Match Day Thread Southampton v Leicester City Friday night football 25.10.2019 8pm

Your point of players being ‘bad etc’ this year is an interesting one. Why? What is going on to make average PL players way less average and appearing to have little idea as to what they should be doing? Has the relationship between RH and the players collapsed?

 

What you lot need is a counter worry. Works for me, and without belittling anyone’s feelings towards the club, it really is only a game.

 

which means either way we have to use money if necessary to rid our selves of a lot of the chaff at the very least.

 

We have plenty of players that are more-or-less dead losses. So in that sense, you could say we might as well get rid of them. But I don't know if we have the liquidity to terminate everyone's contracts.

I would have liked to have shipped some more players out, but I guess to me it really doesn't matter. None of the players we were trying to get rid of played in the game. They're not even on the club. So they have nothing at all to do with what's going on, beyond representing a sunk cost we can't get back.

 

I have no idea, but if we can figure this out, then we'll stay up. I think it's our only shot.

 

And if things couldn’t get worse (football wise), my brother in law (WHU) did a double last Friday: Maddison to score from outside the box & Vardy to score 2. With 20mins to go he took the option to lump it all on Vardy to score 3!! Saw the bet, so kosher... £4.6k No, he didn’t buy me a drink!

 

We have that...Brexit. Or are the Saints our counter worry to that?

 

My guess is they are in a slump and there are individuals in the team who are agitating and other individuals who are trying to prove themselves. RH has transformed the way we play but he hasn't managed to transform the players yet. Without the players he needs he can't implement his methods and if the players don't believe we end up with disasters like Friday.

I really do hope the board back the manager on this. We haven't had good football for years prior to RH's arrival. He hasn't suddenly turned into a crap manager, he's going through a process and the players haven't just turned useless either - they bottled it and couldn't find the will to try. That in itself I find shameful but its a sign of dramatic change, if we follow it through I really think we will be better off. If we run away from it as a club we will be going backwards in the long term.

 

At least someone got the score right.
https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/17...ll-history-10-bet-leicester-southampton-game/

 

What terrrible odds.

I wonder what it was before the game? Probably would've had to request the price so doubt there is anywhere to find out

 

It seems to be quite a slump. The result on Friday was a weather vane to the true state of things at the club. How we can recover from this is anyone's guess but the fear must be that we won't. As others have said, throwing money at the problems in January will only get us in a worse financial mess and doesn't do much to address the malaise running through the club.

The squad haven't turned into really bad players in just a few weeks. There is far more to it than that. I agree that they are not the most talented bunch but they are capable of holding their own in this league, even if it is touch and go at times. With what happened on Friday you have to wonder how the relationship with Ralph and the players can get back on track. My guess is that it is going to be extremely difficult to turn things around but I hope it can be done.

There are things I just don't understand, such as why Ralph is so keen to play players out of position and why he is averse to playing Boufal and Danso on a regular basis. We also have younger players in the squad who just don't get a look in, even though Ralph says he is always looking at fielding younger players. Perhaps the loss of Danny Rohl as the interface between Ralph and the players has exposed things no one knew about, and the players have reacted badly to that?

Fingers crossed that things will improve and we manage to turn things round but end up with a moderately successful season. A squad strengthening next summer would be rather nice but where the money comes from for that is anyone's guess.

 

To date, I don't have any issue with that. I see it as a combination of tough fixtures and trying to protect/cover a poor defence.

But we now have a run of homes games which reads: Everton, Watford, Norwich, West Ham, Palace. With away games against Newcastle and Villa thrown in amongst that for good measure. If we still see a lack of Boufal during that period, then I think it would be legitimate to ask questions.

(Unless Ings, Redmond and Djenepo remain fit and on form throughout, that is. I think there is an argument to say that they are our best three attackers, so potentially Boufal could continue to miss out purely because of those ahead of him. But if Djenepo gets injured again, for example, then I would absolutely be looking to Ralph to utilise Boufal a whole lot more.)

 

Based solely on the games played this season, Boufal would be starting games for me, until he shows any sign of not putting it in. He’s been creative, held it up well and worked back in the appearances he’s had so far.

I get the protection bit, but hey, that hasn’t gone too well.

 

Yep, I think that sometimes our managers, over the years, have underestimated just how important it is to have someone who can hold on to the ball for long enough to give the defence time to regroup.
It always infuriated me when Tadic used to get taken off, for a more defensive player, which was often counter productive as we stopped holding the ball up and invariably went into a backs to the wall fight for survival, that often led to a late equaliser/winner for the opposition.

 

Against Leicester and Chelsea it really hasn't, agreed. But I'm not going to sit here and only retrospectively criticise Ralph after the event. If that was Ralph's thinking going into those matches, then fair enough. And to be honest, the way that Leicester game went, whether Boufal started or not wouldn't have made a jot a difference. Plus you could argue that protecting the defence did work vs Wolves.

As I see it, since being reintroduced in the early cup game vs Fulham, he has started Boufal in matches that we'd be looking to be positive and get something from: Bmouth, Sheff Utd, Man Utd. He even started him away to Spurs - albeit arguably only because of Djenepo being injured.

But as I say, there is now a run of games where I want to see a lot of Boufal. He's done nothing wrong to date, as far as I can see. But I do think it's right that Ings and Redmond are ahead of him.

 

For the most part over the past three years we have had a severe lack of attacking flair and excitement. Players like Boufal provide just that and my guess is a lot of fans would be far happier with a 2-3 loss than yet more boring defensive games inevitably ending in a last minute loss.

Boufal tracks back well and gets stuck in. Yes he can be wasteful at times, but rather he was in there trying to unzip the opponent than sat on the bench twiddling his thumbs.

Danso should be given a run of games so he can settle in to the team. There's absolutely no point in him being here if he isn't played.

We are shipping a vast number of goals this season and we have to turn that around. Using the same under performing players over and over again is not doing any good. We need to change things quickly.

 

We’re not going to ‘throw money at it’ in January as we don’t have any to throw. Part of the issue with Gao is he’s already thrown his toys out of the pram that we spent any money before the start of the season, that wasn’t from sales, and is demanding that back.

 

To me, you can't take out Ings and Redmond and a healthy Djenepo would start over Boufal. I think Djenepo has been our best player when healthy.

I thought Boufal's contract was up after this season, but apparently he has another year after that which makes him more playable.

I guess you could make the case for finding a formation that also takes JWP out of the lineup and allows us to play both Djenepo and Boufal. I think that's tactically unsound, even though admittedly JWP has not been that great this year aside from set pieces.