Match Day Thread Southampton vs Wolves Saturday Jan 18th 3pm

Absolutely.
Kicking someone off the ball, in the centre circle, is a foul no matter who has possession or if the ball is 50 yards away.
Playing devils advocate, I would query why penalties aren’t given for late challenges, after a striker has got his shot away.
Quite often a player gets taken out but because he has got his shot away the ref seems to think that there has been no loss of advantage, yet if a player in midfield hits a pass, and then gets taken out by a late tackle, unless there is an obvious advantage the free kick would be given.

 

Yeah I've always wondered that too.

 

Indeed. I'm not going to be too harsh on him for yesterday, because he has been excellent in recent matches. But equally, you don't just turn into Virgil overnight.

Lots of players can go through a somewhat unusual purple patch, before unfortunately coming back out the other side. It's great whilst it lasts, but it can rarely be considered to be a long term answer.

(To use Stephens himself as an example, along with Maya. For about four months under Puel there seemed to be something there. But then look at their following three years...)

 

With Stephens, players make mistakes. As St Brendy said, he isn't going to become Virgil overnight. Sometimes you get away with the mistakes, sometimes you don't. Yesterday was the latter.

Overall though, his improvement has been vast, and I think the norm for him is solid displays with the occasional hiccup. I'm happy with that atm.

 

Well dissapointing to throw away a 2 goal lead but wolves are a good side. We cant seem to play power through the middle and need to sort that out. That said i would have been happy with two draws from leicester and wolves so to come out one point up is good imho

 

More importantly.......whose doing the Palace match thread after Susan’s amazing run has come to an end?

 

I wouldnt mind but I wont be able to much effort into it till tonight (unless we want a minimalistic thread!) so if someone else wants to, go ahead.

 

Go for it

 

Tonight is fine

 

Maybe it’s just me but aren’t most goals down to bad marking?? Or is it that when we score it’s down to a great player managing to lose his marker and when they score it’s down to bad marking?

IMO Yesterday was about psychology. We bullied them in the first half and they rocked us with their first goal early in the second. After that it was about whether we had the character to get back into it in the face of relentless pressure. We did show quite a bit of character after their third and I think in the end we were unlucky not to get at least a point.

 

Pretty much spot on, that, imo.

I said to my dad on the way back from the game, that we got bullied out of that 2nd half, but on balance probably still deserved a point

 

Not seen any replays yet, but it seemed to me that 1st half they targeted our right (EDIT: LEFT) with little success and 2nd targeted our right with much more

1st half Prowsey, Armstrong, Cedric kept them quiet and hunted in packs

2nd half Pierre, Nathan, Bertie didn’t

They got space behind Pierre, Bedders committed himself trying to match Traore’s pace and failed

Jack makes mistakes when he feels pressure, used to be late in a game, but he’s better than that now. At 2-1 and with Wolves pressuring us, he tried too hard and blew it

Ralph will have learnt stuff from this game

I’d like to see another mobile and industrious central midfielder as a back up option. Is that Smallbone?

 

... and Burnley beat the Foxes 2 - 1.

 

But why oh why does that take so long to say that it’s going to VAR????

I would like to know what the percentage of goals scored don’t go to VAR seems like most do

 

From where I was sat, Neto had so much space with out a Saint player near him.

 

They check every goal.

 

I'm totally over this now.

 

I have just watched the highlights and am totally pissed off at the way Hojbjerg “tracked back” for the third Wolves goal.
Have a look and watch how he slows to a virtual stop, outside the D, instead of getting into position to cut out the pull back to the only Wolves player in the box.
A total lack of awareness from him.

 

Hojbjerg was very ordinary on Saturday and he has far too many games like that. There was a discussion going on behind us between a few fans and they were not impressed with him. I can't repeat what they said but it wasn't pretty.

Ralph obviously favours him but surely we could do better? He looks like he is going through the motions for long periods during a lot of matches. My choice would be to replace him with a younger version of Romeu if we can find one.

 

Yes, sadly, he’s not been the player he was this season and I can’t work out why. We need a strong, creative holding midfielder to let JWP do his stuff ...... I hope we can get one