I’ll start with the ugly. If you were to assess that as a one-off game then the conclusion would be “relegation performance". Not a lot, if any, positives about this game.
Disjointed from the start
Out fought
Out thought
Out muscled
We barely strung 2 passes today and our attacking players barely touched the ball in offensive areas of the field.
Mark’s out of 10
Meslier 4
Shacky 3
Dallas 2
Llorente 3
Cooper 3
Struijk 3
James 4
Klich 3
Rodrigo 1
Roberts 2
Harrison 3
Forshaw 2
However this was a one-off game that defines just 3 of an available 114 points over the season. A bad day at the office. We go away and come back next time looking to improve
Read a lot already in here with several posters now on the attack
- squad not big enough
- poor signings
- Bielsa taken us as far as he can
- poor tactics
Squad not big enough - the squad is as big as the one that took us from the bottom half of the championship to the playoffs to champions and to 9th in the Premier league. Very few premier league clubs would overcome 6 first team players that we missed today, of which 5 first choice starters. Buying football players that are better than what you already have is not as easy as folk on here think it is. There are budgets, wages and the cost of promotion was greater than a lot probably remember. Huge chunks of promotion money was lost to bonuses, more to covid and the £25m court case for JKA still lingers.
Poor signings
Too many folk writing off injured players like Koch and llorente. These were not poor signings - these players were not injury prone when signed - we have just been unlucky with them. It happens , it’s part of football , players get injured. Our signings have helped take us to 9th last season.
Bielsa
Exactly where could anyone else take us further than where Bielsa has already taken us? The fit has been perfect. Some folk need to shake their heads and remember where we were for 16 years. 4 year ago we would have craved for a side capable of challenging for the championship playoffs. Here we are now sitting in 36000’crowds enjoying top flight football.
Poor tactics
We have just had 3 seasons of glorious football that the whole footballing world were jealous of. We have still seen some glimpses of this football this season. Bielsa has no plan B and it can be frustrating no more so than today when it was completely off course. However I trust Bielsa and his methods and forever grateful for what we have achieved.
Have faith in Bielsa
Support the players - they have never walked off a field having not given their all for the shirt under bielsa. To hear folk attack players that got us promoted is awful.
We have had sticky runs before and overcome them and if the owners, management, players and supporters stick together we will again.
MOT
Reflections of the game
posted on 17/10/21
Southampton played an aggressive pressing game very well; we surrendered in too many one-on-one situations, particularly in midfield. Rodrigo was comprehensively bossed in attack while Llorente and Struijk were terrorised at the back. I have no idea why Bielsa continues to persevere with Roberts. We gave away possession far too easily when we actually had it and on those rare occasions when we did have it, we seemed only to play it back to Meslier. Harrison should have buried the only chance we had.
We were pi$$poor yesterday. Absolutely gutted and totally pi$$ed off as I thought we'd start turning this around after the Watford game.
But we must give credit to Southampton - they dominated the entire game and should really have had three or four. Redmond was excellent as was the giant centre back and the young lad from Chelsea at right back.
posted on 17/10/21
The more I read comments the more it seems many folk in here didn’t even watch the game 😆.
Fair enough folk can make general observations of how the season is going but don’t make long winded opinions on the game if you didn’t even see it.
posted on 17/10/21
Am I the only one not fussed at all? When liveroool had VVD literally 50 % of the pre-match and post match talk was build on excising them for not being at full strength. Fact we had SIX first team players out is massive for me. Confident we’ll finish middle table. Yes we were poor, but generally the games we’ve played this season we’ve done well - manu and Liverpool apart obviously.
The worry is that should Rapha, Philips, bamford and Llorente get injured for the long haul we’ll struggle - but for now think we’ll start picking up points and climb up the table. People need to calm the f down
posted on 17/10/21
**Excusing
posted on 17/10/21
Yesterday was worse than Wigan in my opinion. If I remember right did we not score first in that one and end up losing 2-1? Yesterday we never troubled their defence at all. Their goalie could have had a day off for all the work we put his way. 0 shots on target in 95 mins says it all. We were lucky that Southampton are goal shy as they could have scored many more.
We were missing most of our best players, but such an abject performance against, let's be honest, not one of the best sides in the division has to be a major concern
posted on 17/10/21
Well, I did watch it and I wish I hadn't cos I'm extremely depressed today!
Yeah lots of seniors out of action yesterday but even so, that was truly dire.
posted on 17/10/21
comment by Jaz63 (U8369)
posted 2 minutes ago
Well, I did watch it and I wish I hadn't cos I'm extremely depressed today!
Yeah lots of seniors out of action yesterday but even so, that was truly dire.
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Was other folk talking about struijk not been good enough for cdm despite him not actually playing there.
posted on 17/10/21
comment by Kebablegs (U17699)
posted 7 hours, 30 minutes ago
The more I read comments the more it seems many folk in here didn’t even watch the game 😆.
Fair enough folk can make general observations of how the season is going but don’t make long winded opinions on the game if you didn’t even see it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I obviously was a bit impatient with this after full time yesterday. And I should have been more polite.
But it is frustrating to realise you are discussing problems and solutions with fans that don’t watch the game.
Everyone has opinions and there’s so many perspectives. But Struijk playing CB yesterday isn’t an opinion. It’s a very basic fact. And a really straight forward observation at that.
No one on here has anything close to a full understanding of the sport and what it’s really like. Mainstream analysis doesn’t help in that it’s dumbed down so much. And especially with MOTD it’s often just nonsense. Also myths like ‘it’s the biggest crime in football to not beat the first man at a corner’ don’t help either. The best corner is often the one that just skims over the first mans head at pace. Which is why it’s common to get it very slightly wrong and not beat him. However doing that gives you a much better chance of scoring than just lifting a ball into the centre of the box. Yet the cliche is still just accepted as gospel.
posted on 17/10/21
Struijk definitely played cb yesterday. Whether we needed 3 CBS is another matter. We definitely looked lost in midfield with just Klich and Roberts in there.
I'd love to see Shackleton get a run in cm if Dallas is at lb and Drameh get a run at Rb. We need three cms in there or we get completely overrun there. Not sure Forshaw is up to it sadly.
posted on 17/10/21
Many teams will have noted how we do with that formation and tend to lose the midfield with no outball and go with the two up top so that we do. I bet we keep doing it though.