saintant

They all lack fitness for 90 minutes!

We cant score goals. Armstrong gets 2 so Hughes takes him off. Go figure!

If we lose today then surely Hughes must be shown the door. He has shown that he is incapable of taking this team forward. Not sure why he was given a 3 year deal. Absolute madness.

Yeah, defender...ermm, what's my job? Should I just stand in a space or should I mark an opponent.

And that is mainly down to the manager.

But the even bigger clown Hughes continues to select him.

It's only a guess but I imagine you have to go a long way back to the last time we came from behind to win a league game? Whereas if you look at the times we have taken the lead and either lost or drawn.....

Wasn't long ago some were describing him as a future England captain :-)

A look at the number of times we have thrown away possible wins from leading is an indication that Hughes is tactically inept, makes poor choice of subs or the players lack fitness or more likely a combination of the three. Fitness seems to be a major issue based on the fact that we often seem to wilt in the second half and capitulate towards the end of both halfs in games. Unfortunately, if the pre-season work wasn't done to the level it should have and the ongoing work is less intense than required it will be very difficult to rectify this key area and we will continue to fade in matches.

So we've won one game in God knows how long and Ralph claims that his daily discussions with Gao are all sweetness and light. Either Gao is a clueless businessman and easily satisfied or Ralph is being disingenuous. Who would shell out on our football club and be happy with how we are being run and the appalling record of the team? Makes zero sense.

More people mentioning the fitness issue and realising these players, manager and coaches are stealing a living in the business of professional football without putting in the hard wok. no excuse for that. Training has been compared to a holiday camp. Disgraceful.

For me the most telling post on here is the one where a person quotes parents of a new player who are purported to have said that training is like a holiday camp compared to his last club. If true this speaks absolute volumes as to why we are so poor. You cannot possibly expect to compete at this level unless you do the hard work in training and are professional about it. Prime examples of managers who understood this are Strachan and Pochetino. No surprise that they produced good sides. If the coaching staff allow the players to treat training like a holiday camp they cannot expect to compete with sides who are fitter and better prepared. They will be found out every time. I'm not suggesting this is our only problem but it is one that is of our own making if the quote is true and there can be no excuses for this when you consider the amount of money these coaches and players are paid. They are cheating the fans.

To me it's a combination of poor players, old fashioned manager and an abundance of goalkeeping coaches - this last point is madness. I don't see anything improving and fear that we will wait until we find ourselves in a really desperate position before changing. How those responsible can continually make such poor appointments is beyond me and like many others I think the likes of Les reed have had one chance too many.

Why do people persist in saying we keep dropping points to teams that are there for the taking. If there is one team in the Premier League that is there for the taking week in week out it is us. Teams like Wolves and Leicester don't need to do anything particularly clever to beat us. We are by far one of the worst teams in our league and opposition managers must rub their hands at the prospect of playing us knowing an easy three points is the likely outcome.

What an uninspiring team and coaching staff we have. Players not fit, unmotivated, lacking the basic principals of pass and move, no creativity and a defence that you know will eventually capitulate. A recipe to guarantee a long hard season fighting relegation with few if any high spots. All the good work from the days of Pochetino thrown away and we are now just another poor team lacking imagination and unable to entertain. We have gone back 20 years due to appointing a succession of poor managers. What is going on?

Any ideas why this team seems incapable of playing well in two halves of matches? Someone on the coaching staff needs to work out why and rectify it or we are going to be in a real struggle this season. Ridiculous.

The worry for me is that we seem to have had the easiest set of opening fixtures we could hope for two of which have been at home and have amassed just one point and scored two goals. Compare our fixtures with Huddersfield who have faced Chelsea and Man City, Brighton who have faced Man Utd and Liverpool, West Ham have faced Liverpool and Arsenal, and even Cardiff have 2 points despite only one home game and two away. Bournemouth and Watford have both come flying out the blocks. Why do we always seem weeks behind everyone else having wasted the preseason?

Different personnel same old shambles!

Just like the Saints of old - score then let one straight in. Frustrating!

Need to come straight out of the blocks and get in their faces. Start slow as we have done in first two games and it will be more of the same. Hughes needs to get them fired up from the first kick.

Didn't take long

No point playing 3 centre backs unless you have the players to do it and they are well drilled. Seems to me we end up with a back five as we get outnumbered in midfield plus we have two holding midfielders so including the goalkeeper that's 8 players with defensive mindset! The two wingbacks must be prepared to motor up and down the pitch, the centre backs need to be aware how and when to provide cover and the two defensive misfielders can't rigidly sit in front of the defence. It's a recipe for zero creativity so won't result in many victories in my opinion.

Ok Doddisalegend, bad choice of words...I meant to say you try to find a system and team that works. Hughes continued with a system/team that was not working pre-season and then selected it for the first game. Makes no sense to me.

This is my point. The whole idea of pre-season is to sort out your favoured team and formation yet we started the game evidently without a clue on either. That is very poor management.

I am amazed that Mark Hughes and his coaches all of who will be incredibly well paid have allowed us to drift through and virtually waste pre-season persisting with three at the back. The clamour from the majority of fans has been loud and clear - they neither believe in this system nor want to see it employed. Yet we spent an hour of the first game of the season toiling away with three at the back and in the process making a fairly ordinary Burnley side look good - during this time we could easily have been out of the game had their finishing been better and McCarthy not done his job. The minute we switched formation there was a sea-change and everyone seemed to know their jobs and we were on top and could have won the game. We have potentially dropped two very valuable points as surely we might well have won this game had we not started with three at the back. Hopefully lessons have been learned although I know the Stoke fans claim Hughes was stubborn and stuck to this horrible formation even when it was obviously not working. I just don't think we have the players to get to grips with this system but I fear Hughes might continue the experiment in the belief that he can make it work. If so he could be in for a rude awakening.