HarvSFC

Steven Davis named interim manager of Rangers tonight.

Made a smart stop at 1-0 when one of the Leeds players cut in from the left and hit an effort from range too. Parried it away from safety as well. Also dealt with a lot of their corners that were close to him. I know they scored from a corner, but it was well away from him when it went into the box. Good, solid game.

Unchanged 11, nobody loses their place after today. Today's team was the perfect balance. Could argue Smallbone for Charles. In Smallbone you get a player better in possession, while in Charles, you get a player better at winning back possession. But, after today, his goal and playing against an ex-club* I'd go Smallbone for this. *It's probably just Saints where every ex-player scores against us, though.

Get in! First half was very good. The players were playing without shackles and showed what they could do. The first goal, especially, some quick forward passes and Armstrong was in to chip over Meslier as we caught the Leeds defence out. Exactly what we have all been asking for. The second half was more of the same regarding what we've been seeing over the last few weeks, but we were 3-0 up. We definitely lost something in our attack when Sulemana went off. I'm surprised that Edozie never came on, would have brought him on ahead of Fraser, Aribo and Bree as we didn't really offer much in attack once Sulemana was taken off. Now, last season was full of false dawns. Please don't let this be one and please don't tinker with that starting eleven too much. That's the best eleven with arguments for Edozie and Charles coming in. No inverted full-backs. All good. KWP was my man of the match. He doesn't seem to do too well defensively these days in that the opposition keep getting crosses in down his side, but he setup the first goal and most of our good attacks came from him running forward with the ball. Sulemana a close second. Ref was shit, every Saints foul was a yellow and not the same the other way. Up the Saints!

Imagine Alcaraz is constantly on the phone to his agent at the moment too.

Livramento had a very good game for Newcastle tonight. 🙄

Not too sure why some people have been so against what you said regarding Adkins' sacking and Pochettino's appointment right after. I remember it being as how you said it and Poch very much needed to show fans he was a good manager right from the off, which he did. The evidence is also in the thread, find a positive post:

Also hoped he had a bank of names at the least that have caught his eye previously in his previous recruitment role that Aberdeen weren't able to finance a move for. Instead, he didn't seem to contribute/have any influence or say on anything over the summer.

There’s just nothing really positive to say about this team in recent matches. From a fans perspective it looks like they’re playing as half arsed as you’d expect a team to play once the manager’s lost the dressing room (Like under RH), not into his first few months in charge. We’ve been routinely beaten by Gillingham, annihilated by Sunderland, schooled by Leicester, eased out of a match by Ipswich and been seen off by a then bottom of the league and then winless Middlesbrough. We’ve scored in three of the fixtures, but we’ve barely laid a glove on the opposition across the 90 minutes. Just nothing to get excited about. Every week you’re watching the opposition get forward in numbers and attack at pace. Often outnumbering Southampton defenders. Something that is hard to defend against, often forcing errors and is proving to get results. You’ll never see a Southampton attack under Russell Martin outnumber the opposition defence. Instead, we’ll let the defence regroup, setup their block and outnumber us, meaning there isn’t any openings and we certainly aren’t good enough to create any openings. A lot has been said about the static nature of our attack, and I think a large part of that is because there isn’t any space, other than standing in an offside position. They’re constantly marked, playing with their back to goal and watching the likes of Downes, Smallbone and the defence pass around themselves while the opposition watch and setup. We’re not forcing any errors and there’s a lot in the Championship - see the one time we did play a long ball against Leicester and scored from it after I believe Doyle messed up his clearance. Teams are so well coached and set up tactically these days that you can’t really effectively breakdown defences with endless passing and possession. The best period under RH came when Vestergaard was playing long vertical balls up to Adams/Ings. Bypassing the midfield, catching the opposition defence out/sleeping. Which you don’t do when you’re passing it around the centre of the pitch in front of them. Bertrand to Ings’ quick goal against Arsenal, one pass, easy as that. If we’d have made 20 passes, Arsenal would have soaked it up and cleared. We have Sulemana, Adams, Alcaraz, Edozie in our attack. KWP down the right too. All have the individual talent to cause problems, take risks and overload the opposition, but we’re playing out matches while losing as though they’re friendlies and that’s apparently called not being brave. Adams needs someone up top near him. Even if it’s Armstrong to recreate the Adams/Ings partnership, who Armstrong was supposed to replace has got to be better than this rubbish. Finally the signings - Downes played under Martin, knows the system and he’s been more useless than most in his first outings. Same for Manning. Fraser, his mate from Scotland who we all knew had some question marks over attitude hasn’t delivered, Stewart, another Scottish mate injured. Even Harwood-Bellis, who proved himself at Burnley and England Under-21s is being hung out to dry with these tactics. What was Mowbray doing, because he didn’t really unearth any talent, Charles was known by Wilcox. Can’t keep blaming last season either, because a lot of the starting eleven weren’t a part of it. I do wonder however if it’s because we’ve got a bunch of loans and they don’t care because they’ll be going back to their parent clubs next summer.

Despite his height I think Vestergaard must have won a handful of aerial balls during his time here. He was awful in the air considering. Then you had Salisu, who had a 50p head in terms of attacking the ball. He was also awful in the air.

Another assist from a corner for Ward-Prowse. Our shrinking violets really were just shit at attacking corners.

Anyone know why we did stall on Piroe for so long. When Stewart signed we still had Adams, Armstrong, Mara and Onuachu. So, we could have just signed Piroe earlier anyway. Again, there wasn’t a lot of foresight or forward planning going on this summer from observing outside.

I'm just getting bored of all these managers playing "nicey nicey" with the players. Jones with his stupid nicknames and "Romeo done" banter, Selles saying we were fighting to stay up every week, when we were just limping to the finish line and waiting to be put out of our misery. Now, we have Martin saying he's proud of the players after a 4-1 defeat and they just need to be "braver" after a third straight defeat. What does being "braver" even mean, give us something with substance. Our players have had an easy ride from their bosses ever since they beat Norwich near two years ago. I keep referring to Koeman recently, but he was ready to drop players like Wanyama and Mane who were two of our best at the time when they were unprofessional and turned up late. Standards weren't allowed to drop. However, this Saints squad's standards have been rock bottom for over a year now, making it worse when they actually turned up against the big six last season, showing they were actually capable and it was a mental choice not to turn up for the other fixtures. I think part of the reason the managers keep blaming the fans for the atmosphere is because they players have been putting in unacceptable performances for so long now, but the only place they're hearing it from is from us. If they were playing well, but losing we all know they'd be clapped off the pitch as has been the case at St. Mary's many a time before. However, we're getting routinely beat every week and watching the same old players put in lacklustre performances every week, again, for over a year now. Give me a manager who says the players weren't good enough today and their performances are unacceptable, while dropping those players the following week and putting someone else in their place. Rather than starting Adam Armstrong, Will Smallbone and Ryan Manning every week no matter how they played the week before. It was the same with Elyounoussi last season, did nothing with the ball, which is important in football, but started every week.

We were supposed to get relegated so that we could reset the squad, win more games and play more Saturday 3pm kick offs. Instead, we got left with a lot of the dross from previous seasons, decided to spend money on just two players, one being injured while losing our poster boy and captain to West Ham. Won 3/7 league matches and played just 2 of those 7 at 3pm on a Saturday.

Since August 2021 we’ve won 9 out of 43 home league matches. 3 wins out of 23 this season and last. How miserable.

Two light shows in a matter of days? What a treat. If we’re going to stay wedded to this formation: Bazunu KWP - Bednarek - THB - Manning Charles Smallbone - Alcaraz Edozie - Adams - Sulemana For me. If Edozie isn’t fit, A. Armstrong out wide. Although, I reckon with A. Armstrong being named captain he’s an undroppable in the midfield position for Martin. Despite, Alcaraz being a better footballer, attacker and he does work off the ball too, he certainly isn’t a luxury player. Could swap Smallbone out for A. Armstrong, but fear that would be too attacking. Alcaraz didn’t have the best of starts to the season, but he’s still done more in a Saints shirt than a lot of this squad and he has only been here since January.

100%. Valenciennes in the summer was another ego move when they haven’t got their houses in order here, or at Goztepe. Not that I care about what happens in Turkey. The £20m+ used to purchase Valenciennes would have been better served going towards our summer transfer budget and giving us a better chance of getting promotion at the first attempt. What’s going to bring in more money in the long run, the Premier League, or French football? But, it was purely an ego move, as you say, to add another club to the portfolio.

I don’t get these new breed of manager’s who marry a system and stick to it no matter what. Is it because they have the security of a massive payout when they get the inevitable sack these days and therefore don’t really try to develop/adapt? Even title winning managers like Mourinho and Conte got stale because they were inflexible and got found out. Martin got schooled by Mowbray. He hasn’t been found out by his handful of games as a Saints manager, he has been found out by his 100+ games in charge of MK Dons and Swansea. He’ll get taught a lesson by Warnock when we play Huddersfield too. Two old school managers who know how to set up a team when the tactics are as easy to play against as ours are despite the huge amount of resources we have compared to every other team in the league. The thing I keep thinking about is that our most successful period of recent years came when Koeman was on a disastrous run during the Christmas period. He didn’t stick to his tactics, he changed them, moved to a three at the back and we became the top form team for the second half of the season, barely missing out on the Champions League. Then we sold everyone, including Koeman and reset. I also see that we’re trying to imitate City. For one, Guardiola has a set philosophy, but he has many ways of playing up his sleeve. He’s certainly had to adapt his tactics to fit in a striker like Haaland in his team and get the best out of him. Whereas Martin would be asking Haaland to come deep and make sideways passes to his teammates, instead of playing to his strengths. As well as this, there’s a reason “Pep Roulette” has become a thing for FPL players. A large part of his starting lineups aren’t that predictable. Finally, this inverted full-back stuff. City don’t play with two, like we do. Walker’s never been asked to play as an inverted full-back. They use Walker to create overloads down the right hand side of the pitch. They play with a left-back as the inverted to add an extra man in the middle. Cancelo couldn’t play it, so they’ve switched to Ake, who’s traditionally a centre-back. So, unlike Manning, he adds a bit more solidity in the middle. Arteta, a Guardiola disciple also only plays with one inverted wing-back. Ben White gets up and down the pitch out wide. So does Zinchenko on the other side, but he comes inside a lot more. Tierney, who’s a good traditional left-back couldn’t play that role, so they replaced him. We need to play to KWP’s strengths as he’s one of the few genuine Premier League quality players we have remaining, but we’re making him look rubbish in the Championship.

Oh, and Vestergaard probably had his best match in a Leicester shirt tonight, because he didn't have to do fuck all. We know he's shite and like a tortoise in wet cement when he runs, but we didn't even test him.

I'm just angry now and I think that's the feeling shared among many now. Ever since we beat Norwich at home near two years ago it has been been awful supporting this club with a slither of hope mixed in between some terrible runs. Tonight was a shambles, like Sunderland two weeks ago. I know Leicester are the favourites this season, but we should at least be competing with them, which we weren't tonight. We were fortunate it was only 4-1. Not too sure how much influence the new set-piece guy has. But, for the second match in a row we've conceded from kick off, our own tonight, which is pretty special. Can't remember who took the kick off at Sunderland. And, again we've conceded from our own corner. Amazing how other teams leave players up the pitch for a defensive corner and get success from it, while we get everyone in the box when we're defending our own corners and get camped in. Something we've been saying for years. All this tippy tappy shite around our own box is not beneficial at all. Most teams play pressing football these days and it puts unnecessary, self-inflicted pressure on our backline. As we've seen every week now, our defender is going to get caught out and even at Championship level they punish those mistakes if you hand them the ball on a plate. Get the ball up the pitch and then play like peak Arsenal if that's what you want to do. A lot of the balls being passed around our defence are hospital balls. Funnily enough, our goal came from a punt up the pitch, which we didn't try again in the match and thus the goal and the open goal miss were the only two clear cut chances we had tonight. We only spent money on two players in the summer and one of them can't play until mid-October, pathetic after all the sales money. I don't care if SR made a lot of mistakes by spending loads last season. Write it off, instead of letting it fuck up multiple transfer windows. Last time we got promoted we conceded 46 goals in 46 games. We're almost on half that after 6 games. Just shite all round really and Ipswich on Tuesday are no mugs as they sit third place. A lot of optimism in the summer hence why numbers have been quite good at home this season, but that 28,000 figure will soon start dropping quickly like it did last time we played down here if this crap continues.

Leicester are too good to not play Harwood-Bellis, really. Sunderland and Norwich ripped the defence/midfield apart and Leicester are better than both. No doubt Harwood-Bellis would have been informed on how Martin wants to play over the international break, he just wouldn't have been able to practise it with the team, but it's not like he's going into tomorrow clueless. Bazunu KWP - THB - Bednarek (If fit) - Manning (I'd be tempted to put in Larios, but won't happen) Charles Alcaraz - Downes Sulemana - Adams - Fraser Best team for me. Expect to see Smallbone, A. Armstrong and doubt Sulemana's going to start, though.

While Livramento's played just four minutes for Newcastle. Sure, both are long-term options for Chelsea and Newcastle, but both were also seeking instant first team football when they came here. They've gone back to squad roles for a few extra pennies. Lavia was dropped from the recent Belgium squad after failing to make any of Chelsea's squads this season.

Cambridge beat Reading 1-0 in an awful match. Some good posts on the Reading forum, makes you reminisce: "Probably doesn’t help that we started without a natural number 9 tonight. Not sure why Kelvin E didn’t start unless there was a fitness issue of sorts. Let’s not worry about running players into the ground if that’s the excuse either, we’ve played less than 10 games and now have a 2 week gap between fixtures. For a team struggling to score, doesn’t seem very sensible to put our only reliable goal scorer on the bench." "90 minutes spent hoofing the ball up to midget forwards playing against towering CBs." "Clueless tactics. Just play aimless long balls. Constantly give away possession. Dreadful stuff." "Dreadful stuff really. Was really hoping to watch this tonight and feel some hope for the future. Nope. How low have we come to make a load of scuffers like Cambridge look like Barcelona."

Scored some cracking goals against Sheffield United, Brighton and more recently Man City last season. Will probably score for fun in Belgium if he can stay fit. However, he needed a bit more in England, an entertaining player, but never seemed truly in control.

Oh dear.