Huddersfield 3-1 Saints - Post Match Reaction

[Torres]

Keep Thomas? I have kept quiet whilst others have somehow seen him as a potential saviour in central defence. Presumably no-one who was at the game will ever sugegst that again. His positioning is woeful; he was implicated in all three goals; and I cannot remember a single occasion on Saturday where we kept the ball following a header or 'pass' from him. Hopefully he will have picked up an injury on Saturday and will be out for the season.

 

But you saw Lancashire when he came on, right? :smt100

[Chez]

Actually Thomson had his best game for Saints by some distance and gave us everything, kept the ball well and looked like a threat, and Mellis showed the kind of energy we were missing all game when he got the chance (which wasn't often as we never really had the ball in their half).

 

 

Thomson has the done square route of **** all so far, so to say he had his best game for Saints is saying absolutely nothing. In my opinion he did nothing substantial on Saturday either. He beat no one, he didn't get to the byeline when a great opportunity offered itself. He was zero threat. Of course tackling and heading go without saying - he doesn't do either. He is lightweight. He need to get some elbows.

 

As I understand it he failed to impress at Bournemouth either. It worries me greatly that he is first change. Is he even all that quick? Thin yes, quick I'm not so sure. He is going to need a lot of time to develop and perhaps that should be out on loan.

 

Mellis showed energy. Shame we hoofed it over his head for the entire half.

[Clifford Nelson]

Last year we had a fantastically energetic midfielder called Gillet. He was our best outfield player by miles. Now he appears to have gone missing. Have we lost him somewhere?

 

Even if AP prefers Morgan and Wotton, hmmm, without Gillet in the squad there isn't another CM in the squad who can tackle. Come to think of it, maybe he is the only midfielder in the whole squad who can.

[Chez]

So why did Pardew substitute Perry for Lancashire when we were chasing the game at 2-1 with 10 minutes to go? Saga was on the bench as well, seems like a very strange decision to me.

 

because Perry was so damn poor Pardew had no choice but to take him off. If he had more subs available I'd like to think that he'd of taken Thomas off as well.

 

Those two were rubbish and IMO its not that they had an off day it is just that they were found out. Slow and poor in the air. What a terrible combination of attributes we have for cenyre halves.

 

Saints fans need to wise up to the fact that Perry is not a good player. Only Powell is worse in posession than Perry. At least he won headers.

[Chez]

don't often post an opinion post-match, as people do "see" things differently at games - dependant on expectation I guess...

 

FWIW.... I thought it was one of those days when we could've been there into the night and not looked liked scoring. Not because we are particularly poor, it just wasn't going to be our day - and Huddersfield played exactly as a home side should! They played a high temp pressing game that gave us little room to impose ourselves and prevented us from getting the ball down and playing as we would have liked.

 

I don't believe there was a singles Saints player that "had a mare" - this was certainly NOT a Sheff Weds performance where no-one gave a damn, as much as they tried, they weren't going to get anything from the game.

 

Ratings from me:

Davis - 9 - outstanding 1st half save and another penalty save too

Murty - 7 - tried hard, was pressed so hard by the Town winger that he seldom got the chance to go forward

Perry -6 - some good interceptions, but lacks pace (as we all know)

Thomas - 6 - the ref had a real problem with thomas all day without justification.

Harding - 6- one of his quieter games, probably for the same reason as that for Murty - little opportunity to get forward

James - 6- some nice play across the midfield but no thrust forward. often by-passed as we hoofed the ball away from defence

Sneiderlin -7- the only creative influence, when he got the ball he tried to use it productively

Wootton - 6 - did what he does - collects the ball and passes it 5 yards sideways or backwards, with the occasional hoof up towards rasiak and/or lambert

Lallana - 6 - tried to be creative but found plenty of dead ends rather than open spaces.

Rasiak - 5 - clearly has the ability but attitude is still not right. never looked like working well with lambert, they played too far apart and with no understanding.

Lambert - 6 - pressed their defence when he got the ball but was operating pretty much as a lone striker

 

Thompson - quick and fit but struggled in a team already up against the wall

Mellis - nice touches and added some spark to the midfield

Lancashire - brought on to man mark their CF and did ok but confidence is shot and needs time/patience to recover his form

 

AP - tried to gain a point away from home against a team in form and fav for promotion, it didn't pay off this time.

 

we were played off the park. It should have been at least 2-0 at half time and it could have been 5 or 6 on another day. We offered very little threat indeed. Your marks out of ten are far far too generous IMO. Why you mark Rasiak lower than the rest is beyond me. He didn't win headers but if thatss the case why are we hoofing it up to him all day long. Why doesn't Lambert go for the first ball? Rasiak worked hard IMO but the service was appauling.

[Chez]

Last year we had a fantastically energetic midfielder called Gillet. He was our best outfield player by miles. Now he appears to have gone missing. Have we lost him somewhere?

 

Even if AP prefers Morgan and Wotton, hmmm, without Gillet in the squad there isn't another CM in the squad who can tackle. Come to think of it, maybe he is the only midfielder in the whole squad who can.

 

I simply do not understand why Woton gets a game ahead of Gillett. Wotton is so slow he can't ever make a tackle. I can only assume that Pardew wants that extra bit of height. That is the only thing Wotton offers ahead of Gillett.

[Chez]

But you saw Lancashire when he came on, right? :smt100

 

Jesus he was a liability. They wacked over the top and he falls over, they play it to the strikers feet an he nearly falls over. He looks a very very poor player on that short display. Hopefully he will get his act together. Unlike the other two time is on his side.

[MorningtonCrescent]

As for Thomas I have heard some worrying things from people who would know about his mental strength. Although he a powerfully built defender there are stories than when the going gets tough he gets going and to me on Saturday that was increasingly evident as the game wore on.

I would not be surprised to find him injured for tomorrow's game. I'd like to be proved wrong here because, for a team that is far too lightweight we desperately need his strength and power but we also need determination and a cool head. Tomorrow will be an interesting test of his and our bouncibility

 

.

 

I agree he does look to lack mental strength, perhaps as a result of being out for so long with a serious injury? Not all players who struggle with such an injury return to full capacity either mental or physical.

 

It amazes me that some would like him to be our "rock" at the heart of defence and others don't want him to be in the team ever again!

 

In truth, Thomas should be a solid squad player who could be one of our top players if he can recover some of that mental strength we believe he once had.

 

My only hope is that the Saints fans can realise we are re-building and that it won't happen overnight. In order to succeed this season, we need to give them all our full backing, show some patience and allow them all to build the confidence we will need to overcome a -10 starting point (ie get back on terms with others in the league) and then see where we can push on to....

[londonsaint1604]

because Perry was so damn poor Pardew had no choice but to take him off. If he had more subs available I'd like to think that he'd of taken Thomas off as well.

 

Those two were rubbish and IMO its not that they had an off day it is just that they were found out. Slow and poor in the air. What a terrible combination of attributes we have for cenyre halves.

 

Saints fans need to wise up to the fact that Perry is not a good player. Only Powell is worse in posession than Perry. At least he won headers.

 

So he shut the stable door after the horse had bolted and we still conceded another goal!

 

What amazes me is that he used his last sub swapping 1 CB for another with 10 minutes to play when we're 2-1 down! And we had Saga on the bench, so why not chuck him on? We didn't have anything to lose.

[Torres]

I simply do not understand why Woton gets a game ahead of Gillett. Wotton is so slow he can't ever make a tackle. I can only assume that Pardew wants that extra bit of height. That is the only thing Wotton offers ahead of Gillett.

 

Which is negated because the ball would have to go 3/4 of a mile in the air to allow him time to get anywhere near it when it fell

[Chez]

So he shut the stable door after the horse had bolted and we still conceded another goal!

 

What amazes me is that he used his last sub swapping 1 CB for another with 10 minutes to play when we're 2-1 down! And we had Saga on the bench, so why not chuck him on? We didn't have anything to lose.

 

Let me start my reply by saying that I thought Pardews decision to sub Schneiderlin rather than Wotton was rediculous (how he can now moan about us playing it long when he took our only decent passer off is beyond me - Wotton is a hoof ball, over the shoulder talentless player Pardew if you had not worked it out). So I am not defending Pardew for any reason.

 

However, I do have some sympathy for his decision to take Perry off rather than a striker. I thought Lambert and Rasiak worked hard and well together and they deserved to stay on the pitch, but unfortunatley every ball was a hoof so they had very little to work with. I doubt Saga would have brought anything to the party. If anything Paterson should have come on as he hjas shown great strength in the air - more than Rasiak.

 

In contrast the two centre backs were having absolute shockers and their poor marking, decisions, and distribution meant the ball never found our midfield. They effecively killed our side time after time with ball tobleroning off their heads, slicing into touch, wacked through to the keeper etc..

 

Sadly Lancashire offered no better.

 

If Pardew drops Scheiderlin and plays Wotton for Swindon then any faith I had will be lost overnight. Time after time we subbed Schneiderlin last season and we became a far less effective side because of it. Pardew has already done that once and if he did not see he made a mistake then I expect a very long season indeed.

 

I want to see us pass teams off the park and the likes of Rasiak and Lambert actually want to see the ball to feet not round their shoulders - we are not going to get that with Wotton over Morgan.

[Chez]

Which is negated because the ball would have to go 3/4 of a mile in the air to allow him time to get anywhere near it when it fell

 

agreed. I have to ask why we signed Murty if height was an issue. A slow full back may as well be a slow tall full back like Harding.

 

We need to get Gillett back in the side

[bungle]

Other good things was the barmaid in the Grove, and the food and drink festival outside the train station where I got a brilliant Thai Curry for £2.90 for train home

 

The food & drink festival was indeed excellent. Had a good beer and two curries with rice for £3.90 after the game. A real bonus.

 

Pork pie in the Grove was also superb (as were beers).

[Clifford Nelson]

I simply do not understand why Woton gets a game ahead of Gillett. Wotton is so slow he can't ever make a tackle. I can only assume that Pardew wants that extra bit of height. That is the only thing Wotton offers ahead of Gillett.

 

But does it explain why he isn't even in the squad?

[ericofarabia]

My first chance to post since the match ..... a few things that crossed my mind:-

 

1/ Were Huddersfield really that good or did we just make it look that way. I lost count of how many danderous crosses they put in and as the the guy who managed to miss the open goal from 6ft by kicking the ball into the ground and making it loop over the bar was an amazing miss.

2/ I don't think I've ever seen a team go the whole match with such a low amount of completed passes. I don't think we ever strung 3 passes together all game, even when we elected not to lump the ball up to the 2 c/fs.:mad:

3/ Why didn't we have more width, all our crosses were from deep and easy peasy catches for their keeper

4/ Even our fans seemed half asleep for most of the match. Considereing there were 823 of us for most of the game we were pretty quiet, admittedly the team gave us f'all to cheer, but it's a 2 way street our support could lift them a bit.

5/ As somebody else mentioned, Huddersfield perfected the roll over in agony in front of the ref to avoid a dead cert booking technique to a T. :cool:

6/ The Rolling Ball tactics were so biased I'm surprised the ref or our players/manager didn't lodge a complaint about it. Everytime they had a throw in (and there were 1000's of those as we couldn't keep the ball in play ) the ball was in their player's hands before he even reached the touchline to take a quick throw in, putting us under immediate pressure. Yet we when had a throw in half the time our player had to get the ball himself (at one stage the crowd were booing Davis for time wasting as he had to walk to the corner flag to get the ball :confused:)

7/ Obviously with such a good result their crowd were pretty noisy at times, but I'm convinced it was being enhanced and piped thru the tannoy system and at one stage there was feedback and the sound CD's make when they get stuck :cool:

8/Thank God for Kelvin Davis, it could have been 4-0 after 25 mins but for him, shame about the penalty save

9/ I think the goal was the only time we got the ball into their area in the 2nd half

8/ As highlighted the stadium announcer was a good crack ... 'The 4th official has indicated there will be some extra time to be played' was probably the high light of the game.

 

Hope all you lot at Swindon get served up a better nights entertainment than we had on saturday.

[ericofarabia]

My first chance to post since the match ..... a few things that crossed my mind:-

 

1/ Were Huddersfield really that good or did we just make it look that way. I lost count of how many danderous crosses they put in and as the the guy who managed to miss the open goal from 6ft by kicking the ball into the ground and making it loop over the bar was an amazing miss.

2/ I don't think I've ever seen a team go the whole match with such a low amount of completed passes. I don't think we ever strung 3 passes together all game, even when we elected not to lump the ball up to the 2 c/fs.:mad:

3/ Why didn't we have more width, all our crosses were from deep and easy peasy catches for their keeper

4/ Even our fans seemed half asleep for most of the match. Considereing there were 823 of us for most of the game we were pretty quiet, admittedly the team gave us f'all to cheer, but it's a 2 way street our support could lift them a bit.

5/ As somebody else mentioned, Huddersfield perfected the roll over in agony in front of the ref to avoid a dead cert booking technique to a T. :cool:

6/ The Rolling Ball tactics were so biased I'm surprised the ref or our players/manager didn't lodge a complaint about it. Everytime they had a throw in (and there were 1000's of those as we couldn't keep the ball in play ) the ball was in their player's hands before he even reached the touchline to take a quick throw in, putting us under immediate pressure. Yet we when had a throw in half the time our player had to get the ball himself (at one stage the crowd were booing Davis for time wasting as he had to walk to the corner flag to get the ball :confused:)

7/ Obviously with such a good result their crowd were pretty noisy at times, but I'm convinced it was being enhanced and piped thru the tannoy system and at one stage there was feedback and the sound CD's make when they get stuck :cool:

8/Thank God for Kelvin Davis, it could have been 4-0 after 25 mins but for him, shame about the penalty save

9/ I think the goal was the only time we got the ball into their area in the 2nd half

8/ As highlighted the stadium announcer was a good crack ... 'The 4th official has indicated there will be some extra time to be played' was probably the high light of the game.

 

Hope all you lot at Swindon get served up a better nights entertainment than we had on saturday.

 

Oh dear sounds like you got more of the same

 

Things better improve on Saturday for my visit to SMS :cool: