You joke mate but … https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jan/10/romelu-lukaku-legal-action-farhad-moshiri-voodoo-manchester-united-everton
Don’t underestimate it, my sources are telling me that Josh Sims and Matty Targett have already succumbed to the black arts, Les Reed is a well known practictioner of Haitian death cult stuff.
Targett does have the look of someone who has given their soul and brain to the dark side.
The last half of page 7 is more progressive than the last 2 years, we’re getting there boys, we’re getting there.
Targett and brain in the same sentence.
Never believed i would see that, unless the word no prefixed the word brain.
Anyway, isn’t he off to Fulham(Sessegnon to us in the summer)?
You mean this from @saintbletch ?
The only point I’d add is that once the crowd turns it becomes self fulfilling and any manager would struggle.
Who would you like see as as our new manager?
There is many things wrong unfortunately.
Over the years we have been well organised and defensively sound with a strong centre back pairing. We haven’t had that for a year since Fonte left. Hoedt may well come good but Stephens and Yoshida are 3rd and 4th choice not 2nd.
We are defending FAR too deep for long periods of the game and welcome pressure on to us. The weakened defence is allowing way too many free headers in our box and they almost always seem to lead to goals.
The goals today were completely avoidable. Davis gave it away like a complete amateur and then nobody bothered to follow up after McCarthy made a decent save. The second goal we were practically defending our six yard box but still managed to give their man a free header. Sure the cunt cheated but if we were holding a higher line or bothered to compete for a ball up in the air inside our 18 yard box, then it could have been avoided. Deeney ain’t exactly Andy Carroll in the air so it is inexcusable for me.
On top of that there is no belief or confidence which further compounds the withdrawn deep defending.
Up the other end we have people wastefully missing golden chances. Seriously, how much time did Long think he had to just smack the ball home from 6 yards?!
The problem with the manager is that we still don’t have an effective style of play for the players we have. If we were solid at the back you could understand and to an extent and support us defending deep and getting teams on the counter attack. But we leak goals for fun. So hoping to nick results doesn’t work. Yet we lack ambition going forwards so we cannot go gun ho and look to outscore teams either.
You’d think that if he realised we were shit at defending and prone to conceding goals then he would determine reducing the frequency of time we have to defend as crucial to success. Attack being the best form of defence as they say.
Unfortunately it’s going to get worse before there’s a chance of it getting better.
FUCKING MASSIVE 6 pointer against Brighton coming up. Let’s just hope we have some useful reinforcements coming in. And whilst I agree we need at least a striker and a winger desperately, I also feel not getting another first choice centre back is a massive mistake.
Your basically saying the squad isn’t good enough. Which is isn’t really now, even compared to Crystal Palace, West Ham etc.
Having slept on it.
In the first half we were superb. We set up very well ad played our football on the front foot. We really could have been out of sight b y half time. JWP was bossing the game.
As I’ve noted previously PEH picked up a stupid yellow and followed that up with a couple of fouls and then stepped back a bit “off the gas”.
At that point, it waas possible to see that tactically and spirit wise we were matching the corporate hype.
At HT, Silva changed tactics. JWP vanished from sight, Long was picked up and there was no more space for us to exploit on the counter attack.
MoPe DID attempt a “tactical” change as he explained in his interview he brought on Lemina to allow Romeu to drop deeper and play in front of the defence.
Silva set up Deeney to play on their left which meant Stephens was the man to pick him up. Watford went aerial, we went onto the back foot.
Now, Stephens is a fine footballer, BUT we have been aware as fans that he is not VVD in the air. In fact his stats on Aerial duels won https://www.whoscored.com/Players/92550/MatchStatistics/Jack-Stephens are pretty poor - 1 header won in many games.
So did Silva exploit a weakness in our defence? Should we have reacted and switched the CB’s so that Hoedt picked up Deeney (very Sunday League I know).
In the build up I picked Pied ahead of Cedric because of the physical and aerial threat posed by Watford. We had JWP, Tadic and Cedric in the side plus Stephens & Davis who are at best “poor” in the air, and PEH is not exactly a unit either.
So my question
When we talk about “squad strength” it may be that we are missing “Athletes” and “Muscle” as much as missing “Class”.
We are a team of midgets at times. Signing Walcott we bring in another one. Maybe the physical attributes of our squad are an issue in the modern game.
THEN we come back to the obvious question.
MoPe sets us up to play and we performed - when playing on the front foot. When under pressure we crumbled.
We HAVE seen that before, That is not only the manager, that is lack of confidence in the players or, fear.
Fear is the only logical reason I can think of for Davis suddenly deciding that a simple forward out ball was a poor decision and made him decide to be Fabrice Fernandes and do a Supertankeresque circle, give the ball away and cost us the game.
In Sunday League football the two cbs would work out between themselves who they pick up. If you are over coached you play the zone.
It wasn’t ALL MoPe’s fault yesterday, the handball was irrelevant, we could all see what was coming - again.
We need that new blood now, we need someone else good in the air in at CB, from being swamped with CM’s we nowo seem to have very few options in a physical or aerial battle. Any manager of any relegation threatened team knows how to beat us now.
We are in real trouble. Not sure sacking MoPe will solve it on its own, we need a bit more muscle.
The British have developed a “Something Must Be Done” mentally over the years. And this is where we now sit as Saints fans.
Bazza is stating the obvious on a monotonous but justified basis as are so many on Twitter. They are right.
What I am having a problem with right now is not that Something must be done - more WHAT has to be done.
Our Krew had an argument amongst ourselves last night - I tried to get a conversation going about this and got the “You wanted Puel out look what it did to us” auto-response". Which wasn’t actually what I was trying to say.
In the current situation, let us just assume for one moment MoPe is sacked today. Who the HELL would we get in? Available Managers with current EPL Experience? Well, there’s Mark (gone stale) Hughes and then?
AVB would be a damn good replacement. If he wasn’t in hospital after crashing in the Paris Dakkar rally, but surely the “get Tuchel In” mob must realise that he and other successful European Coaches will be starting from scratch in order to get up to speed with the personalities in the squad and the pace of the EPL.
So, based on that first half yesterday, there is improvement and change at last. It is a work in progress, and no I am not convinced it is happening quickly enough or that MoPe can change his thinking/tactics.
Managers have always got stick, I don’t (right now) see a viable alternative.
Here was last night’s list 
Souness
Reid
Pardew
Hughes
Shearer
Graham Potter
Any more?
And before you all go Potter - he was a really shit full back and the weird shit he is able to do to get the bond in his team over there? Really cannot see Fraser Forster or Romeu in TuTu’s (go google)
Sadly the season is only 38 games long…
Pardew already has a job, at WBA.
We tend to hire people we’ve never heard of anyway so coming up with suggestions is futile.
For the love of God can we stop talking about Puel? Yes a lot of the fans wanted him out but it was the club who chopped him and Ralph said they had a ‘feeling’ it wasn’t right, NOT that they acknowledged the fans didn’t like him so just went along with what they read on the internet.
Has he drastically changed the way Leicester play? No. They’ve got quick and talented blokes on the counter attack and two solid centre halves.
It’s a culmination of things. But yes we need some new players. Fonte was replaced in number but not quality, character or experience. Bednarek was clearly one for the future but Yoshida is not ever going to be good enough in my opinion.
Mane wasn’t replaced adequately enough and probably neither was Pelle. Mainly in terms of their attributes rather than just crudely goals.
Other than that I think we have a good squad and certainly better than our league position.
Thats where I have to question the manager. You have to be able to play to the strengths you have. If we aren’t strong at the back then it’s his job to develop a style and system where more emphasis is put on being on the front foot for longer periods and therefore reducing the need to defend. Get us playing higher up the pitch. Where’s the high press we were promised? Long and JWP know how to do that and Lemina is athletic enough to do it if he were in for Davis (which I would probably do going forwards as he has disappointed me).
We lack conviction in our playing style and that has to be the manager. I wonder what would have happened if he’d made a positive change in the early stages of the second half when they were in the ascendancy as opposed to waiting until they scored and making a defensive switch. Boufal, Sims or Gabby might have given us more attacking emphasis and got us higher up the field and given Watford something to think about beyond simply bombarding our defence.
That is what I believe and that is my view on football. There are times when battening down the hatches is sensible but other times it isn’t. Doing it for long periods of time when you don’t have a solid defensive set up is just asking for trouble.
Got to agree with this @simon-says
There are times when battening down the hatches is sensible but other times it isn’t. Doing it for long periods of time when you don’t have a solid defensive set up is just asking for trouble.
I am just not (yet) convinced that it is MoPe doing that vs the players themselves.
And yes it should be his job to make them do it, and yes he did get them onto the front foot 1st half, and IF it had been the players he should have been going ballistic on the touchline.
MoPe, latest victim of the Dave Jones syndrome - #emotionlessbench
Yay!
I found a positive!
We are now unbeaten in two consecutive tricky Away Games.
As @dubai_phil has mentioned i’m the one that wants to see the squad in tutus and i’ve saved you the effort of Googling it. The fact that he was a shit player is irrelevant in relation to his ability as a manager, but i would agree it’s a massive risk(and he’s not available just yet).
Each season Ostersunds take on a different cultural project, spending their time away from training to learn new skills, which they then show off to the public. During Potter’s tenure they have performed a play, written a book, held an art exhibition, put on an open-air rock concert and, most memorably, staged their own version of ballet Swan Lake.
Change the style from shit to shitter?
Thats an effot anyone could manage…
Bert van Marwijk on a temp to permanent if we stay up. All the other battlers who know the League have gone bar Hughes, we havne’t got thugs for him to manage like he did at other clubs though so we can’t muscle our way out, we simply don’t have men on the pitch, I also believe I covered this 3 months ago.
Its all coming home to roost and its all a sea of shite, many problems but the buck stops with the board, managers and players.
You missed “admin staff”
