promotion this year. 

Indeed. Lets say hypothetically Wolves and West Ham are two of the teams who go down. It would be incredibly difficult to compete with the likes of them, particularly when we will be losing Charles, probably Downes, maybe Robinson. We want to be pushing for promotion ASAP. Having a year to build is something people say in hindsight after you've done a Leeds and it's all worked out. It doesn't always work like that. Had Leeds not gone up last year they would be fucked. 

[benjii]

We've had since about January to build for this season.

Pitiful effort so far.

 

[Bakovnetski]

I realise that this is with the benefit of hindsight but, with Spor's apparent knowledge of the German game, how come we ended up with Still rather than Gerhard Struber at Bristol City? He may have been sacked with 2 games to go at Koln in div 2 but they did go on to win the title.

https://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/bristol-city/news/bristol-city-confirm-well-travelled-austrian-as-head-coach-on-long-term-contract_575838.html

Already has double the number of wins out of the first 10 games.

[saintant]

1 hour ago, East Kent Saint said:

So Potter and Dyche out of the running to take over at Saints !

Is there a vacancy?

[saintant]

4 hours ago, CB Fry said:

Your going overboard about a nil nil draw against a bottom third Championship team is getting embarrassing.

Swansea were absolute dogshit and we still couldn't beat them with one of the top 3 best resourced squads in the league.

2 wins in 10 matches (1 at home) is fucking dreadful.

Your going overboard about the fact we didn't beat Swansea is embarrassing. Did you watch the game? If so you must have missed all the good stuff we played leading to chance creation. The fact that we failed to convert any of those chances is the problem. We have no centre forward which is down to poor recruitment. Get a good striker and this side will start banging in the goals.

[East Kent Saint]

12 minutes ago, saintant said:

Is there a vacancy?

Rhol back in the running at Rangers !!! Don't people in Scotland watch English football ? first Martin then Rhol 😄

No there is no current vacancy but people are saying Still needs replacing .

[Lighthouse]

14 hours ago, saintant said:

Absolute bullshit.

You don’t think our squad should be higher than 16th?

[Lord Duckhunter]

23 minutes ago, saintant said:

Your going overboard about the fact we didn't beat Swansea is embarrassing. Did you watch the game? If so you must have missed all the good stuff we played leading to chance creation. The fact that we failed to convert any of those chances is the problem. We have no centre forward which is down to poor recruitment. Get a good striker and this side will start banging in the goals.

You’re taking this result in isolation. Given the nature of our 2 wins & one of our draws, our points total is about right. Anyone can pick and choose performances to reinforce their opinions, but taken as a whole this season has been fucking woeful so far. Yes, we deserved to win Saturday, but have picked up points we haven’t deserved previously. If you’re going to give merit to Weasley for Saturday’s performance, that needs to be balanced against performances where we picked up points we probably didn’t deserve 

Edited 11 hours ago by Lord Duckhunter

[Dman]

35 minutes ago, saintant said:

Your going overboard about the fact we didn't beat Swansea is embarrassing. Did you watch the game? If so you must have missed all the good stuff we played leading to chance creation. The fact that we failed to convert any of those chances is the problem. We have no centre forward which is down to poor recruitment. Get a good striker and this side will start banging in the goals.

I'll be honest, other than Scienza, I missed all of the so-called good stuff. 

I watched us struggle against Eastleigh pre-season, we looked disjointed with no real style of play. I can't say that I think we've improved on that performance. 

[CB Fry]

40 minutes ago, saintant said:

Your going overboard about the fact we didn't beat Swansea is embarrassing. Did you watch the game? If so you must have missed all the good stuff we played leading to chance creation. The fact that we failed to convert any of those chances is the problem. We have no centre forward which is down to poor recruitment. Get a good striker and this side will start banging in the goals.

I was at the game so yeah. 
 

We obviously should have scored but remember we have failed to win many times this season so we don’t know how we would have coped if we had scored. We dominated Derby and scored and guess what didn’t win. It’s a live issue that us scoring does not mean us winning.

Swansea were utterly dreadful, so an open top bus for a nil nil against them is not justified.

[saintant]

25 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

You don’t think our squad should be higher than 16th?

I didn't say that.

[saintant]

8 minutes ago, Dman said:

I'll be honest, other than Scienza, I missed all of the so-called good stuff. 

I watched us struggle against Eastleigh pre-season, we looked disjointed with no real style of play. I can't say that I think we've improved on that performance. 

Maybe take a look at the highlights.

[saintant]

23 minutes ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

You’re taking this result in isolation. Given the nature of our 2 wins & one of our draws, our points total is about right. Anyone can pick and choose performances to reinforce their opinions, but taken as a whole this season has been fucking woeful so far. Yes, we deserved to win Saturday, but have picked up points we haven’t deserved previously. If you’re going to give merit to Weasley for Saturday’s performance, that needs to be balanced against performances where we picked up points we probably didn’t deserve 

No I'm not. I'm giving my views on this game. I haven't stated we've played well all season.