James G

It's a really good question. Someone explained to me Man Utd the other day. Amorims way of playing with the right midfield is like 12 against 11, with the wrong players, it's like 10 against 11, hence their current issues. The players we have are a mix of good players for different systems because of several managers, but not good for one. It takes a manager to stay and filter out players. Russ played a brand of old Pep that teams were wise to, but Pep moves on every year so Russ' brand ended up being vulnerable. Plus, we just also have some players not suited to the Premier League. I don't think we are far away, it just needs a period of consistency and common sense

I'm just reading through the comments deciding how to think, and I found this quite insightful. It implies that this player, maybe alot of the players just haven't made an effort to step up their training and prepare properly for the Premier League. And I wonder if that is just down to Russ not having Premier League experience and not pushing players hard enough at the start of the season. From a players perspective they trust in the manager, and just expect everything to work out OK. Now someone else has come in and is pushing them harder, hence an unsettled period for all concerned. Russ had one learning point, Burnley, who tried the same thing and failed, but he continued nonetheless

The Strasbourg guy is supposedly good, the defender, he has been advised by Liverpool related someones to come to us. I don't know about Bednarek, but maybe it's an in and out The other guy is a random, the striker. Apparently he runs very fast

That was amazing. The next bit is the difficult bit, keeping the lead.

Happy Xmas everyone

Yeah, I didn't know much about him. A few people spoke positively about him, but obviously it went pear shaped. You get events, they are mainly about football helping in the community, and you get random attendees. Southampton,off the pitch, are great. But I am based in Scotland, so a colleague has been going to them of late. We're struggling to get money from the local council, so we count on funding from the police, NHS, sport, local schools. All that shannanigans

My family run a mental health charity in England and we get funding from football and attend occasional events to keep up appearances. I've not been to one for a while, but that is my line of contact for this. It might just be gossip, I don't know

There is a rumour within the club that Martin is going, but there's nothing beyond that, and that is from someone in the events team, off the record

I was thinking of the clear and obvious rule. If VAR is taking 5 minutes, then it surely can't be classed as clear and obvious. It's just an idea

I think you give var a limited amount of time, like 45 seconds, then it goes with the decision of the referee.

It's exactly what I was going to say. Liverpool didn't earn any goals, it was all mistakes again, and it's the same story every week. It's a shame

Liverpool press the space, anticipate the passing passages, so this will lead to goals from defensive errors this week. They also push players forward to overwhelm space, so to win, we need to go forward fast and outnumber them after they have come forward. If we play as usual, I can see Liverpool scoring a few

What's happening is, teams are blocking the passing route forward for Southampton and leaving the route to the keeper open. Martin is then shouting at the defenders to pass to each other to create new passing routes forward, but eventually a mistake occurs and the opposition attacks and scores. It doesn't matter what the formation is. This is what needs fixed

It's interesting, because Pep said Southampton were defending by having the ball and moving it around and not by actually defending. But there is an argument whereby the possession based game is deskilling the players by not allowing them to do the fundamentals of the game. And I suppose if the training sessions focus on possession, that is why the players appear bad and unprepared when the opposition has the ball

If Southampton have 80 per cent possession, that gives the opposition 18 minutes of the game to score a goal. Obviously, we've not been winning with all that possession. However, if we were to play differently and have less possession, would that mean the opposition with more possession would score even more goals. If you think our defense I bad, then I'm assuming it's not a good idea to give the opposition the ball. So, maybe if we are considering a managerial change, it has to be someone who plays in a similar way, but can turn possession into goals, if such a person exists