I have been a staunch supporter of Ralph through his tenure as despite some very bad lows (two 9-0s and a dreadful run in 2021), on the whole his team has met or, on occasion, exceeded expectations (top of the league, project restart period). I’m also conscious that I was one of the “Puel out” brigade and hesitate now to be careful what I wish for.

However it’s clear that Ralph’s time is running out. Yes he has us above the relegation zone at the moment but the performances on the pitch over 90mins have been all too predictable this season. It’s no surprise that we cannot fill St Mary’s this season with repeated performances where the team only play well for 45 minutes. There was some mitigation last season within squad size and injuries, but not this time.

The public criticism of McCarthy is another sign that the manager is now in trouble and pointing fingers at his players to protect his own position. Don’t get me wrong the players should shoulder responsibility for what happens on the pitch but calling out specific players like that is not going to help matters. The whole squad will look at those comments and think what if I do something wrong next time. It achieves nothing other than creating a barrier between manager and players. The proverbial “lost the dressing room” scenario.

So after 3 years of supporting Ralph I have also grown weary of the same old match story and I expect it will only go one way from here until he is replaced. Better to do it sooner rather than later if Saints are to avoid some serious issues.

It’s a difficult one while I agree with all the posts stating an actual fact of how many we’ve lost from winning position I still like Ralph as manager & in some way we’ve got some stability we haven’t managerial wise for years & some of the football ( usually first 45) is outstanding I also still think we can compete with anyone , notsure it should be all doom & gloom

A much better performance than vs the Foxes. The first half was bang on bar not finding a second to go in 2-0 up. Broja looked almost unplayable, but he should have really bagged a second. Tella had an impressive half and Lyanco is a starter next to Salisu for me now, he looks like a real solid centre back and is no nonsense and fully committed.

The signs were there though in the second half that we indeed needed that 2nd goal from the good first half performance. With 20 minutes to go, we seemed to start making individual poor decisions. 3 or 4 times we tried to walk the ball out past players in the deep wide or full back areas of the pitch and got caught. Sometimes the best ball is out and up the field and regroup.

In the end one of these silly mistakes cost us, again.

I think we'll be fine though. There were a number of good performances on Saturday (Lyanco, Tella, Redmond). JWP and Romeu rarely let us down but it happened. The league table is really tight in that mid to lower section. There's a long way to go yet.

In Ralph we trust. COYR!

No Saints fan left the stadium Saturday evening thinking "I never saw that coming"; apart from Ralph of course. We really are a soft touch, more especially in the closing stages of a game. Absolutely no excuses, 1-0 up with 10 minutes to play and Brighton reduced to 10 men. No game management, no astute substitutions, no calm heads, absolutely no leadership on the pitch to see a game out (JWP is anything but a captain). Frankly, I despair. It's not looking good, we are slowly being sucked into a relegation fight. All so unnecessary.

I've been holding off on criticizing Ralph this year, because I'm glad for the managerial stability, and he appears to motivate the players. Unfortunately, he's a terrible tactician. We're just going to have to accept that if he is to stay in the job. On Saturday, had he got his subs (and timing thereof) right we wouldn't be having this conversation. But he doesn't, and we do, week after week. I have learned to turn off the TV at the 75-minute mark of each game, and am glad to have made that a regular practice!

(To clarify, I meant to say that Ralph appears to motivate the players—but only for the first half, not the second!)

What do you know—Claude Puel's available! https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/19764996.former-saints-boss-claude-puel-sacked

Am I the only fan that still appreciates Hassenhutl? Do you remember the previous managers? The miracle that he performed by taking us form relegation certainties to safe mid table again should not be underestimated. I believe that our team is better than the sum of its parts and that is down to the managers philosphy and team setup and instructions.
Dont forget that we used to complain that we didn't change tactics to see a game out. Now that we do change tactics you're still moaning when it doesn't work. We arent suddenly going to get better players. Get behind the team and the manager.

On another note the goalkeeping situation is ideal for getting in Sam Johnstone in January - although I wont credit that to Hassenhutl.

Most of the (above) suggested that Ralph was wrong to blame McCarthy. The accusation is correct even if the manner of the public condemnation was badly-timed, BUT I wasn't the only one to be concerned when Lyanco started taking goal kicks with McCarthy moving gingerly along his goal line. Clearly AM had a problem, but ignoring it is sheer madness when McCarthy himself knew he couldn't move around fast enough, and we had another goalie on the bench WHY?.
Did he think he might lose his place in the next match? ....well, his injury had already done that, so why stay on the field...Sorry Alex, but that was very poor judgement.

Some of you want to blame Romeu for conceding the free kick, or JWP for not clearing the ball, but IF... McCarthy's injury was that bad he shouldn't have still been on the field at that point.

Conceding late goals is bad enough, but to do so in the 98th minute is heart-breaking.
However, once again it's not entirely fair to blame our defending, when in yet another game where we had 15 shots - we managed just one goal.

A decent manager would resolve the ongoing problem with Stewie Armstrong and get him playing again, we miss him big time. He was fit enough to play for Scotland so why not us?

For me, reading these comments week after week is part of the frustration, as I can tell many on this board have been long supporters of SFC. I read a stat yesterday that stated if the games end at half0time, we would be 5th and if only the second half counter, we would be 19th. Every pundit I see/hear says the same thing that we burn out in the last 15-20 minutes of games and if teams can keep us close, they can nick a goal and tie or win the game.

I said it in the game/player rating portion, we have forgot basics and the is plenty of blame to go around from RH to JWP and OR. What gets me is the AM situation. Did AM not tell the bench? Did the GK coach not see the issue? If you are a keep and cant kick the ball or jump, then you have a responsibility to tell the coach you need to be replaced. All that said, there are so many things that our players and manager did wrong leading up to the equalizer that it is not worth the time to detail each one.

Finally, only 11 points separates 8th and 20th and one win could move us up to 10th. THAT is how close the margins are. Realistically, there are 6-7 teams, including us that must be worrying a bit as an real bad run of games coupled with other teams winning matches against top-8 teams, will call the table to collapse like a jenga game. I think this will be a nail biting season again and we will look over our shoulders the whole way. I think that the Club will not make any changes no matter what, the owner situation will hang over everyone and we will have to wait until the summer to see if any real/major change in Manager will happen. So I plan on trying not to be overzealous on every game, will ask Santa for as much help as we can get and will hope that we find a grove and can win some of these games over the holiday fixture time, so we can start the new year in a positive position.

Wishing you all a Happy Holiday Season and low-blood pressure.

Can understand the extreme frustration - errors by good players in last two minutes cost us the two points. Small errors leading to loosing points at critical times all this season. It feels aweful.

Blaming the manager or the players does not accurately describe the core issue. We have not got the funds to invest at the level of most other teams - unless we sell players each year - and the best prices are paid for best players. We have lost three highly experienced players this year.

When we did have the funds - Note this was prior to Ralph arrival - we spent the money spectacularly badly. No need to make that list - you know all the names. So for the last few years we have laboured under high wage bills ( almost cleared up) with minimal ability to sign players. Our squad was weak for the last two years. We stayed up despite low investment and - in the pandemic- with more lost current income ( reducing the only available investment funds further.)

We are slowly starting to invest - with money from sold experienced players. The decisions on players coming in allied to the superb coaching/playbook preparation of those players has been far better than before.

This list IS worth considering ( Adams, Diallo, Salisu, Broja, Lyanco, Livramento - plus players looking good but more work needed i.e. Tella, Armstrong) - Those names look far better than the ones cleared out.

However, that means we have players with less experience plus players who have to learn on the job. This league is the hardest in the world - no question.

So make critical and perceptive comments by all means - and we get plenty of those here - but watch out for what you wish for. Ralph leaving will be a significant blow - unless you know someone with £100m + to spare.

So we are doing the only thing possible. Management making the best of limited resources.

If only the final whistle was blown at minute 98 we we could have celebrated a good team win. Instead all our faults are being aired.

I think that pwithers123 and EGSaint have both got it spot on! If you look at what Ralph’s done for us previously, then take into account of how very little resources he’s had, then look at how other teams are doing around us, what he’s done so far is actually pretty impressive!
But obviously just because we’re not winning every week that’s the managers fault as we’ve been signing the likes of Messi, Ronaldo, Lewendoski etc every season according to some on here!
Sheesh I still can’t believe that some people really think that Lampard will join us, as he’s already rejected Norwich and they’re in a very similar situation to us financially, so why would he join us!? As ever since Koeman left is Ralph has been the best manager we’ve had, as we may have finished 8th under Paul, but we only got 3 more pints that season that we did lasts season.
But if we look at some teams around us like Villa, Everton and even Man U! They’ve all spent hundreds of millions on QUALITY players, yet have all done dreadful over the last few seasons, yet we’re not too far off any of them, yet have spent like 1% (and that’s not even much of an exaggeration!) of what they’ve all spent. So until Gao goes, we won’t be able to do what the likes of West Ham and Leicester have done, hence why we’ve gotta be realistic, and any saints team that’s nearer to European qualification than relegation (nether of which will happen, no matter how bad/decent we end up) is a pretty decent one.

Sorry ElijahK, none of your input above explains dropping 71 points from winning positions. I think most fans accept that our squad has improved since last season - even taking the loss of Ings into account. Taking so long to introduce Salisu, when our defence was struggling last season, playing players out of position constantly, delayed substitutions, unfathomable subs, not reacting to an opposing Managers changes at HT tactically...those are reasons for losing 71 points from being in front....we're not being unrealistic as to what can be achieved, we know where we are in the PL pyramid, but the least we can ask for is that the coaching staff give us a chance with the team they put out and the tactics employed...

Actually onetowatch it does make sense. As firstly it ain’t the masher who gets the golden opportunities week after week to get us a goal! As at no point this season have we been over a goal up, other than that 8-0 EFL Cup game, which is down to the players as they’re the ones missing it, and those misses are what motivates the opposition into thinking they can get that late winner/equaliser, as if weed been 2-0 up against Brighton at the weekend, then we’d have almost certainly have won it.
And I saw a post about this 71 points dropped, but someone replied with an answer that I think is spot on. They said that yeah we may have dropped 71 points in like 3 years (so an average of 24 points a season), but that’s almost always been down to the fact that we’ve scored the opening goal.
As this season we’ve scored the opening goal on 10 of our 15 games (which 2 of the remaining 5 being a 0-0 draw!) which means that we’re guaranteed to loose points if we come away with anything bar a win! Yet if we look at how many points where actually dropped (so from the 60th minute onwards) only 4 of those games did we concede a goal that cost us points (two were when we lost and two were when we drew) which comes down to 8 points, which isn’t the 14 points that all the stats say! As in reality in all those other games we were expecting the opponents to score as they had like an hour left and the only way we were gonna wrap it up was by getting another goal which never came and is down to the players.
As the only thing anyone can really criticise Ralph for, is some of his subs/selections, but even then, Walcott isn’t playing anymore, Tella is starting to play more, he’s playing KWP and Livermento but is still giving Parraud time. I mean there’s very few games this season that he’s actually messed up on where he cost us the points (as only Norwich, Burnley and maybe Wolves are ones where I try ink he is accountable for what happened)

Sorry mind my maths it actually just 6 points dropped not 8