The Players

[The Wyvern]

Might not count for much but I do recall Alfie House a few weeks ago on the Total Saints Podcast speaking of Manning as a good bloke. Was just off the cuff and might mean nothing, but he’s not referenced other players in the same way. Manning’s issue is he’s just not a very good defender. 

[S-Clarke]

14 hours ago, Fabrice29 said:

This is just absolute nonsense again. Not only did those 4 get picked pretty regularly under Juric (and since) but Downes was playing with a couple of weeks of the end of January. It’s just weird narrative building that doesn’t really have any basis to it. If these were a problem because they liked RM then one of the 3 managers we’ve had since might have looked to have dropped, sold or called them out by now. And given only Stephen’s doesn’t get into the team, and we can put that down him not being good enough then we can call this theory the utter shite it appears to be I think. 

These 4 were pretty central to the team being promoted last time and probably wouldn’t mind the club getting to those standards again one day. 

Are you conveniently forgetting the strop Downes performed in January, and pretty much refused to play for Juric - which he kind of said in as many words. 

I wouldn't say Stephens was central to us getting promoted, he was a squad player for the majority of the season as Bednarek and THB owned the CB spots. 

Downes/THB/Stephens were not 'nailed on' for Still, Downes is pretty much a bench player (if he's not ill).

You do spout some nonsense to anyone who dares go against the club narrative. 

[sockeye]

1 minute ago, S-Clarke said:

I wouldn't say Stephens was central to us getting promoted, he was a squad player for the majority of the season as Bednarek and THB owned the CB spots. 

IIRC the lauded unbeaten run started with Stephens getting injured too.

[Saint Fan CaM]

6 hours ago, Tamesaint said:

I reckon the match at Hull caused Still to lose the dressing room. Downes already had an "anti anyone except RM"  club going before then and Archer joined it after being dropped for DD for that game. DD then missed a really good chance and didn't cover himself in glory. 

Still rang the changes after Hull. Everyone on Saintsweb seemed to support the dropping of Baz, Mads, THB and Stephens but I bet this upset the egos of these delicate flowers. All it then took were some crazy substitions at Derby and at Blackburn and the dressing room would be singing "you don't know what you 're doing". 

God knows how a new manager sorts this out but I think the line up at QPR is going to be interesting. 

 

 

 

 

A very insightful post. As it happens I don’t think there is any single one cause for the decline in performances, but ‘player power’ and dressing room cliques probably contribute. There are players in and around the first team who operated under the shield of RM and his possession based slow football - they are being found out by the new managers coming in and they probably don’t like it. Still really was on a hiding to nothing and nowhere near strong enough to sort out the cultural, performance, fitness and mentality issues that the squad has endured and I would suggest even new players have been sadly tainted such is the influence of the old brigade.

[Fabrice29]

1 hour ago, S-Clarke said:

Are you conveniently forgetting the strop Downes performed in January, and pretty much refused to play for Juric - which he kind of said in as many words. 

I wouldn't say Stephens was central to us getting promoted, he was a squad player for the majority of the season as Bednarek and THB owned the CB spots. 

Downes/THB/Stephens were not 'nailed on' for Still, Downes is pretty much a bench player (if he's not ill).

You do spout some nonsense to anyone who dares go against the club narrative. 

Downes was out of 3 matches during that period. He was back into the starting line up within 2 weeks. Juric had every opportunity to not call him back if he didn’t feel it was warranted or his was as big as an issue as you would make out. Juric himself described it as a ‘little’ problem. 

I think Stephen’s was regularly sighted as one of the few players with any leadership skills at all the year we went up so the idea of him not being central to something he was club captain of feels a bit odd to me.  
 

And nobody said anything about ‘nailed on’ so don’t stick it in quote marks or judge things by a narrative you’ve started yourself ffs 🤣 But given you start the game with 11 players and Stephens and THB are in the top 10 players for minutes this season, I’d say once again, they’ve played a big part this season. 

Then again, facts and context might just be club narrative 🤣

Edited 1 hour ago by Fabrice29

[Wurzel]

3 hours ago, The Wyvern said:

If any English club had a similar policy they would be derided as “little Englanders”. I think it would be great and there would be a far better bond between players and supporters of a team of our own. 

Yorkshire County Cricket Club managed it for years

[Saint86]

18 hours ago, skintsaint said:

AA seems part of the bad core of the group if this is true.

He directly calls out bad attitude amongst the players and that makes him part of the bad ones? Eh? 

[Sidney Fudpucker the 3rd]

The way I view the players is that they'd walk into any other team in this league. They're underperforming because of the way they've been managed.
The fact that Bree and Smallbone are winning MOTM awards since leaving says it all. 

[skintsaint]

31 minutes ago, Saint86 said:

He directly calls out bad attitude amongst the players and that makes him part of the bad ones? Eh? 

Lesson learnt, never make a comment before reading the article, I based my comment on another comment 😅