SWLondon Saint

I've said before we're a mess on various defensive aspects, but this is a good point - it could be fitness, but I think it's more likely to be a lack of focus on defensive rigour by the coaching staff. To defend well is pretty similar in many sports and the number 1 thing off the block is you have to really want to defend well and take pride in defending. You can always see which teams do that and which haven't put the work in. And to me, we look like the latter.

I'm still not quite sure what to make of Sugawara. Good in possession on the whole, he makes really good and seemingly tireless runs forward both inside and outside. Seems to have no clue what to do on set pieces and also loses his man outside far too often. Great ball round corner for AA who should have played Archer but closed his own angle and shot. Won the pen due to the defender being naive. No idea what he was doing with their 1st goal. Saved Ramsdale's bacon though with that clearance, that was crap keeping. Would like to see him cross it more but not sure if he's been told not to.

Watching Les play actually makes me appreciate JWP a lot more. If only we'd taken him on loan instead of Cornet and Les.

The only thing I can think of is maybe they're somehow trying to keep possession or something? Like when Aribo got caught on the edge of the box against Forest. Anyway, I've got no clue, doesn't look like the players do either. Even Spain hoof it when it's pinging around the box, just get rid FFS....

That was my first thought too, is he trying to chest it to the keeper or out of play? Bonkers. Only mitigating fact is that it is hard when you're going back towards your own goal with the ball pin balling around which is why most teams don't allow uncontested first headers back into the danger zone 😑

Is this a fact? Because i can't honestly believe anyone associated with the club thinks our set piece defending is working as it should. Something is just completely wrong with the number of free headers / shots.

Literally no idea what is going on with our set piece defending. Why is the first header totally free and unchallenged? What the $@#£ was Suga trying to do? Or was he pushed in which case he has to go down to get the foul, no point in staying on your feet there lad.

He's not really trying to do anything spectacular and revolutionary, there are plenty of other teams and coaches who play possession-based, they just do it better and smarter! Brighton have been the best example of in the EPL other than City, elsewhere you could look at Lille, Weirder Bremen, Leverkusen, obviously Barca and probably Real Sociedad and even the current Spain team. It's not going to result in your Saints World Club Cup dream unfortunately - because if Martin was doing spectacularly well with it, he'd be poached sooner than you can say 'record manager fee'. But unfortunately, he is simply not doing a good enough job. Look at other fairly new first time coaches like Alonso, Amorim, Inzaghi - also all ex players and really making their players and teams improve and really excelling in all aspects of the game. As I said some time back, Martin went straight from playing into coaching, he's reached the limits of his present ability and he just looks out of his depth. I absolutely think he could get better, but I don't think that'll happen in this stint because a) you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps and b) his attitude does seem to be that he knows best, which isn't usually conducive to learning.

Latest Opta predictions have Leicester staying up with us, Ipswich and Wolves going down.

I don't think he will get a better offer, even though he is clearly aiming to do a Kompany - ie putting his ideals and 'philosophy' above results and leverage that into a better job. Fact is a) he is doing a massive lot worse than Kompany did last season, and b) Kompany has an amazing playing record to fall back on. I think the likelihood may well be the club plans to stick with him through relegation, as Burnley planned to, and hope he actually learns enough and secures promotion again to have a better shot in 2 years.

One other thought - which players do Martin's supporters think he has made better? Because if he's moving things in the right direction, you'd generally expect some players to be playing better than they have previously and being eyed up by the big clubs. But it seems like the opposite is happening in the last year. And no, Dibling doesn't count.

Well, assuming the club has done their PSR maths right with relegation pay cuts and suchlike, the good news is that if RM stays the whole season and we set a new low points record, everyone will think our players are so shit no-one will want to buy them...

Any links? Would be interesting to hear some proper analysis, I just don't think most ex-players and 'taters here have any real tactical knowledge.

I think part of the reason Martin provokes such anger is the whole 'the operation was a success, the patient died' attitude. We see it time and time again with institutions and PR these days and It really pisses people off. It smacks of not really caring about the patient or the actual result, only about what that person deems to have been a success - see also COVID PPE contracts, Brexit, Post Office scandal, etc etc. In this case Martin really doesn't seem to give a monkey's about what happens to the club, only what he considers to be playing the right way. So I get the anger. Personally I just think he's incompetent and put of his depth but he's hardly alone there!

Only saw the motd highlights today rather than whole game, but it looked like Manning was playing really high as a winger at times? Dibling looked off the pace, far too slow to get up in support when Archer had that chance. If RM wants to continue to try and pass it out, Lallana has to start / play as much as possible. He's the only one with the quality to get it on the half turn under pressure nearly every time. Defensive transition still looks a mess even from the highlights.

It's easy to be nice to opponents you've just beaten pretty comfortably and who frankly haven't threatened much. Look at the xG, something like 2.3 for them Vs 0.3 for us. Who wouldn't want to play that every week? Of course he can be nice about our possession stats.

The craziest thing is the starting 11 we had the last 2 games was actually kind of working. And he just ditches all of it to get Capn Jack in. Takes off 2 of the best performers in Suga and Aribo. Just makes no sense whatsoever.

Just.... Really no words. When you think the shoehorning and random changes can't get much worse, then.... This....

Well, since he just came back from injury, bringing him on in a high-intensity, super high stakes PL match doesn't seem the smartest move in the book then surely?

The yo-yo idea is plausible, but I'd have thought they'd make more money being a stable PL club doing the same thing? Basically the Red Bull model.

I'm just praying there's a plan to bin him after the inevitable humping by City. Oh, if anyone's wondering about the genius of RM's subs, you can look at Shoehorn Smallboner's stats from the other day: 23 minutes, tackles 0, blocks 0, passes 3, completed 2. Ali Dia level sub appearance. https://fbref.com/en/players/5e105217/matchlogs/2024-2025/William-Smallbone-Match-Logs

The crazy thing is we actually still have a chance to catch the pack at the moment as we're only 7/8 points adrift. Palace and Wolves aren't going to keep losing this badly. But in 3 games time, that could easily be 11/12 points and it's probably gone. I honestly don't know what people who think our squad is hopeless are looking at - there is enough quality to at least put up more of a fight than we're doing. Watch a bit of the Championship and you'll see there's a huge gap in quality even to us - go down and Fernandes, Dibling, Ramsdale and probably Archer are all gone at least. Watch the highlights and see how much pressure gets put on crosses into our box. This happened last year too so obviously the defensive setup or coaching is massively flawed somewhere.

I mean, I get it that a certain level of self belief is necessary in any profession. But holy crap we seem to have got the David Brent style zero self-awareness types lately 😑

Yeah, that's all fair. I remember Ralph looked so worn out after one game I wondered if he'd quit. The team desperately needed a proper forward and reinforcements and wasn't that the summer of all the crap Man City castoffs?

I always thought that if Ralph had stayed, we would have stayed up. Double his total, say 24 from 28 and we'd have needed 13+ from the last 10. Very doable. Instead we got the Beavis and Butthead show for the rest of the season. In contrast to this season, it's actually hard to imagine any manager doing much worse than 1 point from 8 games, including several of the supposed easiest games of the season - Forest, Ipswich, Leicester at home.