Agreed. I barely followed the game tonight (yeah, lucky me), but after checking my phone and discovering we were 1-2 down, I was still hopeful of a draw. That's a huge contrast from the last two seasons. and one poor result doesn't change that.
Second half I thought we were good. Cedric and Boufal in particular (although Romeu beats them both to MOTM, because he was also good first half). Good enough value for at least a point. But no-one is going to convince me that Cedric is a better LB than Bertrand. And to be honest, I'm struggling pretty hard to accept that Danso is a better RB than both Cedric and Valery. If Bmouth had been 4-0 up at HT, I'm not sure I'd be thinking it was undeserved, so bad were we. People can make mistakes, that's fine. And Ralph made it with his FB choices against Sheff Utd. Fortunately, we got away with it. What is very worrying is that the very next game, he made those mistakes again. If anything, they were even worse this time. It requires no hindsight whatsoever to say that the back line which started the second half should have been backline which started the first half (albeit the identity of the CBs could be different). Round pegs, round holes. Given the fixtures we have coming up, Adams really needs a goal against Pompey.
They scored 4 times from 6 shots. We managed 1 from 25, and that was a penalty. We need to be more clinical. Prowse alone should have had a hat trick. Frustrating evening. Still, at least I was able to enjoy the deer and the sunset
He was bought in as a winger and then Wenger made him play centrally I wasn’t sure you really believed it
Yeah I agree with most of that and you know me, I'm not losing my **** over it and won't read much into it going forward, I just call it as I saw it and I felt we were very poor in that first period. Didn't look remotely like scoring and our defence was as you say, awful. I also think our midfield looks quite average when Pierre isn't playing well but that's probably another debate. I'm not really surprised by it though, we're not a great team and this game suited the opposition down to the ground. All down to opinions init n I can only go by the games i've been to, and that first half for me was much worse than Burnley and as bad as anything I saw last year bar away to City and probably Cardiff. Anyway, hopefully it will remind the players that Tuesday is going to be no easy game and we'll need to be much more on it from the first whistle than we were tonight.
Indeed. And we were so much better. Still unsure of his selections though. Two changes in defence and we would not have been half as bad from the off. Hopefully Berty is now off the naughty step.
Unbalanced Saints deserved nothing Southampton gamely battled their way into contention in the second half and occasionally threatened to grab what would have been an undeserved draw but they paid the price for a mess of a first 45 minutes. Manager Ralph Hasenhuttl has had plenty of praise since arriving on the south coast but only he can explain the muddled thinking that left Saints totally unbalanced and a shambles for that crucial period. BBC: Don’t often agree but that’s about it. Yep, been very negative on here the last few mins but that’s me done now. Hopefully a turnaround Tuesday (please).
To play a RB at LB, with a CB at RB (and occasionally a CM at RB) and a perfectly decent pair of full backs in Betrand & Valery nowhere to be seen in the first XI ... I juat dont get it?
And we could be in for a fairly rude wake-up call over the next few weeks. The likes of Chelsea, Spurs, Leicester and Man City won't need a second invitation if we cannot find a consistent defense.
Well that was a mixed night. I would have been reasonably ok with losing after the start we made but the last goal brought me down to earth rather. 1st half we had loads of possession and did nothing with it. Marking on the corner for their first was terrible. Second half we found an extra gear. Movement off the ball was twice the speed, giving many more options and some of the one touch stuff was really good. I have take my hat off to their defence. The number of blocks they got in was amazing. Last15 we tired a bit and then the sucker punch. But... I saw enough to think it very unlikely that we will be in a relegation scrap and that is a plus from the last two seasons.