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Blackpool 3-0 Saints Reaction


CWD

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Does it really matter whether we go up as Champions? For my money two successive promotions would be an incredible achievement first or second. First things first, lets try and get distance between us and third place.

 

I agree just to get up will be amazing, i'd take 2nd any day. But having spent the most part of this season top it would be frustrating to blow it a the final hurdle.

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I knew phillips and ince would cause us problems but playing diamond formation was just asking for trouble. We are not a one man team but lambert brings out the best in the other players so when he doesn't play we look a shadow of ourselves

 

I think that's right. As you say, we are not a one-man team, but he is our Queen Bee around which all the workers buzz. Without him, everyone was lost. It was a shambles today, a day to watch from behind the sofa with one hand over your eyes.

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No we're not, but today Guly, Butterfield, and Fox were absolute pants, and BS missed a penalty. It was bad day at the office, and the Skates will suffer the backlash.

 

Disagree, we are gash without Lambert. We don't just miss his goals, it's his aerial ability and link up play.

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Atrocious performance. For me, the only two players to come out with any credit were Lallana for his tireless work ethic and Davis for his 1st half saves. Apart from that, abysmal... and Guly is doing little to disprove his doubters wrong.

 

Sharp, unfortunately, looks way to slow and immobile for our style of play. Despite his two goals last week, he struggled to link up with any incisive moves that Lallana/Lambert would fashion, looking sluggish and a yard off the pace - too many times you see him overstretching for a well-placed through ball. That said, I've still massive hopes for him - I'm pretty sure it'll just take a bit of time and a surge in confidence (nothing a couple more goals couldn't fix) and he'll be off and running.

 

The best thing about today is that it leaves little room for error come next Saturday - and I believe we play a lot, lot better when we've got a bit of pressure on us.

 

Overall: One of the few isolated poor performances in an outstanding season; We've been soundly and deservedly beaten by a good side but we're still in the mix for the title and more importantly, promotion. We are Southampton...

 

PS: Fans sounded good - it's a shame that even though we took many more than the Skates and were just as vociferous in our support it barely gets a mention. Yet when they take a few t0ssers dressed up as Elvis it's seen as "magnificent support"

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As we always do in these post-game reaction threads, we tend to focus only on our own lot.

 

However, while we played poorly I'd like to commend Blackpool. They were very well prepared by Holloway and they worked their arses off, showing speed, skill and inventiveness.

 

They offered a number of powerful reasons for us to avoid the playoffs at all costs.

 

As badly as the West Ham lot must feel about losing to Reading today, they'll feel even worse seeing Blackpool playing like that.

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Listen ... we'll bounce back. Blackpool are one of the strongest teams in the league. We had an off day. We missed Ricky (rested so he score at least 5 next weekend). The pitch was a f@cking joke. The lino was carp. We had about 50% of possession. On another day we might have got a draw or fluked a win. Get over it and bring on the DSBs.

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Not sure we missed lambert? Are u serious?

 

Yes, (with the exception on the pen). The midfield didn't create anything for the forwards and the fullbacks didn't put many crosses in. This is stuff that RL revels in. It made no difference who was up top today, we wouldn't have won.

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Listen .... Blackpool were outstanding. They were focused, played with intensity, blew us away. We played as if we were still watching Soccer Saturday until 5.15pm. They have a right to be proud, they annhilated us (yes, Blackpool fans, you can copy/paste this).

 

But we have to put this behind us. Saturday after Saturday, it has been All Saints Day, where Wet Spam and Burn After Reading have dropped points. Today is Reading's day. We now have to turn our hurt into magic next Saturday and blitz Pompey. We are still top, albeit by (almost) 3 points. It's not over til the fat lady sings, and she isn't even on the podium yet. Come on!

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Yes, (with the exception on the pen). The midfield didn't create anything for the forwards and the fullbacks didn't put many crosses in. This is stuff that RL revels in. It made no difference who was up top today, we wouldn't have won.

But Lambert does come deep and create chances for the likes of Lallana and De Ridder. HE might not have scored, but he might have done a better job of holding the ball up, distributing it and just given the rest of the team a kick up the arse.

 

Without him or Hammond on the pitch I reckon we lack leaders. Disappointing as Fonte seems to be our de facto captain at the moment and I expected more of Jos.

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That was a disappointment, a very inept performance. Bearing in mind the sheite every player had in support, I can only see Schneiderlin as being the least culpable. This was nothing to do with Lambert, except we would have scored the penalty and won a few headers in midfield. This looked more like subbueteo. This performance typified a pass and move team who had forgot the move part, combined with no pace. When a midfield pass broke down we found their entire midfield exposing our defence, causing all sorts of issues and I doubt Fonte will get much sleep for a while. We needed our midfield covering for that eventuality but without any pace up front, we were never going to make a dent in Blackpool unless our midfield exposed itself as it did. That in no way males it right though and a more tighter practical approach was required when we are that limited. Forgetting about the penalty, I thought Billy was dreadful and needs to reclaim that spot on the bench he has rightly earned. We eventually figured out it was not best to pump up long balls to all 5'8" of Billy and got it into his feet. Turn and give the defence an awkward moment on the front foot, rather than finding one of our centre backs with a 25 yard lay off. This game to me showed how lacking we are without pace that we have to try and force the issue with the midfield, only getting totally exposed when we are not up to the task as today. So many players putting in such a bad performance, such you can forget about our improvement in the second half when the game was over.

 

This was the sort of performance we put in during our slump and anyone taking consolation from the 6 point difference between us and West Ham must have over looked this means we have to play Reading in a couple of games time. Given the current forms of the two teams our prospects seem far from rosy. A draw today would have been brilliant, meaning Reading would have needed 2 results to get past us and West Ham 3, but we never gave ourselves a chance of collecting that 1 point.

Your very accurate and well made point about our midfield being too far advanced is one that few have picked up on but so very true. This was also happening in the Donny game last week - fortunately they were not good enough to exploit it. This is a big issue with our formation tactics and not ensuring a midfielder protects that wide open space we leave on the attacking 10 yards side of the centre circle. When we are attacking this area is completely free of Saints midfielders. As happened to day - too many of our players are too advanced when we are playing out from the back too which means even if we do play long we haven't dragged any of their defensive midfield up the pitch or on the other hand neither have we exploited the area behind their attackers who are advanced to close down our playing out from defence. There is an imbalance in the midfield which has been developing as the season has progressed - too big a gap between players supporting strikers and the area in front of the defence. With our slow build up play we need to flood the midfield a little more and can't help thinking we need more of a 4411 or even 4131 where the midfielder really does 'sit in' as our midfield is to often being over run..
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Having only watched on TV, I am hesitant to comment (moan!), but we did seem poor and lack any penetrative play. Too slow and unable to control the ball or pass it accurately, we failed to really test their defence never mind Gilks, in goal. I thought Fox had been a specialist penalty taker at Burnley and was sorry he did not do it. (Especially after Billy's nervous poke!) As Nigel has probably already said, "We move on." A number of changes for next week and hopefully, the cold or was it a 'Flu will will have moved down the other end of the m27.

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Still dismayed by that performance,

 

Bad day at the office, we are still top..............I don't give a flying f--k.

 

Either our Nige got it wrong or 11 players were not up to a table topping performance.

 

They looked leggy just a few minutes into the game, stray passes, hoofing, and the front 2 and AL trotting about as if they had taken a dose of Mogadon before the game.

 

I should have known with Claridge bigging us up before the game we were going to seriously shaft ourselves and by god we did.

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Just back from the game. A bad day at the office today which culminated in a missed opportunity. Lambert not risked with 6 games in 4 weeks coming up so there was some anxiety in the stand. Bit of a frantic start with both teams setting up to exploit the weaknesses of the other team (rather than trying to stop the other team) which makes for a good game for the neutral.

 

Both teams had chances to take the lead and Blackpool took theirs through the spot. Didn't see whether it was a penalty or not was there was a great big f**king pillar in my way

 

We looked very anxious today, and made some mistakes and the apprehension propagated throughout the team at times. Credit to Blackpool, they suffocated the space very well and worked their socks off. We still created plenty, but I think all their goals came from mistakes. The first from not clearing our lines, the second I think Davis should have come out for, the third not marking at a corner. Blackpool made the most of it and saw the game out well. A shame Lambert wasn't about as he would have eaten those centre halves alive

 

Really disappointed with Sharp today, nothing to do with the penalty, but his general concentration and touch was ****e. Fair play to Reading, I didn't see that result coming and had we won we could have turned this into a 3 game season for promotion. As it goes, it's a 4 game season where we just need to match what West Ham do. If we can pip Reading to the title then all the better, but that is a magnificant run they are on the game at St Marys on the 13th (Friday 13th ) promises to be fantastic. As does the derby next week.

 

A disappointing performance, but bigger picture still looks positive.

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Lambert is an important player for us, but we can win without him as we proved during his supension. Today was a team failure, and may well have happened with Lambo in the team.

 

We need to get some perspective. We just ended a 12 match unbeaten run.....Time to start a new run.

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For me, Guly was one of our better players today.

 

he didnt have much to compete against really, cant say he was any good, but neither was anyone else.

 

Disappointed with the FB's and in particular Sharp, though i cannot see how you can play Sharp and Guly up front together. Guly is never going to do the job Lambo does, would have prefered to see Sharp on his own with a 5 man midfield inc. Hammond in the middle. AL and RC could have supported BS when needed and our FB's could have concentrated on defending in a flat back four.

 

We are near the finishing line, lets not **** it up by going gung ho to places like Blackpool and Middlesboro for 3 points, win the 2 home ones plus a draw against Reading, beat P'Boro, and Palace and that will do it, specially if we can a draw at Boro.

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Poor Show - we never looked interested. Trying not to feel too ******ed off after that performance or rather lack of. Feel sorry for the fans or made the long journey and still sang througout the match. Just a shame Sharp didn't score with that penalty - could have been so different. They'd all better be up for it next Saturday and hope Lambert is back as well!

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Can we have this against skates please:

 

 

..................Davis

Frazer...Fonte...Jos...Fox

Sdr...Morgan...Cork...Lallana

..........Lambert..Lee

 

No

 

Davis,

Fox, Richardson, Fonte, Hoodiveld

Chappers, Adz, Morgan and Hammond

Lambo and Billy

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Your very accurate and well made point about our midfield being too far advanced is one that few have picked up on but so very true. This was also happening in the Donny game last week - fortunately they were not good enough to exploit it. This is a big issue with our formation tactics and not ensuring a midfielder protects that wide open space we leave on the attacking 10 yards side of the centre circle. When we are attacking this area is completely free of Saints midfielders. As happened to day - too many of our players are too advanced when we are playing out from the back too which means even if we do play long we haven't dragged any of their defensive midfield up the pitch or on the other hand neither have we exploited the area behind their attackers who are advanced to close down our playing out from defence. There is an imbalance in the midfield which has been developing as the season has progressed - too big a gap between players supporting strikers and the area in front of the defence. With our slow build up play we need to flood the midfield a little more and can't help thinking we need more of a 4411 or even 4131 where the midfielder really does 'sit in' as our midfield is to often being over run..

 

This, especially as our full backs are not the quickest.

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not sure why everyone is reacting to the game as though this was a one off bad display. We've played like this away from home a lot this season and to be honest the side has not played well since Christmas. In recent weeks we have been ugly away from home. Leeds tore us apart, Watford were terrible but we were only just better and Millwall we stunk the place out. Gone are the days where we passed it out from the back, showed real bravery on the ball and dominated games. We hoof it much more, but we also don't seem to show the levels of ball control in midfield to ensure we keep possession.

 

The fact remains we have won games playing badly and plenty have told me the performance doesn't matter its the result (********), but today we got what we deserved, poor performance AND a defeat.

 

Davis 7 solid display, can't fault him

Butterfield 0 absolute total waste of a shirt. Liability in defence and crap with the ball. Crossing woeful. Worst game I have ever seen him play for us.

Jos 6 had a decent first half, won a lot early on, but he didn't win the header that led to their second and lost his man for their third. Hard to ignore the third goal, but you'd be surprised how often players get miles fro their markers only for defenders to to get lucky as the ball doesn't find them. it did today. But if you can try to ignore those two key moments his all round game wasn't bad.

Fonte 7 casual (or too slow, not sure which) and not strong enough for their second. Chucked himself at everything else. Bit slow on the ball, perhaps the options weren't there.

Fox 6 too casual at times and went missing a few times in first half. He lacks pace, so I guess he did quite well to stick with Ince who was a real livewire in that first half. Quiet game for him.

Chaplow 5 needs players around him to work the ball so he can make runs. He's seeing too much ball. He is needs to be working more off the ball. Not back to his best, but then again he had a long spell in the latter half of his first season when he was terrible too. Need him firing otherwise we are a man short in midfield. The Reading game worries me as they are so quick in midfield. We need them chasing Chappers not the other way round.

Morgan 6 I can see why some fans don't like his simple ball stuff. Too much if that today. Diamond doesn't help him and Cork IMO. When we are struggling he needs to step up, but if his job is to sit can he?

Cork battled hard in first half, but disappeared in second in which his touch wasn't good enough. Needs a little space to work in and he didn't have it. Nigel ****s around with the diamond and he is very often the loser.

Lallana 7 I thought he had a decent game, especially in the first half, an improvement on Millwall that's for sure, but he still gave the ball away too much towards the latter part of the game, but he's always going for the killer ball and that's much harder to complete than a square pass 5 yards.

Sharp 4 missed his pen, OK, it happens, but he had a great chance in the second but he was just not sharp enough and defender made a last gasp tackle. If he was sharper he wouldn't have had a chance to make that tackle though. Hold up play and lay offs were woeful. Luxury player that has not taken enough chances since he came for a bloke that does nothing other than score goals.

Guly 6 should perhaps have scored and just didn't do anything else in the first half. better in the second with some neat play in midfield, but if he's dropping in then we are playing one up front. Little wonder why we have a lot of possession in the match but not threat.

 

de Ridder thought he tried too hard and by and large he was rubbish.

Barnard not on long enough, perhaps someone stretching their defenders would have helped, but he doesn't have pace either

Edited by Chez
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Sharp missed the pen and wasn't very effective during the game, but to say he was offside all game was unfair. The two good chances we had where he was judged offside he wasn't. Guly made a worse error straying offside during a good break, when Sharp got fouled running on the right. Also, there were 2 if not 3 incredible last ditch tackles from Blackpool defenders without which he would have been in.

 

Not dwefending him too much as I agree he didn't have a good game, just trying to give some balance.

Sorry but that is just wrong. Sharp was offise about 7 or 8 times, once.or.twice the decision was wrong. Guly got caught offside once, maybe twice. We used to moan about Bwpp but Sharp's positional sense today was appalling, I really don't recall the last time.I saw anyone.play so badly for us. I really hope Chung is back soon up fro.t with Lambert.
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Shocking, my takeaway was more exciting than Saints play.

 

I thought Saints were NOT a 1 man (Lambert) team? How can one player make so much differance to a teams performance. But a very stupid formation didnt help, and why didnt Jos or Fonte take the Pen, you need to wack the ball not hit it laike a snooker ball.

 

I think Saints are over confident and think they have promotion in the bag from reading the papers and what West ham manager has said.

 

Just hope we dont play crap vs Pompey as WH and Reading wont lose more than 3 out of 6 remaining games

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Your very accurate and well made point about our midfield being too far advanced is one that few have picked up on but so very true. This was also happening in the Donny game last week - fortunately they were not good enough to exploit it. This is a big issue with our formation tactics and not ensuring a midfielder protects that wide open space we leave on the attacking 10 yards side of the centre circle. When we are attacking this area is completely free of Saints midfielders. As happened to day - too many of our players are too advanced when we are playing out from the back too which means even if we do play long we haven't dragged any of their defensive midfield up the pitch or on the other hand neither have we exploited the area behind their attackers who are advanced to close down our playing out from defence. There is an imbalance in the midfield which has been developing as the season has progressed - too big a gap between players supporting strikers and the area in front of the defence. With our slow build up play we need to flood the midfield a little more and can't help thinking we need more of a 4411 or even 4131 where the midfielder really does 'sit in' as our midfield is to often being over run..

 

 

When we are playing well this is never an issue because the opposition has to fall back to defend or we cut through them and render the game meaningless in minutes. The trouble is that we play the same way (with some minor exceptions) when we are not playing well and just invite trouble. What we really needed to do against Blackpool was to set up in front of them and play on the counter. Fair enough we may not have scored in 180 minutes with that form, but at least we would have had some control over their attack. Trying to play on the counter with no pace or size up front is a difficult task, but even Doncaster can get rewards from it. I don't believe Blackpool were even that good, just met the self afflicteds at the right time.

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Terrible performance, but I don;t think Sharp's performance was as bad as some on here. Was called offside incorrectly at least twice which made a difference. He plays on the shoulder of the last defender and when the linos give the benefit of doubt to the defenders it is probably going to affect him.

 

More worryingly were the performances of others. Butterfield was dreadful. Are Jos and Jose going to be too one paced for the Prem? Cork seems to have lost all his fizz since the start of the season and right midfield is a real problem. IF we go up I think NA will be looking for a new RB, CM, RM and CM but will probably leave the forwards alone.

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Terrible performance really, nobody played very well, sharp was awfull, even forgetting about the peno he couldnt pass wind and his movement was non existant unless it was being caught offside.

 

The full backs were terrible, cork non-existant and even de ridder struggled, lallana and morgs played quite well.

 

We missed lambert, the ball just never stuck upfront and with no movement or target man there was no out ball.

 

Not a disaster though IMO, we would never win all our remaining games.

 

I see the usual are over reacting

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What a load of embarrassing carp.

 

Well done to Blackpool, they wanted it more and gave our gutless team a good spanking.

 

This isn't the first time we have been limp away from SMS but it is the first time we have met a team that knows how to punish us. A decent prem league outfit would have put 6 or more past us today. Away performances really need to be improved, at no point in that game did we look like we wanted it.

 

Pitch was like a ploughed field but that still doesn't excuse the lack of heart.

 

Only players who came out of it looking OK were Kelv and Morgan. Sharp has never looked right to me since he's arrived, far too static and appears to be lacking in confidence. Is he up to it?

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But Reading can win all thier games and West Ham dont exactly have a difficult run in. The teams that saints struggle with are fit and fast teams with the whole team of players at the same level. Reading are a strong pacy team as is Blackpool, West Ham should be with thier best 11 and they will all come back soon. Today was an example of all players at different levels of fitness. Guly is just too risky to play and we cant afford a red card to drop us to 10 men, Sharp looked ok vs Doncaster but with 2/3 defenders around each time he gets the ball in a Diamond shape was a disaster even from watching from Eastleigh so that should have changed in 10 mins.

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I watched the first half online at UP and apart from the last 5 minutes Reading were ****e.. One set piece and a lucky run of the ball with the second they were undeservedly ahead. Let's not believe they are unbeatable because they are..

 

Well that's even worse news really - so they played shyte and still ran out 4 -2 winners away from home. We had better up our game from here on it then.

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Bloody crap ....we were due a loss and losing, while no fun, is at least acceptable if the players are trying but today the looked like they couldn't care less. keeping possession of the ball at the back is fine if your 3-0 up but when three goals down it isn't going to do much. I think at one point the telly said we had almost 70% possession and one shot on target ...WTF

 

Not the end of the world if this is just a one off (we're still top of the league)...but still really dissapointing it would be nice for everyone else to see the great football we play down SMS rather than that crap...

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