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Absolutely ******* Disgraceful

It is now three days since the worst performance in the history of Southampton FC, I am no nearer recovering from it !

Unfortunately the following morning after the debacle against Leicester City i had to go on The Ugly Inside radio show on Voice 103fm and spend the best part of two hours talking about it.

But when I walked out of the studio that was the start of a self imposed exile from football and here on Monday morning I have still not read a report of this game nor have i watched any football on TV and I have no idea of any other result over the weekend in any division.

There was a lot of temptation to try and cheer myself up by checking the odd result or two, but the fact is it might well have taken me even further down so apart from a quick trip to the supermarket I have sat in a darkened room for 48 hours.

That is not quite true I have used my time productively, at least a lot more productively than the likes of Maya Yoshida and Vestergaard used theirs on Friday evening, having watched the entire first series of Only Fools & Horses, a few back episodes of Blue Bloods and read Louis Theroux's autobiography cover to cover, but even Louis has never had a Weird Weekend such as I have just endured.

The real thing that kept coming back to me though was that Friday night was a culmination of failing to replace Virgil Van Dijk and Jose Fonte, we have had 6 transfer windows yet we have not signed a capable replacement and also relied on those who 3 years ago were 4th & 5th choices in the side.

People accused me of having something against "Yoshi" and Jack Stephens, I have repeatably said that I judge them only on their footballing ability and I have nothing against them.

But there aren't many arguing me now !!!

The problem on Friday evening is that it showed that our central defenders would not get into a Championship side, I would even state this, I would rather have had Wesley Hoedt in the side than any of the defenders who played on Friday, but of course he did that Cruyff Turn at Bournemouth two years ago.

The other sad fact was there was a complete lack of leadership on the pitch, yes we were in trouble after 10 minutes when we were a goal down and reduced to 10 men, but there was no leader, no Alan Ball, no Jimmy Case who calmed the side down and kept them focused, 3 minutes and 2 goals later and it still never happened even after that.

We were a bunch of Schoolkids either too inexperienced or otherwise to do the job.

For three years I have been pointing this out, sometimes you have to bring in a player like Ball or Case to do a job and bring your team on, we have not done this, we have relied on the experience of Yoshida but age does not make you a leader, that is not Yoshida's fault, not everyone is a born leader.

So we have to try and take positives from this of which there is only one and that is surely those in charge of the club have to sit up and take notice of what has slowly happened.

Ralph Krueger and Les Reed were hounded out by the supporters, but at least they were sporting men who knew what was needed, they were not perfect but Reed knew about football and Krueger's experience as an Ice Hockey coach was vital in helping him run the club in the Chairman's role, he might not known much about football, but he knew a lot about sport and he knew what was needed to be done, but unfortunately for the social media keyboard warriors four straight top 8 finishes and a major cup final were not good enough.

I'm not sure we can yet say we are at rock bottom, two games against Manchester City might well prove to be that point, but once they are over we can move on.

In January we have to do what I have been saying for three years, we have to get in a central defender who can dominate not just in terms of quality of play, but in leading the team.

I think the rest of the team aside from the defence is solid, but it is disheartening for them to constantly see good work going forward undone by the same people making the same mistakes.

Yes you have read this all before, yes it has been almost three years of me seemingly being a broken record, but on Friday everything came home to roost, call me repetitive, but you can't say I called it wrongly.

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