Thankfully Ralph doesn't make his decisions based on whether or not Tom has travelled a long way or not
I had no issues with the 3 CB set up, but as I said at half time, we should have protected them with 3 midfielders, instead of asking them to step out to cut out balls in the midfield, leaving the back line exposed and full of gaps. And once Romeu sees the highlights I think he will put his hands up to not being fully switched on in the penalty area today. Onwards and upwards and fingers crossed we can get to 20 points before Christmas.
Much much better second half. Interesting that Saints didn't press quite so high. When they did in the first half it just encouraged Liverpool to ping it about with ease. It's the difference between constant pressing and intelligent pressing. The flat back 4 was far more effective 2nd half and Tella added a dimension up front that Che didn't. He had a good game but you can see what Ralph means about his defensive qualities. Playing out of his own box he was always looking to get something going when occasionally playing it safe was the better option. I thought we had two or three decent chances second half. Armstrong my MOTM (in yellow) but he needs a decent partner up front. I stand by my original view that others, much better teams, would have struggled. Clearly nobody remembers the visit by Arsenal last weekend who had 5 shots on target against Liverpools 19. We had 7 on target against 20 with the same amount of possession. We have a young team that shows potential and I'm looking forward to the next two games. Final word goes top the fans who made the trip and really made themselves heard and stuck behind the team. Well, most of them anyway....
Exactly. I admit to being the total optimist thinking that Saints would somehow prove everyone wrong after last week, but I was wrong, it's as you say, last week's result that makes this 'par for the course' feel worse.
Seems to be every week that Solent get flooded with ‘Ralph Out’ messages. I am yet to hear anyone who wants Ralph out give any credible idea of someone better we might be able to get. Ralph has his flaws, if he didn’t he’d not be here with us now , but he’s much better than plenty of others who we could end up wi5.
I'm with you on this one. I can't understand people who leave early especially when there is only one goal in it but if the team is not making an effort like today, why should you?
We gambled. We lost. we got outclassed by Liverpool at Anfield. In what world is any of this a surprise?
2 games 2 losses . 1. New manager bounce . 2. Against one of the best teams in the world . Even I’m not panicking * Yet….
Gutted. I really genuinely believed we would keep them at bay for the first six minutes. To make things worse I just returned home to discover my cat has (somehow) done a massive liquid poop all over the kitchen wall.
See now I don't understand this. Who previously had (honestly) heard of Ralph? I'm sure there are many many managers out there who are better than RH that we could get just as I'm sure there's some who are worse. If we had an owner with a couple of quid would he still be here? I'd be very surprised. We know the sum total of our owners ambition is to pray we stay in the league, we're not going to be spending the money to sack him otherwise Ralph would have been binned a long time ago Sticking with someone just because you're not sure if you can get better is never the best plan.