Transfer Rumours Saint Guido!

No I was responding to magic saying that it doesn't look like we'll sack him unless we get cut adrift, to which I replied if we get cut adrift then we'll probably be ****ed due to our fixtures.

I'd still prefer a new guy in now personally though we absolutely should have done it at the beginning of the month.

 

That's boring though

 

Yeah by the time we have given Carrillo and Pellegrino a fair shot to settle in and play to his mans strengths there is a very good chance it will be too late IF it goes badly. So by signing Carrillo it confirms to me that we are basically giving Pellegrino the rest of the season. We may get rid with 5 games left or something if we are cut adrift but by then it will 99% be too late.

 

I'm not worried about that. He must have been on our radar anyway as that's how the recruitment department say they do things. The manager can have an input into his preferences but they also have to match the attributes that we are looking for in a player. I don't think we go out and buy a player purely on who the manager wants, the recruitment team have to agree that he is a player that will be good for Saints.

 

Well it seems a pretty big coincidence that Carrillo played under the manager before. I doubt the board were really tracking him as their number one target. I would suggest that it goes something like black box monitors stats of all players round Europes top leagues > manager says a list of players he wants > someone looks player up on the black box > look at his stats/attributes and make a decision as a committee on whether to sign him.

Carrillo was very likely Pellegrino's choice when looking for a target man, he may not have been the scouts/black boxes number 1 target, but he suited them enough for them to be happy with the signing as well.

 

Yeah I agree. But that should mean that even if Pelligrino is fired at some stage, Carillo will continue to (hopefully) be a good option for us.

 

Our black box is ****ed

It would seem that this Guido is very much Pellegrino's man in view of the background.

I therefore suspect Guido is probably a bit **** at football but you never know

Whats £19m quid anyway

sell a defender and buy a front man. makes sense yeah

you can tell i have had a friday beer

 

Mate. I think that's what I was saying!

 

People discussing how many goals he needs to get....depends on context. He could score 6 goals and gain few points, but score only 4 and win 4 games. Not the number of goals, but how important they are that counts.

 

Agreed. As it stands, we're running low on games before our schedule bares its teeth, and it's still rather bizarre that we're backing Pellegrino to the hilt under the circumstances.

 

Why are people surprised? Ralph clearly said we were backing him weeks ago. Nothings changed except we are playing better. We just need the results and maybe this guy will make things happen to help us get them.

 

We've played better, once. You could give him one and a half games of playing well, I suppose, but the second half against Watford was at least as bad as the first half was good.

 

This is a good point, I remember reading that Lukaku had scored around 22 goals by February for Everton last season, but those 22 goals only 'gained' them 4 or 5 points. I'd take 3 goals and 9 points from Carrillo.

 

Spurs, Man U, Watford are all good performances recently. If that handball hadn't have happened, it would have been praised as a resilient second half performance and a well fought win. If you re-watch the second half you will see/hear Pellegrino telling the defence to push up, you could hear McCarthy screaming at the defence to do so as well - the players were inviting the pressure on themselves. While Pellegrino has made some odd decisions and is slow to react to changes within the game, the personnel he has had at his disposal has largely handicapped him, as our squad is so one dimensional. While I wouldn't be sad to see him sacked, I also don't mind us backing him in the market as our squad is/was clearly the bigger issue that needed addressing. There were signs of stagnation and weakness under Koeman that weren't addressed, again they were largely ignored under Puel.

Playing against any combination of Hoedt/Stephens/Yoshida must feel like Christmas for any PL attack, especially those with physical strikers. I don't blame MP for that - look how many goals we've conceded in the air, either directly or from knockdowns or because of Forsters mistakes and tally up those lost points.

 

As far as i'm concerned, he doesn't need to score a single goal if we start to pick points with him in the side.

 

Disagree that it would have been viewed as a resilient win; it would have been a relief, because we were riding our luck throughout, but there was nothing particularly resilient about our defending.

MP unquestionably isn't the only problem, and I agree about our central defenders. Given that we aren't in the market for a defender for some reason, though, that means that it's incumbent upon our manager to get the team playing on the front foot consistently, because we cannot rely on numbers in defense to see us through. And if Pellegrino is consistently counseling them to get forward, and they're instead dropping to the edge of the box, there's a serious issue of trust there.

 

Ok we rode our luck for the first part of the second half, which I missed the first 10 minutes or so of so I'll take your word for that. After that though, I don't remember McCarthy being troubled by anything or Watford creating anything majorly clear cut. One of their goals was from Davis being Davis on the edge of our box, and the other goal was a blatant handball. Away wins against close rivals (competitively) are always going to rely on luck so I think you're being a bit harsh tbh, there were bodies thrown infront of Watford shots and some good blocks made, which indicates resilience.

We don't know why we aren't in for a CB, we might be. I am worried if we're going to stick with what we got, but I'm not going to put the blame solely on MP for that. We have good players in midfield, our attack has been lacking quality so playing on the front foot constantly is a pipe dream at this point,. Having a a weak defence behind them it makes their job even more difficult they're, as they're wary of being caught out up the pitch, I believe Romeu has even come out and said something along these lines. Pellegrino doesn't counsel them to get forward, he tells them to push up - that's two different instructions. If you've played football then you'd know it's hard to push up when you're on the back foot of a game.

As I said, I don't think Pellegrino should be safe in his job, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend that he's the reason we're in a relegation fight. As I said, check back the goals we've conceded and you'll see that being beaten in the air, or Forster clangers are where we lose most of our points.

 

The suspect goal was the 12th shot of the half, and they had all of the ball. McCarthy wasn't troubled because Watford couldn't hit the target, but they were good value for the equalizer, no matter the manner in which they found it, IMO.

Disagree. I think our squad is poor, poor enough that we'd likely be murmuring about the possibility of relegation if managed by someone else. But the fact that we're actually in the relegation zone? I think that's on Pellegrino.

 

I need to watch the first part of the second half, because at 2-1 the game was relatively even, but Watford had their tails up which I'd expect given their equaliser and how awful they were in the first half. Without seeing the missed shots, I'd imagine they were missed because they were under pressure from our defence, but I'll have to watch to know for sure. A team doesn't miss the target with11 good opportunities in 45 minutes.

As I said, rewatch our goals we've conceded, and the points they've cost us; Man United home (1 point) Burnley (1 point) & Huddersfield (2 points) were all headers where our centre backs were out jumped & out muscled. We dropped 2 points against Newcastle thanks to Forster ****ing up for both goals. That's just off the top of my head, theres 6 points dropped due to personnel, not tactics. Those 6 points would have us out of the relegation zone quite comfortably.

 

Tactics play into the personnel woes, IMO. As a team, we have made a habit of retreating into our own end and attempting to defend slim leads, but we don't have the defensive cohesiveness to do so. Changes need to be made there; either we need to do something to keep the team on the front foot, or we need to change the personnel to leave a couple players with pace high and offer a threat on the counter.

Watford had eight men around our box at times, because we had everyone save the striker behind the ball, and Long isn't a threat to scamper 70 yards with the ball at his feet. That's been a common theme: it's one thing to defend in numbers, but if you cannot give them a moment's pause about leaving their midfielders and fullbacks high, they'll generate chance after chance until our defenders make a fatal error.