melmacian_saint

This topic is pathetic with all due respect.

Embarrasing defeat and a true show of the kind of mediocre thinking (and quality) that has taken over our squad. I hope some people open their eyes about Koeman. This is why he is not the Dutch national coach. He is too arrogant and narrow-minded to change his ideas about the way his teams play, and after his initial idea started failing (which wasn't his anyway) we have been dire. This last change to a 5-3-2 formation is just pathetic. What a lack of personality. There's still time of course, and I don't mean it's all going to go tragically from here, but don't think that a team that can't put on a decent show on against a Danish team (champions or not, they're far from PL level) will respond any differently against at least 75% of our domestic rivals.

Lie of a footballer. Should've been subbed and not Davis. In fact, the amount of crap SD gets mostly because of baby Beckham is ridiculous.

Whoever decided to sign Martina has a lot to answer for.

For a Scandinavian team they are a bunch of dirty time-wasting *****s.

Wohoo 4 at the back!! Look at this change now.

I miss Bertrand so much.

Davis had our only shot on target. But of course he must be kidnapped to make way for the new Beckham. JWP has the potential to be released in a couple of seasons, and make a living in the Championship. Come on Saints just a bloody 2-1 win!

The only thing we did was replace like for like. We benefited from teams not knowing our new signings and had a pretty simple start while our main competitors had a nightmare- Everton, Liverpool etc... From the moment teams started to know how to defend Pelle and Tadic, we dropped significantly. Anyway, we have 45 minutes to give our season a little push. I don't care if we make it past the group stage or not, going out to a Danish team is not a sign of focusing in the league, it's an indication of sheer mediocrity that always stings you back.

I can only understand this tactical set-up if Ronald Koeman is genuinely jealous he is not Louis Van Gaal. Otherwise it's just ridiculous.

To where? I'm yet to see evidence that he deserves any better than this. So far, the more he has had to respond to changes to what he was given at the beginning of last season, the worse we've become.

I hope everyone is seeing the lie of a footballer that is JWP.

We are pathetic, and if anyone thinks that being knocked out now is going to improve our season look at Hull, who were also knocked out by some Belgian nobodies. And no, we are not better than them.

We are getting into good positions but our shooting is dreadful.

Not many of ours there but I'm not surprised, stadium looks tiny!

Can Wanyama still play in Europe for another club this season?

It does seem to be the trend. Automatic CL spots on the top 5 leagues fall more and more frequently to the same teams, and only play-off contenders change every now and then. If you look around Europe's middle-class leagues, you always hear the same names as domestic champions. Celtic, Basel, Olympiakos, Dinamo Zagreb... the changes are rare. So I think at some point there will be two closed leagues, given that there are a lot of clubs. I wouldn't be surprised if their names aren't two different from Champions League and Europa League. Their naming as "leagues" while still being Cups seems to suggest that. The fact that the Europa winner gets to play in the Champions League also points to me that they are no longer seen in isolation but as part of a wider pyramid. I don't, of course, wish for something like this to happen, but I recognize the desire is there, both political and commercial. There will still be professional domestic leagues of course, but some (the best) will experience a slight decline, and very few have anything to gain.

Bit of flight stalking, where is the team flying into? Also what airport did they use for Vitesse? Couldn't find a Southampton charter anywhere!

There's also a lot of talk about how Koeman is frustrated bla bla bla...as if he's too good for us. What makes you think that? He picked up a team that was always going to sell its best players, and signings so far show that he has had a big say on the players that came in: they were signed from a league he knew well, and in some cases a team he knew well. Last season we fizzled out towards the end and many of us started spotting some shortcomings in those signings and the tactics. He won a cup in Spain but with an embarrassingly low league finish, failed to put a serious challenge in for the league title in Portugal, had a couple of top 3 finishes with a team in Holland that has seen much better times. Ronald Koeman is not too good for Southampton, nor is he having his ambitions blown away by the club. He has as much to prove now as he did last summer.

As I mentioned Cédric gets in good positions, but can't get a good cross for his own sake. Too high, not enough pace, too floaty, too short...never good.

Romeu looks like a good player, but I think with him and Wanyama our midfield lies too deep. We can't play our FBs this far forward every week, we're not in the Eredivisie!

I insist, he will play more at RB than what we think.

Poor result, but really I expected us to beat them in both games, so I don't see why we can't get a win in Denmark.

Europa League and 12th. Easy choice.

We need patience, of course, and this season with more competitions it's not going to be incredibly easy. I think it will be an excellent season if we manage to get into the top 10, and avoid the bottom 6. The extent to which this is positive depends on our cup success. Priority is the Europa League, where I think we should aim to be as close as possible to the Quarter Final draw. I also hope we can keep our travels small, to avoid a lot of tired legs. So far the draw has been very generous to us, but of course looking at the team list going forward there are a lot of awkward journeys. Domestic Cups are nice but depends on the draws we get, as long as we avoid disappointing defeats like Sheffield United last year then we hopefully won't be at fault. Main target is to avoid league troubles, but the magic is elsewhere this season.