Nemi

Maybe we’ll give Russ a few weeks to learn for his mistakes and then rehire him.

Exactly we’ll be awful against Everton next week

We might have lost again but at least we’ll get a complimentary quote from Pep afterwards - that’s better than 3 points isn’t it?

Why’s everyone complaining, we’re winning aren’t we?

It will be our best performance of the season, we’ll go toe-to-toe with Arsenal and we’ll get the first goal. Martin gets kept on for another week. Final score: Arsenal 2 (Saka 87, Trossard 90+5), Southampton 1 (Downes 12)

Easily one of our better players tonight and has been totally fine in all the other games he’s played this season too. He’s got a weird agenda about him just cause his technique is a bit unsophisticated, but he’s one of our few players who can receive the ball from defence and not get hustled off it - meaning we aren’t just passing straight back to the defence and putting them under pressure. We were going absolutely nowhere in the first half - Ryan Christie was completely bullying everyone - at least Aribo had enough physicality to hold the ball up and drive us forward. Ok I’m going to exaggerate a bit here - but if he was a loanee from Chelsea coming on and putting in that performance everyone would be waxing lyrical, but because it’s Aribo people just look at his clunky style and assume he’s crap. I call it the Wan-Bissaka effect.

We can make all the excuses for him in the world, but at the end of the day he played an awful 3 yard pass to give away possession in a dangerous area, which led to the attack before the first goal. Appreciate there was a second mistake after, but that was the pass that put us under the initial pressure. It was also him who played a pretty suicidal pass into the middle of the park for the second - again recognise that it could have been dealt with better, but I still can’t work out whether he was intending to pass to Stephens or Bednarek, and again it just unnecessarily put us massive pressure in a dangerous area. And he did it a third time again later on in the game but luckily that went unpunished. Two of those passes happened after the subs took place, but even still a weak team selection isn’t an excuse for such poor errors.

A few off the pace - but I thought Walker-Peters was pretty crap today, held things up for too long, have the ball away in dangerous areas a few times, didn’t get any crosses in, granted he was helped much either, but so many Brentford attacks came down our left side. Not surprised no one picked that up as he often seems to get a free pass. I just really don’t like him as a LB, he’s not as undroppable as people make out and if he wants to play he should be competing for the RB spot and we play an actual LB.

Your post says it explains it better than mine. We might have some experience, but generally they’re the players who we haven’t been able to shift, hence the majority of their experience is losing and dragging our club downhill. They might have played a lot but they have no knowledge as how to win a football match. Similarly, our more vocal players - Bednerek , Stephens - are not reliable enough players to be considered leaders. How many leads have that pair thrown away in their careers? What experience do they have of shutting up shop and seeing out a game? None is the answer, because panicking, losing concentration and conceding late goals has become engrained into their careers. And we risk engraining the same mentality in our young players. What we desperately need is a few players - who know the championship inside out, who have won promotion, who have delivered in big moments - who can supplement the young talent we have. Because unfortunately we have no winners in our squad, no true talisman who steps up and delivers in a pressure moment. Whereas Leicester and Leeds do.

His form certainly went downhill the more his season here progressed, even on here there was a flurry of posts which picked up on it. Not a comment on his ability because he came here a class player and left a class player, but playing in such a young team without much leadership, it was certainly impacting on his and Broja’s confidence that season.

Lavia and Livromento were just good players anyway though, but as we see their a rare example and there not gonna come around too often. Not enough to base a whole transfer strategy around. And even then, I don’t think Lavia actually improved here, he was always really good. And Livramento was certainly going backwards, compared to the player that joined us who’d take people on at will at the end of the season he couldn’t wait to get rid of the ball. It’s worked out for them though but I think that’s more down to those players talent rather than us. As for Edozie, I like him and he has plenty of time, but right now I have no idea where his career is going.

Well we all know this buying young players strategy isn’t bringing the results on the pitch, but are we also destroying young players careers with this idea? We’re throwing a load of talented kids into a team with no leadership, no direction, no-one to learn from and let’s be honest more of our young signings have regressed rather than developed (arguably even Lavia started to perform slightly worse during his time here, he just set such a high bar from the start). Surely if we carry on down this path, young players are going to figure out that moving here just isn’t a good idea for their career - players just aren’t developing in this team, and tbh I feel a bit sorry for them. Personally, don’t blame someone like Kami Doyle having a go at Brighton - where at least their team has a bit of balance and gives their players the space and set-up to develop. I still not sure Doyle is good enough to make it but he definitely has a better chance of improving there than here. Captain obvious here (for anyone apart from SR) but maybe it’s time we buy some experience and quality to create an atmosphere where our own academy players can develop, instead of bringing in young players elsewhere and leaving them in a rudderless starting 11, and blocking the progress of our academy.

Not to direct the blame away from Russell, but no chance IMO. We have the worst GKs in the league, which is one of the most important positions. We also have below par strikers, again one of the most important positions and then apparently, despite spending 12m on one, no back up DMs. The rest of the squad is easily better than 4th best in the league. Problem is we’re stacked with quality in positions which are less important than the two or three where we aren’t. So easy to identify, so easy to fix. Yet somehow Wilcox couldn’t. Even when he still had a chance in Jan.

Not to redirect the blame away from Martin because he hasn’t been good enough, but we’ve had the exact same issue ever since VVD left the club, under various different managers with various different playing styles. Back when we actually had some success, we built a team of younger talents alongside a group true leaders in the core positions. We never had to worry about throwing away a game back in 15-16. Nowadays, we only buy younger talents and they’re lead by a bunch of failure signings who only know how to lose. I’m sorry to pick on them because they haven’t been exactly terrible, but Stephens and Bednarek aren’t capable leaders. They might shout a lot, and they might be passionate, but they panic and crumble under an ounce of pressure because they’ve spent their whole career chucking away what should be easy victories. And that’s all they know what to do. And this rubs off onto our younger players who inevitably panic too. And as long as this leadership focuses on buying individual young players with the sole motive of making a profit, instead of building a balanced squad with true leadership, we’ll continue our journey down the football leagues. Ultimately we have zero chance of being promoted this season, because no matter how well we play, we collapse during the key moments, whereas Leeds, Ipswich, and to a lesser extent Leicester, will be promoted because they have the mental brittle to ride out tough moments.

Tbh yesterday showed that we need our best player to be a player to be a striker or a goalkeeper, not a RB. If we has competent ownership, losing KWP shouldn’t be such a terrifying prospect because we could feel safe in the knowledge they would provide a solid replacement at RB and reinvest the extra money where it’s needed in a new GK or ST. What we all know will happen though is that KWP will leave for a decent fee, and we’ll spunk all of it on some 17 year old from Man City’s academy who’s miles off being ready for first team football sending us even further in the abyss.

That’s missing the point. What is embarrassing is that no matter how well we performed today, every single Saints fan saw this loss coming, and even more embarrassingly we all saw the manner of the loss coming from a mile off. Its embarrassing that even in the first half when we’re well on top, we’re all predicting which substitution will fuck it for us and lo and behold… It’s embarrassing that a squad with such quality that they can outplay an outstanding Ipswich team like that, yet still collapse and blow it today, and numerous other times, and against teams with far less quality than what we’ve seen today. It’s embarrassing that the issues are so blatant that you managed to summarize it in a sentence yet this so-called “star” director of football, couldn’t see it. The performance today only makes the whole situation so much more embarrassing - because despite all the talent and resources we clearly posses, Ipswich are heading to the Premier League, and we are not.

We’ve just been embarrassed by a team in League One last season. Considering the resources he’s had to work with for a Championship team, heads should be rolling that we’re not in the automatic promotion places. Really he should have been sacked anyway for such a failure. To many fans falling for some smart answers at a fans forum, but the results that matter and the ones on the pitch, and they haven’t been good enough. Failing upwards though and I’m sure heI’ll continue to be a complete disaster at Man Utd. Good riddance and now we need to get Ankersen out next.

Your imaginary scenario was saying that Martin essentially said he’s unwelcome. Your making things up and now clearly getting riled up for being called out about it

Always be respectful and polite, yet in your first post you invent an imaginary scenario in your head to try and discredit the manager.

Gonna happen sometimes when playing this style of football. Meanwhile, their keeper was completely static for our second goal - awful keeping and puts us out of sight.

He’s talking about the three of them in total, not Manning. Stewart 8, Charles 12, Manning 0 = 20m

Another good performance from Aribo today

Don’t really understand why he got dropped for Sulemana - offers everything he does and sends to have actually added an end product to his game

Don’t understand why Fraser doesn’t play more. Not that skillful but the only player whose willing to get the ball into dangerous positions quickly

It did always seem like we fucked up the easy games under him and then randomly we'd nab a win out of the blue against one of the big 6.