One thing the draw at Newcastle United highlighted was the fact that Saints need to tighten up at the back.

In many respects it would be easy to forget the number of players Saints had missing from the game against Newcastle, new signing Jordy Clasie and Ryan Bertrand to name but two, but the real problem was the amount of possession we gave away cheaply.

Put bluntly we had two many lapses in concentration and the two biggest culprits were the two central defenders Yoshida and Jose Fonte.

Now we know the standards that Fonte can play too and most of last season he was outstanding, but he looked a different player against Newcastle in the second half and on one occasion sliced an easy clearance for a corner.

Yoshida was worse and his failure to do his job lead directly to the first Newcastle goal, his miss with a free header was also bad.

Cedric Soares was struggling to deal with the pace and could have easily have been booked twice in the first half and had to go off for his own good at half time despite putting in a great cross for the opening goal.

There will be many who will point to the fact that Morgan Schneiderlin is not there to sit in front of the back four, but I dont feel this was the problem at Newcastle, this was a case of individuals lacking concentration and making errors that they really should not be making

When player miss kick balls, miss hit passes or just fail to do their job, that is not the fault of anyone else but themselves and it has o be nipped in the bud fast.

Yes football is a team game but a successful team relies on each individual member doing their own job and that just did not happen defensively on Sunday at St James Park.

The good news is we were still good enough to fight back and get a point and I dont think we would have done so last season as was shown in our appalling osing streak on the road at the end of the season.

But the fact still remains that too many were sub standard, we already have sSteven Caulker in the squad and we need to bring in another central defender with Virgil Van Dijk the favourite, when we have done that they their will be competition for places and that will help, but we need to concentrate for 90 minutes and do our jobs, if we don't then we will continue to ship cheap goals.

Photo: Action Images

IanRC added 13:13 - Aug 10 Difficult to argue with that, thought Victor had an off day too.
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bstokesaint added 13:20 - Aug 10 From what I heard on the commentary it sounded like Fonte was worse than Yoshida? Also Cedric has looked decent in every game I've seen him so far (not particularly lacking pace either) and with one decent effort on goal and an assist it doesn't sound like he had too bad a game. There's no mention of Targett having a bad game. It sounded to me like he did? I think our new look defence may take some time to gel. We did only miss Bertrand really as I can't see Clasie changing much to how we defend. We definitely need a replacement for Toby.

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Zambucco added 13:49 - Aug 10 With Virgil Van Dijk we will win the Premiership! Okay a man can dream, yes I am in love with him and big Vic!
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halftimeorange added 14:56 - Aug 10 We all know that Toby has to be replaced with a quality CB but the main culprit in this game was the team selection. Why expect a not quite fit J-Rod to support Targett. He couldn't and didn't. Fonte was well off-colour and Yoshida was trying to hold the centre back line on his own which, for the most part he did. Okay, he missed a header but why no mention of Mane's failure to put the game to bed. It isn't fair to be so subjective.

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jmsaint added 15:10 - Aug 10 Interesting to see others opinions, to me it look as though the 'defensive' issue stemmed from giving the ball away too cheaply. We are clearly going to play more attacking this year, which is ok but when we get the ball and our wingbacks bomb forward the. We give the ball to thier midfielders it leaves us very exposed, yoshi and fonte both had poor games but that was compounded by how exposed they where. P.s. Correct me if I'm wrong but should the title not read 'sure' up?

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andywelsh added 15:23 - Aug 10 No I think for the first time ever Nick is grammatically correct on this one.
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SaintBrock added 15:52 - Aug 10 Nick, I am fed up with the regularity with which you like to have a go at Maya Yoshida, almost every bloody article you write. You should be grateful we had him yesterday with the other 3 members of the back 4 having nightmare matches and only Yoshi around to sort things out and clear up the mess. OK we may well need another central defender but don't assume that even if we sign somebody like VVD he will automatically become our new saviour overnight. Yes, we lost a world class centre back and seem unable to attract an equally gifted replacement but tights' the nub of it really, world class stars do not see us as a sensible place to be in their quest for the games highest rewards and for that reason and that reason alone we will always have to make do with lesser talents like Jose & Maya who by any standards are damned good players as you will now discover with the likes of Caulker on our books.

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SanMarco added 16:27 - Aug 10 Yes - definitely 'shore' up and yes we definitely need to do it. I think the problem with Yoshida is that he is not good enough to start in a top 8 PL side. We need someone better.
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palmsaint added 16:51 - Aug 10 Though I agree about needing a cb were were the mid field yesterday to much hoof up the park and not enf passing the ball gave it a way cheap and to meny times
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palmsaint added 16:53 - Aug 10 Lol and yes for first time ever nick was right shore up not sure
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gpsgm added 18:17 - Aug 10 I must agree with SaintBrock I do think that Maya is a bit of a favourite scapegoat for some people at present. I think he has improved enormously under Ron and sometimes his 'errors' are only apparent because no-one is thereto nullify the resultant threat. I have seen him do this for others. When the defence plays well it isn't because no-one makes a mistake its because there's cover. With no Morgan our midfield is going to have to work harder to protect our back 4. I hope that Jordy will become part of this soon.

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corkcitysaint added 19:08 - Aug 10 At the moment it now seems that big Vic is the only ball winner in midfield. As our ball possession is poor at the moment, it is putting our defence under pressure. I think Newcastle was a bit of a wake-up call after the 2 Vitesse games where we lost possession but they didn't do much with it. Yesterday, we looked panicky at the back for the first time in a long time and Newcastle put us under a lot of pressure. Having said that, we could and should have been 2-1 up instead of 2-1 down, or even won it 3-2. We're still a point better off than we were after the first game last season and look how that turned out.. let's keep the faith. But we do need to "shore up"..

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