PartridgeA

Baz KWP. ABK. Sali. Perraud Diallo S Arm. JWP Aribo. Edozie Mara Don’t trust anyone in centre midfield so would rather a sitting player (Diallo) and JWP and Stu working together looking for the FORWARD pass. JWP pushing more on Rice to stop him acting as playmaker. If we keep playing from centre back into JWP and back to centre backs we will make mistakes and we will struggle to get out (leading to hoofs to no-one). I’d give Mara a go as the central striker with Che to come on as the physical presence later. (this may force as to play on the deck more than good to Adams). Edozie can’t be worse than Djenepo, A Armstrong or Ely so let’s give the kid some game time. Aribo deserves his place. To be totally honest you could put a blanket over a Ralph team and expect the same performance 90% of the time so selection almost irrelevant. Ralph needs to get the patterns of play on the training ground and teach JWP some positioning and drop of the shoulder moves to go forward rather than the “safe” but not really safe option. Saints 5 - WHU 0.

Sam Gallagher. Beast in the youth set up

Agree with you Alan. It’s not so much that I want to finish 14th and above. I’d be happy with 17th but I’d like to be entertained. We have enough talent to stay up, I’m unequivocal in that. Do I think Ralph will keep us up again? I’m genuinely not sure he will (and the football is also shite). Lots point out we have 3 teams worse than us…. Now I don’t want to state the obvious but if we’re constantly looking at who’s worse than us rather than who need to emulate or be better than you know you’ve got problems. Best example would be that we hounded out Puel for the boring football and at this point I think he’s an upgrade on Ralph! Yes I am a relatively new poster (to other comments). I’m an observer usually. Naturally we all want what’s best for the club and I feel I’m reasoned in my thought process and it worthy of sharing. If we beat Everton 6-0 would I immediately think different, no, I would bask in the glory of a win and hope we keep it up - I’m quite certain however that it ain’t gonna happen!

The beauty of football is that everyone is entitled to their opinion and no-one has the divine right to be correct as it’s so subjective ! I try and look at the hard facts, starting with results. Clearly those stats stand against Ralph for 2022. Secondly performance, I have not been entertained by a saints game in over a 9 months. Yes we’ve had some hard earned points and we’ve shown mini spells of something clicking but the lack of consistency is compelling. There are factors outside of Ralphs control of course. I have no doubted he wanted a 15+ goal striker and the board didn’t deliver but how much of that is players not wanting to play for an underperforming team / Ralph and how much is it us not willing to spend? I don’t know that answer. Is Ralph asking for us to just sign kids? I don’t think he is. I look at our tactics - we started as a high press team two/three years ago and I just don’t see that same press anymore. It’s a half press and we are so easy to play through. Romeu is a huuuge loss. He was literally doing 2 peoples job in centre mid and some won’t want to hear this but he was carrying JWP. I have no problem with this because what JWP offered with his dead ball play but you take that away and he’s a weak link IMO. Neither strong defensively, or offensively. He does however run his socks off (often to little affect). He needs dropping but we have very little options with an injured Lavia and Romeu wishing to leave. JWP > Vestergaard, now that was a weapon and was highly effective. We lost that, we lost goals and attacking threat from set pieces. We haven’t found an alternative yet. The Salisu throw? LOL !!! I’d say literally every saints fan wants Ralph to do well and not everything his his fault at all but he’s not improving things and we are regressing. Many many managers will have been sacked for less and will do in future. Being a realist, I don’t expect saints to be in the top 10, or even 12th,13th - I do however wish for some base entertainment, some kids to develop and move on to bigger things for profit and to not go into a game thinking WTF is that lineup (almost weekly). Ralph hasn’t ticked those boxes for a while for me. Last point would be, if Ralph was that good he’d have been poached by another club. Every single manager of any pedigree we have leaves to an arguably bigger or better club. It’s great to have a consistent manager and even some loyalty but I think we can do better and we need to roll the dice. So many new managers coming into the PL all the time. I think we have enough talent to get excited once again and I think we have enough scouting resources to find the next “Poch” Poch going to Nice. Is that really a better option than Saints for him?

*Losing 9-0 twice. * prolonged losing streaks which clearly show we’re on a downward slope. * baffling team selections, substitutions and often tactics which have had years to tune and improve. * giving players like McCarthy and Djenepo long term contracts so we’re stuck with them financially. * Playing weakened teams in cups but saying we want to win the trophy * Winning 3 out of 27 PL matches in 2022 (worse record than Mark Hughes) * Boring, abject displays, time after time. Going through 90 mins and barely threatening whilst having a blind panic every time we slow down play and pass backwards to defenders clearly not comfortable with the game plan * Over-reliance on JWP set-pieces when JWP has been absolutely dreadful from open play so far this season and set pieces not much better * Not learning from previous mistakes These are just off the top of my head. Love Ralph as a bloke and we’ve clearly improved defensively this year but that improvement has been at the expense of attack and more than cancels out the positive. We need a change

Ps - sorry about the font. Copy and pasted from my iPhone notes!

Really enjoyed reading the tactical analysis here. Some great points. The thing that has really stood out to me is the lack of variety in our play. You could literally go through the last 100 Saints matches but for a couple of odd exceptions (ironically where we played different formation like against Man City or the drubbing from United) and we have no deviation in play. Not even through different personnel. Several things jump out from that. We are easiest team to play against tactically in the league. This is a major weakness. The depth and variety of the squad is poor. (Redmond or Djenepo to me is the equivalent of saying do you want to start 10 players on the pitch or 10 players) Ralph doesn’t seem to have the ability to learn or adapt (I do like Ralph) Players look out of ideas but for a small flurry in the first half There are loads more questions that come from this such as what are we doing in training, why aren’t we recruiting to improve the starting lineup in the style Ralph wants and why do we have no plan B? Ultimately like everyone else has stated on this forum. We seem to have issues with tactics, manager, personnel, money, motivation and ability too. Then we win a game and suddenly everything is rosey again and we paper over the cracks. Another observation from myself is that we are so reliant on JWP set-pieces it hugely hampers us if he’s off form (and especially now Vest has gone). I find his general play far too basic. He has heart no question, but he’s so often out of position but rarely contributing defensively or in an attacking manner in general play. Now I’m not a JWP hater by any stretch but the best I have ever seen JWP play was that England game where he burst forward and scored. Granted the oppo wasn’t up to much but he had purpose and played much higher up the pitch. He passed quicker, looked to build triangles and actually looked to try things I have very rarely seen him do in a saints shirt. That’s not all on JWP either… I think this causes us so many issues as we really need him to be jack of all trades - creator, shield and leader. I think he’s too limited to offer us that and therefore we need to look at ways of reducing his workload but increasing his output to what is beneficial for the team. To my mind we need a change in formation to do that. 4-2-3-1 would be the obvious choice. I actually think he would do a job as a deep lying playmaker and concentrate on keeping the moving forward quickly to attacking players. He can also play as a 10 if we want more pressing support up top. Just not in this 4-2-2-2 nonsense which makes him so isolated and limited in his passing options. For what it’s worth I’d play 4-3-1-2 this weekend Forster KWP. Bed. Salisu. Perraud S Arm. Romeu. JWP Livramento Che. A. Arm. Yes I think Livramento can play behind strikers and I think he’d be much more effective than Djenepo, Redmond or Walcott. I think we need the width to come from fullbacks and more rotation in the centre. Anyhow, just a few observations for a first post.