Swansea 1-2 Saints - Match Thread

[Dr Who?]

So many bed wetters on here. A slightly off 45 minutes and 0-1 down at half time and the majority are throwing their toys out the pram. Gets a grip lads! It is likely to be the playoffs and I am still trying to work out how we got this high up the table. Try and enjoy it everyone, it does not get much better… but it could! 🙌 

[Dr Who?]

4 hours ago, Badger said:

Exactly 

Who can forget the great 1-1 at home to Rotherham? 

We have drawn with some dross though. WBA, Charlton and the Skates! Those extra 2 at home to Charlton and 2 at Farton, would have been massive… but swings and roundabouts with late goals to win games. 

[macca155]

2 hours ago, saintant said:

Yeah, just seen it in the highlights. Archer did well to keep his cool and made sure he got a good connection. Most would have mishit that but he smashed it goalwards so fair play to him because that's a big win.

That is his key skill, he shoots on site, hard and fast. That was his trademark at Villa and Middlesbrough. It's what sets a Prem level striker apart from the journeymen like Armstrong.

The problem is he rarely gets himself into a position to do it. Ings was similar but he did have that edge.

I've always rated him and I'm pleased he's finally finding some form. Doesn't nullify some pretty inept performances though, although he probably wasn't feeling the love from previous bosses. Tonda really is a wizard with players.

If we'd kept Dom Ballard, goodness knows what Tonda would have done with him.

[Lighthouse]

4 hours ago, hypochondriac said:

Worth remembering that our last unbeaten run contained about a billion draws. This one has had three.

18 wins and 7 draws (6 of which were away games) compared to 15 wins and 4 draws.

[Stud mark of doom]

14 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

18 wins and 7 draws (6 of which were away games) compared to 15 wins and 4 draws.

Are you counting the Leicester cup match as a draw, coz we only won in extra time? I make it 16 wins and only 3 draws. 
 

it does feel much different to last time when almost one in three were draws. In this run the small number of draws were towards the start of the run and it has just been win after win relentlessly recently. 

Edited 13 hours ago by Stud mark of doom

[Lighthouse]

13 minutes ago, Stud mark of doom said:

Are you counting the Leicester cup match as a draw, coz we only won in extra time? I make it 16 wins and only 3 draws. 
 

it does feel much different to last time when almost one in three were draws. In this run the small number of draws were towards the start of the run and it has just been win after win relentlessly recently. 

Leicester was officially a draw and we won after e.t. Two years ago we drew against Watford in the cup and won the replay.

They are/were both fantastic achievements and better than any run Adkins (whose tenure I absolutely loved) managed in the Championship. As far as I’m concerned both were great times to be a Saints fan and I see no reason to downplay either.

[Stud mark of doom]

No doubting they were/are both fantastic runs. I’d actually checked the number of draws in each myself last week as this one “felt” better. I was surprised that the number of draws last time wasn’t higher.

i think one key difference is that this time we have shot right up the league, gaining points on everyone.

Last time we had another three teams doing similarly, that we couldn’t quite catch, even though (if memory serves) we were the only one going unbeaten. They were all getting similar points.
 

Definitely agree both great runs, of course. 

Edited 4 hours ago by Stud mark of doom

[trousers]

29 minutes ago, Stud mark of doom said:

i think one key difference is that this time we have shot right up the league, gaining points on everyone.

Last time we had another three teams doing similarly, that we couldn’t quite catch, even though (if memory serves) we were the only one going unbeaten. They weee all getting similar points.

Yep... That's what makes this run feel better... It's had a significant effect on our league position, whereas last time it didn't. 

As good as any unbeaten run is, I'm sure Coventry fans aren't too fussed that they won't be winning the 'unbeaten run trophy' this season... 

[Sheaf Saint]

24 minutes ago, trousers said:

Yep... That's what makes this run feel better... It's had a significant effect on our league position, whereas last time it didn't. 

As good as any unbeaten run is, I'm sure Coventry fans aren't too fussed that they won't be winning the 'unbeaten run trophy' this season... 

Agreed. Also, I remember feeling that we weren't playing particularly well in some of those games last time round, and got away with it a bit on a few occasions. Whereas the closest we have come to ending the current run was away at WBA. I can't remember another game since this run began where I found myself genuinely believing we were going to lose.

The 2023/24 run didn't include an away win at the league leaders either. Leicester absolutely humiliated us both times we played them that season, and gave us a taste of what was to come if we were to get promoted and attempt to play Russball in the PL. I don't get that sense this time round because we have a pragmatic rather than a dogmatic manager now and I believe we would be much more competitive in the PL if we get there for next season. Which leads me to my final point...

The 2023/24 run didn't include an FA cup win against the team top of the PL 😉

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Sheaf Saint

[Stud mark of doom]

10 minutes ago, Sheaf Saint said:

Agreed. Also, I remember feeling that we weren't playing particularly well in some of those games last time round, and got away with it a bit on a few occasions. Whereas the closest we have come to ending the current run was away at WBA. I can't remember another game since this run began where I found myself genuinely believing we were going to lose.

I hate to admit it, but I thought we might lose when we were 3 down at half time against Leicester. 

[Hawkswood]

10 minutes ago, Stud mark of doom said:

I hate to admit it, but I thought we might lose when we were 3 down at half time against Leicester. 

Fucking bedwetters 

 

😉

[Sheaf Saint]

10 minutes ago, Stud mark of doom said:

I hate to admit it, but I thought we might lose when we were 3 down at half time against Leicester. 

Ah yeah, fair enough. It wasn't looking good at HT admittedly, but as soon as we got one back you could just see how fragile and likely to concede more they were. And from that point on I was confident we could at least get ourselves level (and lumped a fiver on it).

[Football Special]

31 minutes ago, Stud mark of doom said:

I hate to admit it, but I thought we might lose when we were 3 down at half time against Leicester. 

Funny old game. 3 down at Leicester early on, home fans joyous singing "Southampton, its happened again" 

They're as good as down now, players and fans facing up swearing at each other,about time those players showed a bit of pride to earn a move elsewhere- starting with Millwall at home on Friday night would be nice 

[Badger]

10 hours ago, Dr Who? said:

We have drawn with some dross though. WBA, Charlton and the Skates! Those extra 2 at home to Charlton and 2 at Farton, would have been massive… but swings and roundabouts with late goals to win games. 

We’re not going to win every game, and the WBA was a below par performance that we salvaged something from.

Skates.. shame we didn’t win, but it’s a grudge match and derby so form goes out the window. And the fixture was shortly after a poor run of form. The draw was accepted by most after the game.

Charlton - I came away from that game reasonably impressed by the performance and effort put in. A complete contrast to the feeling after Rotherham at home, and Huddersfield away. 

 

[goodymatt]

Skates - equalised with a handball. It was a tight game but we limited them to no big chances other than their illegal goal. Armstrong missing the 1v1.

Charlton - deflected shot to steal a point. You could argue we didn’t quite do enough on day

WBA - we got away with it with a looping header at the death.

We have gone on to win EVERY other game in a 19 game unbeaten run. 8 wins in a row in all comps. It’s been incredible!

[saintant]

10 hours ago, Lighthouse said:

18 wins and 7 draws (6 of which were away games) compared to 15 wins and 4 draws.

Tonda has a better win ratio and includes matches against 2 Prem clubs.

Edited 2 hours ago by saintant

[Mboto Gorge]

Tonda > Lego

[Sheaf Saint]

4 minutes ago, goodymatt said:

8 wins in a row in all comps. 

The only previous time we achieved that, Queen Victoria was still on the throne and aeroplanes didn't yet exist.

[Mr X]

16 hours ago, for_heaven's_Saint said:

Get in there! Thought Jander, Manning and Matsuki were good today. Leo didn’t have his best game but still gets an assist and did the flick for Jander’s cross for the winner. 
 

Also think it was good management from Tonda to take Downes off at HT. He was going to get sent off. 

Why is Downes such a hot head? The slightest thing that goes against him he loses the plot

[austsaint]

40 minutes ago, Mboto Gorge said:

Tonda > Lego

On every level.

[trousers]

41 minutes ago, Mboto Gorge said:

Tonda > Lego

 

Just now, austsaint said:

On every level.

I think you'd struggle to build Thunderbird 3 out of Tonda...

[Football Special]

41 minutes ago, Sheaf Saint said:

The only previous time we achieved that, Queen Victoria was still on the throne and aeroplanes didn't yet exist.

I missed some of these stats, so we've equalled a record league straight wins i think, how many more do we need to set a new record? Nice to have some positive record breakers after last seasons negative ones 

[S-Clarke]

That's our toughest remaining away game out of the way, and we managed to win it from a position that we'd have lost 9/10 6 months ago. It wasn't perfect and we struggled to get going in the 1st half, but we still kept them at bay and didn't allow them to do too much damage even though they somewhat had our number. I thought Vipotnik was marshalled superbly, bar the flick on he got at the far post, in play he was really well nullified I think. Wood did a good job on him and that is exactly how you use a squad - chose players based on attributes for specific reasons, don't change the shape, just slot one in and one out - perfect. Common sense.

The second half was much better, I think Swansea tired a bit - and I think one of the other big takeaways from the last 3 or 4 months has been our fitness over the course of 90, we seem to have teams on the ropes at the end. Given the amount of games we've played and the fixture pileup, I think our sports science/physios and management are dealing with the squad as well as you could ever dream of.

I thought Stewart struggled yesterday to really impose himself, I love Larin as he injects so much energy and running when he comes on. He's a perfect number 9 in that respect. He's not static, he moves everywhere and you can anchor an entire attack around him.

There are a few differences with this team that we haven't seen in many years, a lot of it comes down to a common sense approach to football - which isn't too common in football nowadays.

1 - A GK who is a GK

2 - A focal point to build an attack around

3 - Skilful and energic players in and around the 9 to pickup the bits and pieces 

4 - Playing players in their natural positions and allowing partnerships to form.

5 - Being purposeful every time you have the ball and not recycling it for 10 mins just 'because'. 

6 - Hitting it long when needed, not farting around keeping the ball at the back all the time - even when it's not safe.

7 - Players having clear instructions about how to mark, when to press, where to be available on the pitch.

Sometimes it's the most obvious things that can make it all click, but we've had years of managers and coaches trying to do clever bollocks stuff - but I always point back to Adkins and Koeman to a degree, we never had what I'd call a defined 'philosophy' or 'style' (like Martin for e.g.), but we just had good players, in their right positions and a common sense manager. I'm not trying to belittle Eckert at all, I think it goes to show that managers who have this sort of 'view' of football are few are far between these days - there are way too many Rosineiors and Martins. Football needs more Eckerts.

[Toadhall Saint]

1 hour ago, trousers said:

 

I think you'd struggle to build Thunderbird 3 out of Tonda...

Yep and you fail spectacularly building a prem side with Lego.

Edited 49 minutes ago by Toadhall Saint

[Baird of the land]

That wood pullback in the box (non penalty) was a huge moment.

[for_heaven's_Saint]

2 hours ago, Mr X said:

Why is Downes such a hot head? The slightest thing that goes against him he loses the plot

Yeah it can be quite frustrating but I think without having that side to him he wouldn’t have the aggression that he plays with. Don’t think you can separate the two so he’s always going to get in a few scraps. 
 

The good news is he only played 45mins, we still won and he’s fresher and ready to go for Tuesday. 

[Toussaint]

2 hours ago, Mr X said:

Why is Downes such a hot head? The slightest thing that goes against him he loses the plot

It’s what makes him what he is, and long may it continue. It’s refreshing in a game which is now dominated by characterless clones. 

[Football Special]

5 minutes ago, for_heaven's_Saint said:

Yeah it can be quite frustrating but I think without having that side to him he wouldn’t have the aggression that he plays with. Don’t think you can separate the two so he’s always going to get in a few scraps. 
 

The good news is he only played 45mins, we still won and he’s fresher and ready to go for Tuesday. 

How many more yellows for another suspension?