Charlie Wayman

It still shocks me how many of our fans are still trying to defend the indefensible. Any other club would have ditched Hasenhüttl long ago. The very fact that he smiles and joshes his way through humiliations and spends much time ingratiating himself with top club managers tells us all we ned to know. He is so deeply entrenched in Saints management set-up that he senses he is fireproof, Semmens can't boot him out simply because they are in this together right up to the neck. The one unknown factor is Gao. Why hasn't he intervened yet? That's the question.

What the heck was Hasenhüttl doing at the end of the match ingratiating himself with Guardiola. He should have been angry and spitting blood and bawling at idiots like Stephens and Adams for making costly mistakes, not smiling and behaving as though he had been a very good boy and needed praise from the All High Priest of World Football. If you're a Saint Ralph than act like one. We don't do crumbs from the table of arrogant twits. Grow some will you for goodness sake. It is not OK to smile and fawn when your team has just been thrashed 5-2 and made to look like chumps. Guardiola succeeds because he has hundreds of zillions of ackers to buy the best players in the world not because he is some kind of over-arching Authority who must not be challenged. All the time you hold these people in such high esteem you will always be in awe and never be able to challenge them.

In fairness it was the word 'pal' that he objected to and where it was placed in your sentence. He read it quite reasonably as sarcasm and a put down.

Bizarre from beginning to end. Angry, frustrated and thoroughly disillusioned yet again. Half their best XI rested, never needing to get out of 3rd gear and yet they score at will and win at a canter. Where is the satisfaction of surviving in this league by being only slightly better over a season than the three relegated teams?

Popularity has little to do with management ability. Bielsa is about as lovable and communicative as a grizzly bear in a bad mood yet Leeds fans adore him.

None of this adds up to a row of beans. Effectiveness and success are measured by results and points on the board.

Not at all. Ralph has suffered two 9-0 defeats no way will his CV stand another. He has no option but to play his strongest team and go for it, This will not be the time for pointless experiments, he doesn't think like that at all.

One suspects that the London Life suits him rather more than the sylvan glades of the New Forest. If he is happier and more settled there and that is reflected in greater dedication to his trade and improved performance then we should all rejoice for him. In which case why on earth would he want to come back to this sleepy backwater.

We're not in the Championship thanks to Mark Hughes. Hasenhüttl was fully aware of the situation when he came here and also when he signed an extension to his contract so to imply that he is a great manager dealt a rotten hand by the club is just fantasy. He is being judged on his merits; if you think that a 33% win ratio this season is a satisfactory metric then nobody will ever change your thinking but don't slag off people who have a different view and who expected and demand more.

Well you know how this will pan out, Pep demands a reaction and we are the poor sods who get both barrels straight between the eyes. Ah well, there are no easy games in the PL Ralph?

KWP & Diallo need game time to reach match fitness. Also we need to keep our best team together to recover our automatism which has been lost since the injuries crises. Calls to field a weakened or experimental side are daft, we need to put out our strongest team and go for it. If we lose 2-1 so be it but we'll improve our cohesion and team work ready for the next few games where we could grab a fine haul of points.

Makes you wonder if we will see Ings in a Saints shirt again.

One thing's for certain the PL will be much better off without Sheffield U - Effing - nited who surely must be the dirtiest, least, skilful team ever to be there. It will be surprising if we don't have four or five injuries to contend with after the dust has settled on this brawl of a match. Adams was lucky not to have had a broken leg after that horrendous late tackle on him, how was that not a red card? At least we stood our ground and refused to be intimidated by this bunch of Yobs. Impressed with Tella, he's our future and Redmond is our past. Superb strike from Adams. Ings out again. Diallo and KWP need game time to get up to speed and build their fitness. Forster looked good. A fully deserved win and now more or less safe.

What this topsy turvy season has shown is that the season is long, clubs have good spells and bad and expectations should not be judged by a few games. It looks likely Saints will end up pretty much in the same situation as last year as that is our true level over a full season. In the same way we knew we wouldn't be PL Champions when top of the league so we should be confident we will not get relegated because of this bad run. I cannot see us losing to the Blades we do have more quality than them even if it is not always on display. A 0-0 or 1-1 draw will gain us a much needed point and for now a few scrappy draws will ease worries while the odd win will come when least expected. Expect us to end in 15th place on about 38 points.

Why be so generous 😂?

If people want change then they must hope that Ralph steps down voluntarily because there is no way Semmens can sack him. There is no money to pay off his contract and he and Ralph are too close and in this together right up to the armpits. Mr Gao has stayed out of sight and left it to these people to run the club sustainably but even he must be on the brink of saying enough is enough! You don't get rich by being Mr Nice Guy and the only surprising thing is that he hasn't intervened before. Laissez faire and wishful thinking are luxuries that management and fans have afforded themselves since this bad run started but it has got us nowhere. Something needs to change and change soon if the season is to be saved. On a positive note, big shout out for Stuart Armstrong 👏! Pity we don't have eleven of him.

It wasn't the main point of my post. You should have read it all before making a facetious comment. I get that you think we only lose because of bad luck or lousy refereeing. By all means carry on deluding yourself if it makes you feel happier.

Indeed. Even Ralph has changed his view on this. Having always advocated a small squad it was notable (press conference) that he commented on the need for a much bigger squad next season, having been caught out this season by the intensity of the fixture list, injuries to key players and the need to rest them. Mind you saying you need a much bigger squad is one thing but where will we find the players or money to build it?

Interesting to watch the Villa v Leeds & Newcastle v Wolves games last night, all between teams that have beaten us comfortably recently. Two good games to watch and all four sides playing fast open football. Once again we saw how modern defences are so well organised as to give little away and how much harder it is for all teams to score. So much of the play was in the middle third of the pitch. What was highlighted was how poor our defensive tactics are and how our gung-ho pressing style leaves the back line hopelessly exposed and over stretched. We need to watch these teams playing defensively and learn from them even if it means we are less gung-ho in our pressing. We are not scoring anyway but at least we might pick up a few points rather than lose out every time. Even Matt Targett looked competent at times although I didn't like the cynical (dirty, cheating) play that has crept into his game. I was surprised Bamford didn't floor him last night, must have been sorely tempted.

......and he is always caught ball watching. It's a bit sad when you're paid £50k a week yet can't concentrate on your job for 90 minutes per week!

Do we have even have ten outfield payers left who are not crocked? Team selection will be a nightmare; Forster; Bednarek, Vestergaard, Salisu, Bertrand; JWP, Armstrong; Tella, Djenepo; Ralph, Ings. Djenepo & Tella because they are brilliant chase-back tacklers. JWP & Armstrong are going to need all the help they can get! Actually Adams but it must be getting close to bringing on the big man

That's all we need. Poor lad must be gutted. Armstrong any good as a holding midfielder?

That old mantra eh? Saints (and Puel in particular) only ever beat poor teams. Wake up!

Ralph knew the situation he was letting himself in for when he signed his new contract. If something better had been on offer at the time do you think he would be here now? It must have dawned on him that this was probably the best he could hope to do in the Premier League at this stage of his career. He must have believed also that he could extract far more from this group of players than a superficial review of their talents would have revealed at the time. Whether that was arrogance or genuine insight remains to be determined. To some extent he has made progress with Romeu, JWP and Vestegaard improved beyond measure and if indeed he has had a major input into signings, the arrivals of Walker-Peters, Diallo and Salisu also signal some notable successes. If you factor in that senior players like Armstrong, Bertrand and Ings have blossomed in patches as well, irrespective of who else makes up the starting XI that cadre of nine players surely are as good as most squads in the PL as they have demonstrated at the end of last season and in the first half of this and Ralph can claim to have had a lot to do with this. Where then has it all gone wrong? That is why I point the finger at the coaches and Ralph in particular and his stubborn refusal to change methods. One could easily suggest that this group of players is far better than he can get them playing because of the inherent limitations of his methods, too much attention on physical fitness, sprint times and winning back the ball and too little focus on skill, vision and creativity. As I have said in other threads something has to change and change quickly; as we are not in the happy position of making wholesale changes to the playing staff, the spotlight must inevitably fall on Ralph. If Ralph has no other way of playing than his 4-2-2-2 headless chicken scramble or has no intention of altering his method than he ought to go. Sooner or later the players will feel that they deserve better and will either seek the exit door or more simply will stop playing for him.

Life is full of What - Ifs, Should - have's and If - only's! So how come according to many fans, Saints encounter more than their fair share of these judgements? Blame bad luck, blame the officials, blame injuries, blame VAR, blame the weather.... It is none of these, it is simply poor football and if the people who are charged with putting things right cannot change their thinking and methods then isn't there a certain inevitability about the likely outcomes?