Southampton Banter Archive December 08 2014

 

Use our rumours form to send us soutthampton transfer rumours.


(single word yields best result)

08 Dec 2014 22:10:02
Well, the good news is that Pelle seems to have woken up - that's the best he's played in weeks - and the team looked a lot livelier overall.

But some terrible mistakes have seeped into the defending lately. Fonte's been a liability these last three games (should've conceded a penalty against City with a ridiculous lunge, gave Arsenal their goal with some headless chicken abandoning of his position and gift-wrapped United's opener tonight). I can't remember him ever not looking out of his depth against top class strikers.

And quite how Forster made no attempt to come out for a long, looping cross that landed in the six yard box I'll never know. So poor. And that was the difference between winning and losing against an incredibly average Man United side.

Tadic anonymous again, Mane playing in ice skates again - it's all a bit of a struggle at the moment.

Desperate for a win at Burnley now before the wheels come off totally.

Believable0 Unbelievable0

09 Dec 2014 07:33:19
How many more times are we going to be called unlucky ? Sooner or later the bad luck has to be re-defined as not quite good enough, I can't see many teams doing what we did last night. Just plain suicide. I know he had a good game at Arsenal but I think Forster is the poorest keeper in the Premier League at coming for crosses which I am afraid doesn't seem to be improving. Two poor goals which definitely were the difference and have made United look once again as if they are rapidly improving when actually they were as poor a side as I've seen at St Marys this season apart from Sunderland.

Agree0 Disagree0

Letting that second goal drop about 2 steps from the far post was awful / terrible goalkeeping - what is wrong with the man ue is 6. 7' - why not either pluck it out of the air - or smash it away with two fists and clear RVP out at the same time. FF needs to go down to Trojans and do a bit of rugby training and man up a bit. And then to the Solent Kestrels to get his ball in the air confidence up a bit. Then he would be able to a. CATCH and b. CLEAR OUT the ball and player.
Apart from that Yoshida looks much improved after a few proper matches, Clyne was great again, Pelle more direct, butwe do need a striker who can play off Pelle well - come on JR get fit we need you.

Agree0 Disagree0

09 Dec 2014 10:32:37
Work in progress guys!

Our squad is too thin and the bench showed this. We made mistakes, and I feel this has been about to happen once players were out injured and the team were adjusting to playing a revised 11. Koeman knows this and will shortly have the opportunity to correct this, plus add in Jay Rod, Morgan, Corky, Toby, JWP and it is not all doom.

Top 6 for January will be a great position to enable RoKo to make the adjustments he needs and has obviously identified.

Annoying to lose against a poorer team but it probably strengthens RoKos hand for January.
Why start blaming players who are carrying an injury and still give all they can with that limitation?

Agree0 Disagree0

Finally a post which sees some common sense, thank you Saint Martin. Do people not realise how lucky we are to be in 5th place!? Especially with a squad as thin as our is currently?

But like Saint Martin says, all of this is an advantage to us, because it will certainly be a convincing argument for Koeman to say to Les Reed, look if we bring in the right players we could really have a go at getting 3rd or 4th here.

Agree0 Disagree0

09 Dec 2014 13:23:31
Last night was nothing about injuries it was about giving 2 goals away and we have let in a couple of others recently that could have been prevented. To me seeing sense is getting our 6'7" goalkeeper to sit in a classroom and watch United's second goal 500 times over and then maybe he will grow some. I don't feel that Fonte needs teaching anything as he will be really annoyed with himself which is punishment enough and probably had a very sleepless night with the first goal playing on his mind. He will recover from his mistake as he is a top professional. Finally saying we should be happy about being 5th is just plain crazy as we should be 3rd on merit barring schoolboy errors.

Agree0 Disagree0

In my opinion we are now a good team. With Toby in the back 4 and Morgan in front we are a great team. At half time v Man City it was 0-0 and we looked comfortable I was thinking a draw for sure possibly a sneaked win. The morgan went off and toby moved to mid field. We conceded 3. Against Arsenal no Morgan and Toby injured in 75th min. We are 10 men and unlucky not to get draw. Man U no Toby or Morgan. Two errors otherwise we did more than enough. With those two on the field we have hardly made an error.
Lets hope we can get it going again against Burnley - I am sure Ron will be on a few cases about sloppiness.

Agree0 Disagree0

@Chrisdownj you are taking fifth place for granted, it is an achievement which none of us expected at the start of the season. Because of the way we've started the season you now expect a flawless performance every game? It's not going to happen. Mistakes will be made, key chances missed, and injuries occur that's just football.

Moreover a lot of our players, such as Tadić and Pelle have never experienced this frequency of games in a short space of time.

Agree0 Disagree0

09 Dec 2014 20:11:31
I don't think you understand what I mean, in 2 out of the last 3 games we have been the better side and lost. I think most of us knew really that top four would be a bit far fetched but to lose games the way we have is very frustrating for everyone especially last night when we absolutely murdered United even without our best players in midfield and defence. Toby is the biggest loss he is so comfortable on the ball and has pace and vision. Let's get it right at Burnley and who knows we might go on a run again.

Agree0 Disagree0

Playing Man City, Arsenal and Man Utd in a row was going to test our resolve and so called Champions League aspirations and this ultimately proved we lack strength in depth once injuries occurred.
RK would have known this from the start of the season and so has no excuses for which he hasn't made, but during these games Saints haven't helped themselves by making schoolboy errors, notably Forster and Fonte.
All is not lost, as Saints can make Europe via the League Cup or gain a top 6 finish end of season.
We would have all settled for a top 10 finish, so happy days if that is achieved.

Agree0 Disagree0

08 Dec 2014 22:01:32
Another unlucky result, missing those key players with injury who probably would have made the difference tonight. However we also had plenty of chances to win the game with the team which played. Have to say Yoshida played very well tonight, I'm not sure many of us ever expected to be able to say that. Likewise Wanyama was terrific, school-boyed Fellaini all game. And Pelle looked much more himself, that goal will give him a much deserved boost for the weekend. Anyway, let's not get too downhearted, I mean look at the table still 5th and with a 3 point buffer to Arsenal, and 3rd place remains in touching distance despite 3 losses in a row. Who would of expected that?

Believable0 Unbelievable0

They weren't unlucky at all. The two goals Saints conceded were a joke and purely of their own making. That's not bad luck, that bad play.

And the amount of decent attacking positions they got into only to make an absolute pig's ear of it wasn't down to misfortune, it was poor play.

Throw in Long and Pelle failing to even hit the target from good chances and Long heading straight at the goalkeeper when it seemed easier to score and you've got a tale not of bad luck but of Saints having only themselves to blame.

Can't even blame the injuries - it was Fonte, not Yoshida, who gave United their first goal. Yoshida was actually one of the better performers on the night, along with Wanyama.

Agree0 Disagree0