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Southampton V Brighton The Verdict

There is no way of dressing up this defeat, it was a lacklustre uninspiring performance by the entire team, not helped by two individual errors to gift Brighton their first two goals, but the main worry was the team selection and formation.

I find it very hard to rip into Nathan Jones in what was essentially his first real game in charge in the Premier League, well some of you may say, you used to give Ralph Hasenhuttl leeway, so why not Jones !

When Saints were playing badly in Hasenhuttl's last month or so, I felt there was an excuse, we were missing key players, but for this game the only real absence from those that have played this season was Romeo Lavia.

What doesn't sit well for me was that after six weeks working with the squad, we look a less organised and more importantly less inspired side than we did before we changed managers.

In essence you could excuse some of our failings in Hasenhutt's last days on injury's, but for this were no excuse.

So where did we go wrong, the first ringing of alarm bells was the team selection, perhaps our best player before the World cup break was Armando Bella Kotchap why was he on the bench ? add to him Joe Aribo and Stuart Armstrong, another two solid players and it seems that there is something not quite right within the squad.

Also in the team were Djenepo & Diallo, I can see some logic here, in fairness Djenepo did well against Lincoln and Maitland-Niles was awful, so Diallo was a natural replacement, but it still comes back to the question as to why ABK, Aribo and Stuart Armstrong were on the bench.

Thrown in at the deep end was Samuel Edozie, yes he had some dazzling moments and played without fear, but at the moment he badly lacks end product either in shooting or creating for others, I am sure this will come, but I am not sure this was the game to start him.

The lack of motivation was clear to see as was the fact that again this was a team that didn't seem to know what formation they were playing and more to the point they didn't seem to know what the game plan was.

Under ralph we passed and passed, Nathan Jones has a more direct style, but on what i have seen in these two games since the break, we seem to be under instructions as a team that we cannot make more than 4 passes in a move, two often we seem to pass 4 times and then hit the ball forward with absolutely nothing on.

This was playing right into Brighton's hands, a team that are big and strong at the back and can handle long and high balls all day.

But the hope was that we could weather the storm and start to get our game together, but that hope was soon put to bed on 14 minutes when Adam Lallana lost his marker and headed home, in truth Gavin Bazunu should have stopped it, the only excuse being it was close range so gave him little time to react, but he still should really have stopped it.

The rest of the half wasn't great, but the hope was we would get into half time only a goal down, the issue for me was we were giving the ball away too much, again instead of keeping the ball and gaining confidence and not letting Brighton get the ball back, we seemed to be under instructions to have to hit the ball forward on the 5th pass.

We never kept the ball long enough to get any sort of confidence building.

On 35 minutes we again gifted Brighton the ball, it was a good cross flashed across the goal, Romain Perraud was under pressure, but TV replays showed not under that much pressure, he really should have cleared the ball instead of slicing it into his own net.

The hope was that after the break we would be better, the truth was we were slightly, but then 10 minutes in came a goal that nobody could be blamed for, when you are 2-0 down these shots go into row z, when you are 2-0 up and everything is going right they fly into the top corner and this one did.

So 3-0 down and in disarray, the worry was that this would be a rout, but the one good thing is that we kept going and with 17 minutes left got back in the game, a rare James Ward Prowse header, sadly it came after the Brighton keeper had saved his penalty but the ball fell kindly for JWP with a simple header into an empty net.

Could Saints get a second and perhaps make the last 15 minutes uncomfortable, the answer was no.

I find it hard to work out just where we went wrong and that is because I find it hard to work out just who was playing where and if I was confused it seems so where the players, the back four was set up to keep it simple, we had two central midfield players, but then we left no real cover for the full backs, we had a loan striker with Elyounoussi floating, but did he know his job and position when we didn't have the ball.

That was perhaps the issue, when we didn't have the ball, too many players didn't seem to know just where they should be.

Few people came off that pitch being able to say they had an average game let along a good game, Lyanco led by example and James Ward Prowse despite playing a role not natural to him were perhaps the best of a bad bunch.

I have to say that although my natural instinct is to say we have to give Nathan Jones a chance, this is one Premier League game, many of our managers who have gone on to be club legends have started their Saints careers badly, Jones is not alone in this, but there is something nagging in the back of my head.

Is Jones trying too hard to impose his way of playing on the squad, is he trying to be too clever, has he underestimated the task he has ?

All these thoughts were in my head, he hasn't come in and tried to evolve the team, he is trying to revolutionise it and that seems to have caused a little chaos in the squad, why is he not playing those players who were the spine of the side in the first part of the season ?

We will perhaps find out all of these answers in the next few weeks, but I still feel that we would have been better under Ralph Hasenhuttl, who knew the task in hand and with players back from injury has proved he can motivate a squad.

However that is the past we have to move forward, what other choice do we have !

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