Jittery game by all accounts. Looked good team selection on paper. If you can't test the depth of the squad in cup games against lower opposition, when can you? Hopefully Lyanco will take the lesson tonight and realise he still has a lot to learn before getting in the first team. Brave move by Ralph though. The positive is we still had players on the bench to rescue the game and remember, Sheffield Utd away was never going to be a push over. Well done for keeping their nerve in a penalty shoot out. Not easy!
On Lyanco, not only is he new to the club and country and doesn’t speak the language. He also hasn’t played for a long time as he was out of favour at Torino. Not to mention being up against a thug of a centre forward in McBurnie and playing next to Valery who also hasn’t played much for a while and by all accounts also had a bit of a dodgy game. He may not be ready yet, but that certainly wasn’t the easiest scenario for him to make his debut tonight!
I guess this means that people will stop heralding Broja as the second coming of Christ, off the back of a good cameo against West Ham and a couple of goals against Newport. I mean, I am absolutely sure he'll come good. Possibly very good. But the reaction of people that he wasn't starting against x and y teams was mental. Same with Tella. Reminds me when people thought that Billy Sharp and Josh Sims were the missing pieces of the jigsaw in the Premier League. Everyone needs to take it a bit easy with these kids, and realise that just possibly, Ralph and the coaching staff understand a bit more about it than we do.
Josh Sims He was ****, remember lots of people going mental about him because he got an assist against Liverpool and Everton
Gutted for Stephens Ralph Hasenhuttl says Jack Stephens could be out for “10-12 weeks”. His tendon on the knee is “disrupted”. A real blow for Stephens.
Highlights here - https://www.skysports.com/watch/vid...006/sheffield-united-2-2-southampton-2-4-pens
There's no way Ralph and the coaching staff know more about football than we do. I've been to way more Saints games than they have
Some good stops by Forster there. Hopefully will give RH something to think about going forward in the league
Spilled one during the game in a not terribly good way by all accounts. Great penalty saves, but no way he's going to be starting in the league off the back of Alex keeping two clean sheets against City and Wham. Rightly so, too.
That’s harsh. He wasn’t sh*t. Actually looked very dangerous in several games for us. Easy to slag him off now we know his career has gone downhill, but based on Saints performances alone, certainly wasn’t ‘sh*t’.
Irrelevant. I’m talking about how he played for Saints. If you want to consider performances after he left Saints, then I guess we have to say Morgan Schneiderlin was sh*t too.