Stop The Player Witch Hunts Now ! Wednesday, 1st Nov 2017 09:56 I am getting sick to death of certain Saints players being lambasted not only on social media but by other fan websites, it needs to stop. Whilst I can appreciate why some supporters may not be happy with the performance not only of the team this season, but also individual players, what I find hard to accept is the witch hunts that go on against certain individuals. I said something similar a couple of seasons ago when both Pelle and Sadio Mane in particular were coming in for some immense stick from certain sections of the crowd, however after they left at the end of that season, suddenly they became hero worshipped by many of those who had previously slagged them off, yet now hold them up as a stick to beat not only our current squad with, but the likes of Les Reed as well, claiming they have never been replaced. This seems to have esculated after the point at Brighton, in fairness a decent point given that the only team to go to the Amex and win have been Manchester City, but this has not been good enough for the moaners, Fraser Forster, Dusan Tadic and Nathan Redmond being the whipping boys so far this season. But it is unfair on Sunday to blame them, Fraser Forster might well have done better on the Brighton equaliser, but it took a deflection that slightly wrong footed him and although there would have been some Premier League keepers that might have got it , there are just as many who would have let it in. Forster was not given enough credit for the rest of his game at the Amex, where he did everything that you would want for him including coming and dealing with crosses under pressure. Some fans are just willing Forster to make a mistake, yet they forget that he has kept clean sheets in several crucial games this season, including a man of the match performance against Crystal Palace. But Forster like Tadic and Redmond has mitigating circumstances why he has not been playing with confidence including not yet having a settled defence in front of him and that is a big issue for a goalkeeper. Tadic and Redmond are also as big a scapegoats as Forster, but again no one looks into the reasons why they are playing badly, no one considers that they are both essentially wingers, they like to cross to a centre forward, Sunday was a good example of why they are failing, they can put in crosses all day, but of you are trying to hit a single 5ft 8 forward who is being marked by two 6ft 4 central defenders, then your choice is either put the crosses in and see them eaten up by the defence and get blamed for that, or check back and keep possession, either way eventually it destroys your confidence. I am not saying that any of the three players mentioned are totally without fault or blame, but what I am saying is that they should be supported and not subject to the frothing at the mouth I saw at Brighton or the witch hunts I see on social media. The problem then gets worse as more and more jump in and make it seem a crisis rather than a drama, yes the football is not great or entertaining, but we are still 10th in the League and we could still go to Brighton and get a point despite being so bad, that should tell some of these fans that we do not have bad players and I include Forster, Tadic and Redmond in that, we are just not playing well or perhaps more importantly finding the right formation. The other issue is that it is fine to demand that these three be immediately dropped, but who do you replace them with ? Alex McCarthy is the only option to replace Forster and he has not played much in the past year due to injury both long term last season and short term this, would he be better ? Likewise Tadic and Redmond, who would go in, Boufal would be the obvious choice but that wonder goal aside none of his performances have really demanded he be played ahead of them, Josh Sims and Jake Hesketh are injured, so it is then a case of playing players out of position and neither Steven Davis or JWP are natural wide men. If we don't have the players at the club to do better then yes we need to change that, but we cannot do anyting till January so what is the point in demanding something that cannot be changed now, better to keep behind the team and hope that it improves before then, that will be the time to moan not now when nothing can be done. The real issue is the way we are set up, we play wide men but have no centre forward for them to aim at, we play a short central striker who needs balls in the channels, but we have no one who can seemingly hit these balls, we are caught between a rock and a hard place, for some it is easier to blame individuals than look at the root cause of why they and the team are not playing to their full potential. So these players need our support, not our abuse, are we supporters of Southampton Football Club ? or do we go because we enjoy ranting at players, certainly the man in front of me at Brighton seemed to be practising for the upcoming World's Angriest Man Finals, why travel across the country when your stock words of encouragment are "For F*cks Sake Saints/Forster/Tadic/Redmond" ! Perhaps we have been spoiled by constant years of improvement, but there was always going to be a time when we hit a plateau and lst season was it, yet if 8th is our plateau that is far better than at any time in our history and we need to remember that, we need to be realistic about what we can achieve and how we can achieve it. All I hear now is people moaning about not being entertained, to be brutal, most people do not support football clubs to be entertained, they support them because thats what they do, over the year we moaned about Manchester United and Liverpool fans only supporting their clubs because they were succesful, but there now seems to be a new generation here that is saying they support Saints because of just that ! Personally in 45 years or so of following Saints, most of it has not been entertaining or successful come to that, the last five years in the Premier League including last season, in the main have all been better seasons than most of the 30 odd other seasons I have watched us in the top flight. I am not claiming to be some sort of super fan here, the majority of people who go to the games are solidly behind the team and support it, but there is a growing faction who go to have a go at the players, social media and fan websites esculate that and make it seem that things are far worse then they actually are, we need perspective and to look at things with clarity rather than just following what the next man is saying. We all need to be behind the team and manager, no one goes out there to play badly, support from the fans helps and we need to remember that, like any other fan I have my opinions on players, I voice them in the pub or on message boards like any other fan, but I try to back my opinions up with reasons why not just because they have played badly, when I go to the games I am behind every single man in a Saints shirt for the 90 minutes, again that is nothing out of the ordinary, it's just what football supporters do, or at least used to. It's a team game, we should win as a team, draw as a team and lose as a team, that includes the supporters. Individual errors sometimes cost games, but they even out over a season, the team is bigger than the individual. This is a period of consolidation, things take time and in every season since we returned to the Premier League, including last year, it has generally been the case that patience has been rewarded, remember that ! 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