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Yesterday's game
at 09:19 8 Dec 2024

When I got up yesterday morning I was heavily weighing up whether to go to the game. I had the ticket but I didn't have the motivation and looking at the deteriorating weather I was looking for an excuse not to drive down the M18, M1, etc or hoping that perhaps the game would be called off. Anyway, despite all those doubts and knowing that I was going to watch another defeat, like many others I did go and the end if the day wondered why I did not stick to my gut instinct telling me not to.

I got there in good time, decided to venture into Aston Tavern to escape the cold and wet and paid the £5 entry fee which did include a bowl of food and though a Villa fans location there was a smattering of Saints fans and it was arguably the most pleasant part of the day.

As for the game. Well, whichever side you were supporting, there was a common feeling - it was a poor game, with a poor atmosphere played in poor conditions. Even the overhanging roof did not protect you from the elements as my feet became blocks of ice and the only thing that kept you going was the gallows humour between our own fans.

The game can be summed easily. They scored because of another error, we offered no goal threat whatsoever, despite alot of huffing and puffing. I think at best we had one real meaningful shot on goal and I think our corners was less than a handful. I cannot think of a more inept bunch of strikers we have had at this level in all my time watching Saints and that includes even through the Branfoot era. Armstrong was repeatedly in off side positions so on the rare occasion we did try to get it forward he had to come back. On a simple chance that he had in the second half he inevitably fluffed his lines. Archer I do think potentially offers more but wiith tall centre halves on either side of him the ball to him has to precision and Brereton- Diaz - why oh why did we waste our money on that purchase - put bluntly, we knew we would need a good striker for this level and we have at best a bunch of championship strikers - even Vardy at Leicester offers more than our 3 put together and of course in the background is Ross Stewart which has to go down as one of the worst signing decisions given he was injured when we purchased him - though I suppose they would not have expected him to have had these medical issues.

In some respects our build up play was not bad. As usual KWP, Dibling and Fernandes worked hard and Aribo worked hard when he came on but we simply had nothing in the final third. Our crosses got nowhere when we got to the opponents box. In defence we were ok (except for the one costly error) and Wood looks like persevering with. Lumley had his moments and having nearly had a repeat of his Chelsea moment he then proceeded to kick the ball long which RM blames the fans for doing as he claims it led to their goal! Blaming the fans is never a good thing - especially given the money they spend, the trip they have made, the conditions they have got there in and have to return home in and the lack of entertainment value his team have served up. We are not the ones on the pitch earning thousands of pounds per week.

Villa themselves were not in truth much better than us and that was also reflected by the lack of vocal support from their own fans, After the game I could hear Villa fans saying that Saints support was better - which is something given the difference in numbers. You left thinking that this was another game where the opposition were there for the taking. You would not have had to have been that much better than we were to beat them - if only we offered some sort of real goal threat. Most other PL teams would probably have beaten Villa yesterday, even arguably any of the others at the bottom (except us)!

For the life of me, I really cannot see where an improvement or a win (even a draw) is going to come from. I have tickets for one more game in this month and beyond that I am really questioning whether I want to invest any more of my hard earned cash in being so underwhelmed by my team and club - I probably will because I always have but is that insanity?????

We are now 8 points at least adrift and 9 if you count our poor goal difference. To all intents and purposes it feels like our season is over and it really depends whether SR feel it is worth making the change in the hope that someone can produce a miracle now or accept (as I believe they have) that going down in the hope of coming back up is a reason and their model for sticking with what we have - with the risk of losing the few good players we have (and given SR record of wasting the money that we would get from them).

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El Sackio game on Monday
at 08:50 6 Dec 2024

West Ham Vs Wolves on Monday. It is being suggested that whoever loses that game will get the sack - probably an element of truth in it. I would not be surprised to see Potter going to West Ham and another opportunity will be missed by our owners.

Not sure what happens if Monday night is a draw!

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Yesterday's game
at 09:48 10 Nov 2024

It would be easy to say that the reason we lost at Wolves was down to bad decisions or incorrect decisions by the officials/VAR. The fact is, Manning's goal should have stood and prior to Wolves second goal there were 2 clear fouls which should have meant their second goal being ruled out and had those decisions been awarded correctly we may have come away with 1 point and at least a draw (though by no means guaranteed).

All the above said, it would hide fundamental inherent problems with our play. Despite huge amounts of possession we created so little and barely threatened in front of goal. Opposing teams have all been saying now that they know we will play possession football but we will not hurt teams with it and it is just a case of them waiting for us to make a mistake or lose possession and then they hurt us. For the life of me, I cannot understand why everyone is saying it, even opposition managers etc but we keep doing the same thing and our manager seems incapable of responding to it.

I have tickets for games coming up but to be blunt I don't even want to go. I cannot stand just going to a game and knowing in my heart of hearts that we will do the same thing, we won't offer much going forward and we'll probably lose. I knew we would lose yesterday. It was irrelevant to me that Wolves were bottom, had a generous defence and their confidence may be low, I knew we would not capitalise on it, seize the game and take control. My expectations for the season was reasonable, I knew we would lose far more than we would win and that relegation was probable, but what I did not expect is so many games where we are lacklustre and insipid in attack and showing so little fight. Once we are behind you know we won't come back. Once we went 2-0 down yesterday we may as well just gone home then as there was no way we were going to turn that over because we don't have the manager and players that seem to have a mindset to fight back.

I am resigned to us retaining Martin and to going down now. I wanted Martin to do well but he had to be willing to adapt to the league he was now in and we had to bring in players who could compete at this level. He has not adapted and some of our recruitment has been wholly unsatisfactory for this level. The question is, once I have used up my tickets for the games I have purchased, is it worth the effort to spend hard earned cash on 90 minutes plus of football that is anything but enjoyable (all bar a few brief occasions)?

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Obafemi winner against the Skates
at 07:38 6 Nov 2024

I see that Obafemi scored the only goal and winner for Plymouth Argyle against Pompey last night. A good goal too.

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My take on yesterday's game
at 22:54 27 Oct 2024

I have had a good weekend in Manchester interrupted by a football game. This is my take on the game and wider. It is just my opinion, many will see things differently which is what forums like this are for.

Few, if anyone thought that it would be anything but a rout and that it would be damage limitation at best. That feeling was not dispelled when we had not even managed to get to the 5 minute point of the game and Man City were in the lead courtesy of a Haaland goal. The surprise is that it proved to be the only goal of the match and thus the winner.

The match to be truthful, was dull and largely insipid. Man City having got the lead seemed content with it and barely broke out of first or second gear and I doubt never broke sweat. They were content for us to have spells of possession and we rarely threatened. We did hit the bar at the closing stages of the first half and had that gone in, could it have been a surprise outcome to the game or would it merely have poked the bear and woken it up? - on evidence of previous games, I suspect the latter. The second half felt like both sides were going through the motions but we had a flurry at the end which bought a little hope to the ever patient away fans. Fernandes, Lallana (his experience showed in the first half and I can't help but wonder, had he not left as he did and we Saints fans had been a bit more forgiving we could have enjoyed and benefited from his return much earlier) and KWP had good games and we did show some endeavour and we kept our structure but then it was not really tested that much. Man City have loads of games, bigger ones than Saints and it is as if they decided this was a game that they didn't feel they needed to take risks. Against other sides they may have been made to pay for that approach.

The officials did not give much, if in fact, anything. Gary O'Neil dared to suggest that there is unconscious bias. Of course he got in trouble for that comment and PL loving pundits said he was wrong. I think most of us know what O'Neil meant and it is difficult to disagree with him.

Those of us in the away end felt at the end that the team deserved some recognition for the effort and really because we had not got the thrashing we all expected. In many ways, that is almost a sad reflection of what we now deem as acceptable. Celebrating a defeat in which neither side exactly busted a gut. Had we lost 3-2 or something then you could have walked away saying that we had seen a good game and we were unlucky.

But, pundits, commentators, Guardiola and Silva praised Saints. Is it meaningful or patronising? What I find hard to accept is that somehow us Saints fans are supposed to be grateful for losing and being bottom. That we are being unrealistic and unreasonable for expecting anything more. Imagine if it was one of the so called big teams without a win, barely a goal to celebrate - there would massive noise. I (and I believe a majority of Saints fans) was realistic what this season would bring and many of us thought relegation was the most likely outcome and we would be mildly happy to finish 4th from bottom and then build from there.

Few of us really thought that we would be looking at almost certain relegation by the end of October/early November but if we don't beat Everton (and they looked awful against Fulham) next week then you would have to say that relegation is all but confirmed - I appreciate that is defeatist but when people say that yesterdays game and result will not define our season and we did well, that may be the case, but the games against Ipswich, Leicester, Brentford, Bournemouth and next week do define our season and whilst no game is easy, there are some games you would have expected more than the 1 point we currently have and would have kept us in the pack.

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Glimmers of hope extinguished by the same old problems.
at 23:03 19 Oct 2024

There have been glimmers of hope in our games recently but that hope has been extinguished by what is now age old problems:-

- failure to capitalise on the rare occasion we take the lead (though we have taken the lead in the last 3 games);
- failure to protect our leads;
- consistently poor defending no matter whom we seem to play in those positions and with that rare clean sheets;
- lack of resilience and mental strength when we concede;
- inability to come back from a losing position;
- consistently concede late in games;
- lack of tactical nouse;
- poor use of substitutions

KWP and Dibling are our stand out players but I don't fancy our chances to retain them.

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Ross Stewart
at 17:04 4 Oct 2024

Am I hearing correctly that he is not available again? If true, what the flipping hell is wrong with him this time?

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So many questions - very few answers.
at 08:16 1 Oct 2024

The morning after another sickening Saints performance and so many questions. Of the 3 teams promoted we have in theory had the easiest of starts in terms of fixtures and yet you wouldn't think so. We spent £100m in the squad this summer and yet we are not seeing anything like a team that can challenge anyone in the PL (no matter who they are). So:-
- having put in a half decent performance against Ipswich at home why did that team perform so poorly in the first half last night?
- why did Lallana not start the game at least?
- why when we go a goal behind do we seem to collapse/capitulate so readily? We never ever look like coming back?
- Why do we seem so weak mentally and physically to have any fight?
- why amongst our squad do we not have a single striker that looks capable of hitting the back of the net? They haven't scored one goal yet, let alone any notion of them getting to double figures

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