Our season starts Vs Aston Villa

[Wade Garrett]

How about being bereft of ideas and losing at home to Wigan ?

 

You mean the Wigan game that we hit the bar twice in, and their keeper was Man of the Match?

 

Granted we weren't great that day, but I still reckon we could have got a point.

[SaintRichmond]

Apologies for posting a new thread about this, but wanted to raise a few points:

 

Every team outside the top five would struggle to get more than 3 points from our first four fixtures. Similarly, every defence in the division would struggle to cope with the likes of Aguero, Tevez, Van Persie, Hernandez etc. Let's not get carried away and start being over-critical of the team. We're a young side, relatively inexperienced and the core group of our squad were plying their trade in League One a few seasons ago. Have some perspective.

It's inevitable that we're going to make mistakes along the way, but you can bet that those players will learn from it and be better players in the long run. After these four games, if the squad can replicate the quality of performance we saw against City and United, as well as matching the levels of intensity on show, they'll find themselves beating the likes of Aston Villa and Fulham. That's no disrespect to those clubs either.

 

Finally, people always talk about the 'Southampton Way'. Well to me, that means starting slow, everyone writing us off and then coming back to prove the doubters wrong!

 

Ps. Lambert, Schneiderlin, Puncheon, Lallana and Ward-Prowse were sensational yesterday. Exciting times ahead!

 

 

 

I think you had best send the above to Nicola Cortese

 

It could well be that his view on it is that our defence let it slip v Man C, we did not turn up v Wigan, and (thanks to stupid substitutions) grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory v Man U

[CanadaSaint]

Our season started the same weekend as everybody else,we just weren't prepared for it.

No good making excuses,everybody has to play everybody else at some point during the season and every game is going to be difficult.....if we had man city,Wigan,manu and arsenal the last four games of the season would you say our season ends 4 weeks before everybody else?

 

I'd say we were prepared for it. Let's face it, for teams like us the brutally realistic goal is not so much to get a point from the City and United games (although that would be great) but to make sure that our goal difference doesn't take a hammering. On that front, we were -2, which I venture to suggest will prove to be much better than most of our "relegation rivals."

 

Yes, the Wigan result was very disappointing but that's a team that went W8, D4 and L3 over the last fifteen games of least season, and they have - arguably - the best young manager in the game. They are not the crap team that some people think, and we should have been well ahead by half time.

 

In one of the first three games Nigel's substitutions changed it for the better, but in two of them they changed it for the worse. He's learning at this level, just like the players, and I believe that we will continue to consolidate and end up somewhere between 12th and 16th.

 

Sure, Villa is a big game but don't forget that Wigan - with a similar style but less depth than us - were dead and buried at Christmas.

[Saint_John]

How about being bereft of ideas and losing at home to Wigan ?

That the same Wigan side who in there last 10-12 matches have gone to Arsenal and Liverpool and won 2-1. Beaten Manure 1-0 & Toon 4-0 at home etc.

In case you didn't see the way they played it was recorded as 3-4-3 but for long periods they played 3-6-1, their 6 in midfield were very good at shutting down our passing game and from what I heard they did a similar job at the other sides mentioned above who tried to pass through midfield.

 

When we changed from our 4-5-1 (4-3-3) to a 4-4-2 (so that our 2 could try and get at their back 3), all there 6 in midfield did was pass the ball around among themselves so that our 4 in midfield ended up chasing shadows.

 

It took them three quarters of a season to get those tactics working but they will stop alot of sides passing through midfield this season. Wet Spam / Stoke tactics might be the way to play against them but I cannot see Nigel changing his ways.

 

Back to the thread there are alot of "points games" before Xmas (Home games against villa,fulham,spurs,swansea,toon,norwich,reading,sunderland) for anyone to panic yet, play the way we know we can and we could win all of them.