Tom57

I think our only salvation may be that Chelsea won't care enough to score more than 6 or 7. First half might be like Tottenham though

I wonder how Rusk's input will affect how we set up tomorrow. If it's anything like the Fulham game we'll be playing very defensively

I wonder if this is more Juric asking for some help with new ideas after he's admitted he can't play the way he'd like, or if it's Sports Republic telling Juric he needs help and that he needs to listen to Rusk's ideas so we can at least pick up a few more points by the end of the season

I think Rusk saw what we did against Arsenal in the first half and said 'If I can't win a game I can at least draw one'. The fact there was no attacking presence was almost on purpose I think, with even our central striker in Armstrong being expected to be more defensive than attack minded. Incidentally, I think that may be why he wasn't taken off earlier for Onuachu; Armstrong was at least chasing back and helping out, while Onuachu wouldn't have tracked back at all or if he did he wouldn't have been as mobile at closing down. This obviously isn't how we can play forever, but at least we have something to work with now. I'll be very interested to see how we set up on Boxing Day. I think to stay up we'd need about 30 more points from the remaining 21 games, which over a 38 game season would equal about 54 points. That'd get you about 10th, so midtable form would be necessary for the rest of the season. I won't get my hopes up, but if Juric is as good as some say he is at getting results from limited squads, we could be ok. We could also finish on 10 points and take the record from Derby, you never know! 😅

There's The Shooting Star as well (but obviously that's just the sci fi other half of The Hobbit's fantasy) and the occasional Apocalypse night at the Heartbreakers or Sobar or wherever it is now. Not a metal fan myself but my friends are really into it.

I wonder how he'll do if he likes a target man and our only two are Stewart who has a default state of being injured, and Onuachu who may have already decided he's leaving in January. I guess we could buy one but Sport Republic may not be interested in spending in January.

I guess the question is, how fun is it being a Bristol City, Preston NE, Millwall or Stoke fan? Because if we're spending almost all of our time in the Championship and rarely if ever playing in the Premier League, that's what it'd be like.

Thanks for the advice! We'll probably aim for the park and ride at Mill Road and then get the train if we're struggling with traffic and don't think we'll make it. Is the parking free at those train stations too then?

My brother's driving us both there for this one and neither have been to the Amex before. Is it better to get the park and ride from one of the two places, or park in the city and get the train in? We'll be leaving Southampton about 4pm so I'd imagine we'll arrive in Brighton about 6:15pm to 6:45pm.

Maybe something like: McCarthy Sugawara Stephens THB Taylor KWP Ugochukwu/Aribo Fernandes Onuachu Archer or 4 atb: McCarthy Sugawara Stephens THB KWP Ugochukwu/Aribo Fernandes Lallana Dibling Archer Armstrong Admittedly nothing looks great

Yeah, that is true. Looking at when those results happened, they were fairly evenly spaced throughout the season, so it wasn't like they were getting used to the league or that they'd given up at the end of the season when they all happened. Unfortunately points wise, a 2-0 loss gets you the same number of points as a 8-0 loss.

I'm interested to see how people think we compare to a couple of other low point scoring teams from the Premier League's history. Everyone knows Derby ended up with 11 points and Sheffield Utd were only last season so I picked them too, ending up on 16 points. Derby infamously were essentially a midtable championship side trying to compete in the Premier League, whilst also suffering off the field issues with new owners with a stingy attitude to purchasing players. After accidentally getting promoted (beating us in the process), they won one game all season against Newcastle (they also drew with them in the reverse fixture which is quite funny to think about; Derby got over a third of their points against Newcastle alone 😂) Sheffield United got automatically promoted with one of the best teams in the championship at the time, but sold all the better players, leaving them with a championship playoff level team. They were quite pragmatic though, and managed to fairly comfortably get enough points to avoid going into the history books. We probably have a similar quality squad to Sheffield United last season, but we're not playing to our strengths and are being very naive in trying to pass more technically gifted teams to death. I think Derby had a worse team than us, but the premier league may have been less competitive then. I personally think we'll end on about 12-15 points if nothing changes. I think we'll stumble to the odd win or two like at Everton, and a couple of draws. After 11 games: Derby- 6 points Sheffield Utd - 4 points Us- 4 points

Don't you need a UEFA Pro coaching badge to manage in the Premier League? Lallana said in April he had his A badge, but he also said he probably wouldn't be able to get the pro one until he retired

Why do saints never make it easy? No one can ever say we take the easy route supporting Southampton

To be fair to him it isn't a totally new game plan. He's trying to emulate something similar to the 2010-12 sort of era Spain and Barcelona teams. Unfortunately for him and every other manager in the last ten or so years who've tried to play like that, it's impossible to get results playing that extreme possession game unless you have a group of some of the most technically gifted players to have ever played the game like Spain and Barcelona did then. Even Guardiola has stopped trying to play like that with his other teams since because even his Premier League and Bundesliga winning teams aren't technically good enough to play that way.

It probably won't be a humongous win for City as it just isn't worth the effort for them. They'll win 2 or 3-0 at a canter, basically treating it like a cup game against lower league opposition. The teams we need to worry about beating us by cricket scores are the up and coming European competition teams like Villa, for whom a big 8-0 win would be something they'd talk about at the end of the season as being a highlight. The games against the likes of us, Ipswich, Palace, Wolves etc. don't really register on the radars of the title contenders at the end of the season unless we don't lose and they don't win the title. My team: Ramsdale; Sugawara, THB, Bednarek, KWP; Aribo, Downes, Fernandes; Dibling, Onuachu, Archer

I'm by far not a master tactician, but surely anyone can see that by leaving Manning at lb basically on his own we're going to completely give Leicester complete freedom do what what they like offensively down the left. Taylor for sugawara was the obvious change if he had to come off injured. It's rare one change can completely ruin you like that one did. First half was nice though I guess...

Manning was the wing back against arsenal, with kwp slotting in a bit when arsenal attacked down the left. Not that Manning got forward much, he basically got to the half way line and passed it inside then didn't go further forward. I wonder if we're going to sit deep again and try to hit Leicester on the break, perhaps trying to get a first clean sheet

Manning got into the attacking third about 0 times against Arsenal which was ok as his job was to help control Saka, but today we need someone attacking down the left and he won't do that, or at least nowhere nearly as effectively as someone like even Armstrong or Fraser would.

Is there any merit to sticking to Archer through the middle? I agree Onuachu looked promising when he came on against Arsenal, but Archer did finally score and it might be worth giving him at least the first half to get some scoring form going. I'm not sure whether putting him out on the wing might not suit his game as well, and kill off any momentum he might start to pick up. We finally have one of our strikers scoring a goal in the Premier League, and I'd be reticent to throw any chance of that happening again any time soon out the window 😬

I think we defended really well in the first half but scoring like that made us our own worst enemy in some ways as we suddenly deluded ourselves into thinking we could beat Arsenal at their own game. As encouraging as it is to keep one of the best teams in the league out for as long as we did, we were basically playing the San Marino game which is pointless in any game you want to win, and which any half competent team should be able to do effectively with fresh legs for at least 45 mins. The Leicester game will have a very different approach I'd expect and we really need to win as we aren't beating Man City which would put us on 1 or 2 points after 9 games

Hello, long time lurker, first time poster here. That's a weird line up for sure. Maybe a 451 with Manning as a LM. I really very hope he isn't playing lb as he's not even championship level there defensively