eddie

Bright first half I thought. Could go either way second half. Newcastle haven't offered up much, although we aren't great with clearances. If you put a ball in our box or hoof it long, we look shaky. Think we need a bit more in midfield to get the ball forward quicker. If it falls to Ings or Djenepo in a good position, think we'll nick it 1-0

Can't see the normal Hojbjerg thread so starting a new one. Apparently won possession back in midfield 18 times, a record in a Prem game since Whoscored started collecting data 10 years ago. Watched the full 90 mins but can't say he especially stood out to me - seemed to me all our lot were pressing and winning the ball back quickly for 70 mins. Could be a case of 'you can prove anything with the right stats' but found it interesting nonetheless.

In: 11 Out: 11

Happy with that fixture list actually. Good mix of home/away and top/bottom of the table. Only one back-to-back weekend against top 6 sides.

Apparently I'm late to the table. Only just heard about this today. It looks dodgy as ****. The photos, the fact they registered their website two months ago, the previous-unheard of star-studded coaches. Either it's a way to get money into the club but avoiding the normal regulations/oversight, or this is an odd marketing/expansion into the U.K./Europe deal that Gao insisted was a condition of him taking over the club, to whatever end. The Chinese link isn't the problem here. If it was a U.K. company I'd be as worried. Helpful article: https://www.scmp.com/sport/football/article/3010161/premier-league-southampton-sign-record-shirt-deal-ld-sports-who-are

Redmond, Gunn, Valery, Hojbjerg and JWP are the silver lining in what has been a forgettable season. We need to get our centre back situation sorted ASAP. Whether Vestergaard and Bednarek have enough quality for a top half finish I'm just not sure. Besides that, a new RB (or cover for Valery), a solid striker and getting rid of the January loan-outs must be top of our agenda. If we made those transfers, with perhaps 2 or so attacking signings like a Number 10 (we really don't have a single proper playmaker as Tadic was) and a Winger, I'd be very happy. I think Romeu/Lemina/PEH have shown they do possess good qualities to be our first choice holding midfielders alone or in a pair, and perhaps a pre season and having better players around them would help.

Weird game this. It's a free card to have a go at them (although I actually wouldn't mind setting up for a draw). I just hope people don't start writing the 'we were awful' drivel. Liverpool are an excellent team and I fully expect us to get hammered so I won't be disappointed if we don't grab at least a point. Having said that I genuinely think we can beat them, if we set up right with good subs and attack the ball we can give any teams in the league a quality game in current form. We almost had United for God's sake. And beat Arsenal and Spurs since RH came in. But it's a free card this. Losing does nothing to our survival hopes given that our run-in (especially with Liverpool out the way) is damned easier than the others.

My thanks for posting this. Absolutely hilarious.

fcking chuffed with that. thought we played excellently for most of the game, maybe tailed off a tad but hey. Yoshida and Bertrand showed Targett/Stephens what real defending/attacking is like. Hopefully we won't see either of those two on the pitch unless injuries hit. We've missed that left flank Redders/Bertrand combo. JWP, PEH and Romeu were solid. Hopefully when Ings comes back we'll be able to stay up. arsenal scored 5 today, makes me feel better about the result. Fulham were poor defensively but you can only beat what's in front of you and we managed it. The fact they were poor doesn't take anything from the result. Onwards...

Not clued up so perhaps someone knows. Can we recall loans at any point in the season? I forget...

Bear in mind our team stats for this season: Second highest number of interceptions. Third highest number of clearances. Third highest number of successful tackles. Four players the poster suggested kicking out the club: Vest, Yoshida, Stephens, Targett. Vestergaard has the third highest clearances for a player. To suggest he should leave is just ridiculous in my opinion. I think him and Bednarek are solid. But we do need a new center-back. We've reportedly been looking in the market for a new center-half, I reckon Ralph rates Bednarek, he rates Vestergaard, but he feels Yoshi/Stephens (Stephens less so), while good back-up options, would be better on the bench. And that's fine. Targett obviously isn't our first-choice left back, and if we get a new first-choice center-back (I think Ralph feels the same based on the rumours), I'm absolutely fine with keeping those players the poster mentioned as stand-ins. We've cleaned out our squad of idle first-teamers this January. Are you now suggesting we need to clear out our reserve options? With a make-shift defense we managed some fairly impressive statistics. When the first-choices are back (Bertrand/new RB/new CB) we'll be absolutely fine. And Yoshi/Stephens/Targett go back to the bench.

christ. there’s a lot of nonsense on here but this has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve read in a while. Cheers for the laugh!

Any actual links/ITK snippets or are we still just discussing which players we don't rate highly?

Agreed. I never thought he was as bad as some on this platform make him out to be. He's a decent attacking option (didn't he used to play right wing?) and I see makes some decent tackles during the game. Perhaps there are better defensive and attacking options at right-back out there, and his decision-making has left me exasperated more than once, and I'd be happy to see what other options we can bring in. In the same breath I won't be happy per se that he's gone.

You have my thanks! Great stream! Does it only have main channels, or SkySports etc. too?

Yeah... Anyone but Pellegrino would have been able to breathe new life into the team and galvanise an end of season effort to avoid relegation.

agree with all of that. good effort against an unbeaten chelsea side when confidence is low. ings was a fairly bad miss, although his and bertrand’s chances weren’t the biggest ‘sitters’ i’ve seen. 3-0 was harsh over 90 minutes but when you concede that much possession to chelsea it’s going to hurt. not really sure what the answer is. hughes, reed and some players are easy targets, but to be honest I can see them being scapegoats for a general lack of direction in terms of recruitment, player management and confidence. Getting rid of them could easily be worse than what we have now - and that’s saying something. No wins in 26 games is awful and we’ve lost our reputation as the best of the rest from 4-5 seasons ago. sad state of affairs and I for one won’t be calling for anyone to leave because i just don’t have the knowledge of the inside workings of the club to know what’a really going on, and at whose feet the problems lie.

don’t get this ‘we played poorly and were lucky’ or ‘negative football second half’ ... i thought we absolutely dominated the first half. palace hardly had the ball and we had chance after chance. great movement, attacking intent. second half was simply a great defensive display, from mccarthy to the back 4/5. i thought Cedric especially made some excellent tackles and did a great job of stopping attacks down palaces left side. we changed 2 attackers for 2 defensive players (Romeu and Targett) to close out the game and thats exactly what we did. which is unlike us, granted, and usually a cautious approach hasn’t worked well for us. but today i thought we defended well against intense palace pressure second half, and first half had all of the ball and did something useful with it. austin’s pen was awful, mccarthy saved us on 3-4 occasions and PEH showed he’s got some pace. I liked the fact lemina was able to play a little forward after Romeu was bought on beside PEH in the middle of the field. Bertrand and Redmond continue to link up excellently. And Ings firmly deserves the No. 9 shirt after I had my doubts about whether he was what we needed.

Is there any video stream for the game? Or is it audio on Solent only?

well given injuries/travel to vest + Mo, not the worst line up. I do agree the only question marks are Why Austin not Gabbi Why JWP not Armstrong Why Stephens not Yoshi Armstrong is the biggest loss of those (for JWP). Gabbiadini can be hit or miss. Yoshida I would prefer you stephens but he has had some decent games.

bah. 3 at the back isn’t a ‘bad system’ or destined to fail. it’s worked wonders for us in the past. Under Koeman if I recall correctly it got us an away win at Stamford Bridge. We have the same wing backs as before. It might have just been that Burnley set up to counter that formation. Dyche hinted as much in his presser. I wouldn’t mind giving it another chance. Ings for me has to start on the basis of yesterday, and I’d have Yoshida instead of Stephens. Those are about the only important changes for me, not having a clue about the ins and outs of countering Everton.

A couple years back we had this. Being a lazy sod with no time to trawl through the HCDAJFU thread, wondered if anyone found ITK posts from any of the threads and could post them here? (although gone are the days of reliable ITKs, it seems). Cheers!

Hey guys. The team are staying at the Evian Resort Hotel, in Evian les Bains. I went last year (lived across the water), no one was there and I was able to meet all the players and have a chat to them. Really relaxed. It's very, very low key. I even walked into the dining area and chatted to Shane Long among others, no one was particularly fussed I was there. I moved away now but it's one of the more relaxed training camps I've been to where there really are no fans around.

Why appalling? I think what LeG was saying was that there's a top five. Not that we only scout five. There are ****ing hundreds of names in each position. But there's likely already some governing criteria that limit that pool. It's not like the list will be Ramos, Hummels, etc. I think five players who have already been screened and deem to be affordable, fit into the club ethos/team dynamic, aren't well past it in terms of years ahead of them, etc. etc. seems like a reasonable number. I wouldn't completely go on a ****ing rant on the basis of a strawman argument against LeG.

It wasn't an inspired substitution. Great moment and great goal. But he was always going to come on as a substitute to say farewell to the Dell. Changed the game undoubtedly but not surprising sub to come on.