I can’t see anything giving immediately though, a gradual evolution is more likely. I don’t think that the manager is the problem. It seems more ingrained. We knew that it was going to get harder when the Austin is Pellès replacement how clever we are bollocks started being touted. The board failed that summer and Puel became their scapegoat a year later. Until the board admit and take ownership of their quite honestly massive fuck up then it will be business as usual. Trying to improve without the proper tools ( I know Black is a proper tool but that’s not what I mean).
I don’t buy in to this notion that we need to buy a new striker to ease our woes. Unless of course we want to deliberately play a type of football that utilises a target man to hold up the ball and bring others in to play. Lambert and Pelle were both very good at this. However, neither were quick so relied upon having quick and direct players behind them (pre injury Jay Rod and Mane) to run beyond them. As @cellone says above, Austin was not comparable to Pelle in any real way. (On that subject, I was shocked to learn that until the goal on Saturday we had not scored a headed goal since January 2016!)
This is the issue regarding the ‘identity’ of the side. What exactly are we trying to achieve at the moment? What is the ‘Southampton Way’? Are we intentionally trying to transition from a side who plays with a target man to a pass, pass, pass and pass again for the sake of it side? From this point, in my opinion, we have two issues:
Tactical approach - what are we trying to do?
Personnel - do we have the right players for that approach?
But ultimately it will be a combination of the two, depending on how we want to play.
I for one like what I see from Gabbiadini. He is always making intelligent runs across and behind the opposition. The problem however is that our midfield are not looking up quickly enough or are not capable of playing the quick through ball or over the top. I know this is a ridiculous comparison but if we had a player with half the ability, but similar vision/style of play to Kevin de Bruyn playing at number 10 then we would see far more from Gabbiadini and even Long. We simply don’t have that in the squad though. Not even close.
It frustrates me when I see Long being played in games where the opposition sits deep behind the ball. He is rendered virtually useless in such circumstances and when there is not a very deliberate counter attacking game plan. He is like a square peg in a round hole in such games. This was one of the first irritants for me during the Puel regime and his rotation policy. It was strange personnel selections that didn’t fit with who the opposition were or how we were looking to play. Rightly or wrongly, from my point of view he simply picked one of Long or Rodriguez, depending on who had played the game before. It was tactically senseless and luck of the draw who the opposition were. All in the interests of keeping players ‘fresh’. What is the point of keeping Long fresh if he is going to have to play with his back to goal with no space to run in to?
Myself and many others have whinged about Tadic and Redmond for many months now. They slow the game down too much and are not a good support act for the way in which Gabby and Long want to play. The former two want to take a touch too many before looking up, invariably coming square. They are not very direct at all. I can to an extent forgive Tadic for this because he does not have the attributes to be a direct winger, but Redmond certainly does. But he seems to think he is Iniesta instead and prefers to come square and look for one-twos everytime before invaribly shooting well wide (on the rare occasions that he actually gets an effort away).
So is the issue tactics or personnel? Probably both.
I can’t think of a single striker we could potentially/realistically bring in that I would drop Gabbiadini for. I think he’s a class player with exceptional movement. If we play a one-up-top system then that system needs to work to the one-up-top’s strengths, and as Simon points out, that’s the problem at the moment. The ‘attacking’ midfielders are the problem, not the striker.
as @simon-says the issue is probably a mix between tactics and personnel.
Personally I feel it is more weighted towards tactics, as I’ve said previously MoPo MKII seems to be a very defence minded coach and leans towards possession based football.
We don’t have the players that can play the possession based stuff so much.
I see more forward balls than the end of last season but as already said by others, it slows down or stops when it gets to Tads n’ Reed’sman. If the play in that third was as rapid as some of the so called lesser teams that we’ve played then Gabbiadini and Long would get service.
When we bought Nate and Austin I couldn’t have been more disappointed. It wasn’t a step backwards because we had better players in league one. Over a year in and I’ve seen no improvement from these so called improvers. I say play Boof over Nate even if he’s fkn awful at times because he may improve and Reedmond hasn’t or won’t.
When Cedric and Bertrand have shit games it really exposes the skill set or lack of, of some of our forward players. Thinking about it, have Bertrand and Redmond ever connected? I can’t remember one game where they have played with the kind unison you’d expect.