Southampton Banter Archive November 07 2013

07 Nov 2013 15:42:23
3 yes 3 southampton players are in the England squad. Rickie lambert, Adam Lallana and jay Rodriguez are all in the England team! I am one very happy saints fan right now! I hope they all get a chance to play. Imagine if they all score.

Finally! always have been proud to be a Saints fan, even through the sticky times, but this is so well deserved, well done.

COYS

I know it's quality!

06 Nov 2013 22:55:20
tonight's performance has just proven are lack of squad depth. As much as I respect the guy, Kelvin Davis is nowhere near first team quality. Great championship GK but bad premier league GK. The defense of Hooiveld and Fox is not good enough. Nowhere near first team quality at all! Midfield I think we are fine. We have an abudance of quality midfielders in Lallana, ward-prose, wanyama, schneiderlin etc. Ramirez needs to be sold in my opinion. Yes he has potential but isn't showing it at the moment. f we cash in on him now then we can at least re-coup most of the money that was initially paid for him. I also think we need one more striker and we need to get rid of Tadanari Lee. Tonight we showed no ambition of wanting to succeed in the cup (which I am a bit gutted about because I think we could have gone a lot further. ) What are your guys views on our squad depth. All this talk about Europe but if we get a few injuries we can't replace the injured with the same sort of quality.

If there is any blame it rests with MoPo and his motivational skills. He clearly has his favourites and the guys who played last night know this. Please don't come on with stuff like "players should take their opportunity" because many of them haven't had a look in all season! And fans describing them as the reserves or B team, I bet they love that? Another point is the A team struggled against Sunderland the previous two outings, home and away, I know, I was there! And finally we only have three strikers, Rickie who's 30+, Jrod, young and tries hard and our record signing who's done nothing, now he's injured but at least he's one of MoPo's favourites. Hope he's fit to face Arsenal, and Chelsea etc along with the rest of the A team

I think Davis is a perfectly decent backup keeper. Fox is not good enough, we need someone who can push Shaw for that left back spot. Hooiveld is a reasonable defender but frankly if we are aiming to push up the league we need better than reasonable. After watching Yoshida last night, I'm not sure he is good enough either, he looked like a fish out of water against a not particularly special Sunderland team. As for Ramirez, to me it looked as though he didn't really care and didn't want to be there and whilst it is clear he has talent, if he doesn't want to be at Saints, now is the time to move him on. I also agree about Lee, I have never really seen anything of him that suggests he has what it takes to cut it or challenge Lambert, Rodriguez or Osvaldo. I must admit though when JWP came on, what a difference he made, he is going to be a seriously good player!

Listened on radio, sounded like Kelvin had a howler, I would have thought he had a point to prove at S`land, would have been worse if we had to go to pen`s.

COYS

Until Saints are in CL it is almost impossible to justify and keep happy a squad of 25 players who are all first 11 quality. Yes, last night showed there were a few players who were not up to speed, and perhaps some of them will not be kept long term but it is a balancing act. NC will not go out and spend a fortune on replacements until he feels they will be playing regularly in serious, competitive games.

Saint Martin

I understand a lot of the frustration from Saints fans about our not being able to beat Sunderland last night, but personally I'm not too bothered.

We have used the Capital One Cup for squad players, and to aid the development of our kids. Last night we had 10 English players in the squad. Harrison Reed, Callum Chambers, (both 18) started. Sam Gallagher (also 18) made his debut. JWP (only just 19) came on.

Then Gaston, Yoshida, Hooveild, Cork, Lee etc etc got valuable game-time.

For Saints, this competition primarily about helping to develop our academy kids - Giving them a chance on the 'big stage'.

To develop these kids they need to be given their chance, and on another night we could well have had a couple of penalties and easily gone through against a far more experienced Sunderland XI.

How do people think these kids make a breakthrough without being given opportunities to play?

If a finger has to be pointed, it should be at our experienced players that didn't show enough when given their chance to stake a claim for Saturdays starting XI.

Pochettino put the players on the pitch. Is it really his fault that the players didn't grab their chance?

Having watched the game last night i'm finding it hard to process some of the above statements. Davis did not have a howler at all. We were the better team for most of the game and made two mistakes, firstly Hooiveld didn't mark his man and instead was on the goal line and was still unable to clear the ball, secondly Fox was out of poition and a back line unused to playing together was stretched. Poch made too many changes and if he had played three or four of the first team then I believe we would have got a result. we lacked a bit of an edge up front so possesion was dulled.

Fox was out of position because he had to cover Hooiveld's mistake and he actually made a very good challenge! Agree though, no howler made by Davis, in fact he made a few very good saves.