gio1saints

A cursory google might have saved @CSA96 the admittedly minor discomfiture of being unaware of TP penalties’ record. It’s hard NOT to go for self deprecating humour as a Saints fan these days…anyhow I think TP over Cameron, in my eyes anyway, taking the pen on Saturday 🙏

Now that AA is gone who is the designated taker? If there is one that is. I’ve got a feeling we may be due one at home v Wolves. My guess is that if TP is on the pitch it’s him. If not and Archer is on the pitch then him. If both on the pitch I’d have TP take it. Any other realistic contenders? I’d laugh if we let Rambo take it lol. Least you know it would have some welly!

I cannot get annoyed at defeats either . I was miffed though like you that I Lost my nap bet on Will being carded - but more than made up for it by having him down for 2+ fouls. NB First time in my life I ever placed a bet on total minutes penalties ( buying) with Spreadex. Had a feeling that Saints would succumb / concede a pen to those cheating scousers at Anfield and was proven right. Getting two was a surprise bonus. Priced at 19-22 and closed at 143 - so that was something of a touch. Extra NB : Do not gamble on football. It’s ultimately a bad idea and you will lose. If you persist in being an idiot Stop when it’s not fun and absolutely do not stake more than you can afford or can treat as an entertainment expense. Watching Saints no longer qualifies as an entertainment expense so one could say they’ve driven me to gambling in a sense!

Will smallbone to be carded is 4-1. My bet of the day.

And this is one of the most obvious negatives from the current durection of traffic for football. The players the manager the style of play even the colour of our shirt all bring uniqueness to our support. Once it’s reduced to an algorithm which says new squad for the EPL new Manager, new style of play and new shirt required even obligatory each season - there is less and less of a chance of a lasting relationship being developed or even created in the first place between supporters and team. it’s simply just another transaction in a transactional impersonal world. Pretty soon it will be just generic red team versus generic blue team in a virtual stadium but with a worldwide paying audience. Or a stadium filled with the corporate sponsors on freebies more likely.

I would have thought it fairly obvious what the SR play is/was. It looks misguided in retrospect but I’m uncertain many of us would have done different if it was our own money. You get more hits at finding a future £50M + player the £10m a player route. Buying one supposed “ banker” for £30m then potentially selling for £50m + has less upside ~ and arguably equivalent risk as it’s all eggs in one basket. What if that £30m player has a career ending injury? With three players for £10m each at least you got two others who could help recoup your losses. We have an inverse example, possibly, with RS. The policy looks a mistake but it’s forgivable for a club our size. The particular aspect that should be questioned is that it seems hardly any of these “bargain” buys are proving any good under SR ( MF excepted). Which in turn suggests a scouting / talent identification then development problem. That obviously includes the Managers too! Bournemouth, Brighton, Brentford and Forest appear to have much better talent identification and development than us for example -and are (or were ) in our kind of price shopping category. The buy cheap buy twice adage is often true - look at how many FB’s we have….and the opposite when we actually pay market price for a proper keeper in Ramsdale. Incidentally the reason that Ramsdale is a success is because we did not need scouting reports or data analysis to say he is a good player NOW - too much weight has been given to obtaining players who might be a good player IN THE FUTURE. This has clearly exposed and undermined first team competitiveness - and our club league status has been taken for granted essentially. That’s the big Mistake.

Krafts badly handled resignation(s) occurred in just the same way he has overseen the club. Not handled it particularly well. Resigns as Chairman in January then steps down from the Board in February. WTF? Chairmen usually are primus inter pares when it comes to decision making voting so this seasons rubbish decisions OFF the pitch (especially not replacing JW imo) must in large part be laid at his door. Our recruitment strategy pre season being a fundamental error. My impression is that Krafts has done the right thing in leaving - but sadly that's not going to help us this season. Spors seems to have the cred for his role but do we have a new chair lined up yet because surely it cannot be Dragan next season? I'd absolutely prefer a footballing industry professional with mucho league experience rather than the money man.

From what I understand ( and no big surprise either) he is going to have a lot of work to do. Juric only fancies 5 or 6 in the current squad. Would not be surprised to see 15 + out and 10+ incoming during post season. That may or may not include the manager and his sidekicks. I think the latter will largely depend on what Spors thinks if Ivan’s ability in these last few matches and his assessment of wether he has got what it takes to get us out the Championship. It seems ever more apparent that we may need one team, including management, to get us out the championship, and another, probably including management, to make us competitive in the EPL.. Hell of a lot of buying and selling and inducting and integrating -ahead.

I think objectively we look slower and less fit for sure. And some of that is mental but a lot is bad training. Rest time is just as important as running up hills all day. To use “rest days “ as a historic stick to criticise RM or current state of player fitness is convenient - but it’s also wrong and too facile an answer. My suspicion is that the obvious lack of fitness in our squad is less to do with rest days and more to do with the type of exercise and fitness and game training they do/did as well as diet and importantly, the ball possession fixated approach we had under RM. Ball possession and ball handling techniques elevated at the expense of basic fitness imo - when the latter should always come first. We may have impressive physical training facilities but they are only as good as the trainers and the trainees. Rest days are not the issue.

Juric was a hard to criticise prospect given the cards SR had. He has /had credibility due to the Torino spell, he was/is known for a more proactive pressing aggressive and direct football- which many fans were calling for , and he was both relatively cheap ( compared to some unlikely names touted) AND available AND amenable to an 18mth gig on what was obviously a sinking ship. He was also not obviously an ex top player fancying himself as a manager - a la Neville, Gerrard, our very own RM and, notoriously, Wayne Rooney. A foreign coach from a country famous for defensive ability, which seems a la mode, and can speak fair English, no, well he ticked pretty much every box. Perhaps a fair criticism would be that his spell at Roma was a total disaster. Fans hated him, players hated him, even the press blamed him. All my Italian friends expressed regret for me as a Saints fan on the news of his recruitment! Saints players are not Roma players but I guess some fancy themselves as top “ballers “ so running hard and man for man marking is not for them - it’s for dinosaurs and donkeys. Cue rude awakening and the dysfunctional shit we are watching every week from our team. I don’t blame SR for picking him and I don’t blame Juric even if it seems he has been a failure so far. But I do blame a lack of energy effort from many of the squad, and that’s v upsetting. One example : BK has been fit enough to be in the bench last half dozen games. Yet when he came on it was obvious to me he was breathing out of his arse after ten minutes. Team is basically UNFIT!

Juric does have a bit of a problem on his hands convincing this bunch of players to actually play in his style after 18 mths of another style being drilled into them until it was automatic. Neither does he have the benefit of having a bunch of super fit athletic fighters in his team able to execute his style either. Technical ability aside this squad do not look as fit as anyone we’ve played so far this season - Swansea excepted. So I get the feeling he’s becoming increasingly irrelevant in players eyes, especially those who are going to move at season end ( which is at least half the entire squad- a team-full at least). Those that play are playing to get attention for themselves and that it, so it’s not a team anymore. He won’t win this season so they can try put themselves in shop window. To cap it all we no longer have any sense of spirit or on pitch leadership either. Downes was never a particularly vocal captain, Jack Stephen’s has impressive 😄aggression but not so good self control but Jan is positively mute whilst Adam never is fit enough to get on the pitch for all his talking when he’s on- and poor old Aaron is having canary fits at the rabble in front of him when he’s got the armband. I personally would appreciate THB given the armband and giving out on pitch bollockings to players not working hard rather than the current silence. People maybe are upset nobody “fights”for the shirt anymore. It’s been this for many many years. When a players kisses the badge he’s 99% kissing his bank balance and social media following0.91% he’s pretending it’s the missus and 0.01 actually doing it for the club and the fans. The only ones with loyalty are US. Saints used to be able to avoid relegation by sheer guts tenacity (and an MLT.) We don’t have gut s we don’t have tenacity and our version of MLT ( TD) is still too young to take on that responsibility it seems. Next season is massive project reset.

I saw little to no sign of Juric ‘s preferred man for man marking style on Saturday. IF that was our players attempt at implementing that style it was a 0/10. There was no Press and no intensity no evident group collective endeavour to swarm the opponent and regain possession. We neither attacked nor defended with any evident cohesive plan. Unless you can call passing the ball back to Aaron from kick off so he can launch it high and long to the right back who marks 5ft 4” Kameldeen a tactic. I was expecting aggressive, hard pressing high pressing physical kind of pressure to be put onto Brighton ( and every other match we’ve played under Juric ) to make up for our skill deficiency. But it appears obvious the squad of players we have don’t want to do it - or cannot do it, or both. This squad is going to be completely turned over if he is still Manager next season. He will need less artists more athletes first and foremost.

Just fwiw, terrible tactics by Ivan Juric PLUS He has clearly ( to me) lost the changing room. Not one player willing to break a leg challenging for the ball, not one player saying I’m not having it. Not one player realising that there’s 30,000 supporters wanting them to at least put their foot in. It was as apathetic a defeat as ive ever seen.

Given our passivity You can almost guarantee if Jack Stephens gets on he will foul someone straight away, if he gets more than 10 minutes expect at least a yellow…

What’s most alarming is the lack of intensity. We are nowhere near Brighton most the time. It’s not intense death metal football, it’s more like morris dancing.