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PRE-SEASON: Southampton vs Real Sociedad - (15:00 kick-off @ St Mary's Stadium)


Saint-Armstrong

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Our first choice defence is probably Shaw, Lovren, Yoshida, Clyne. That wasn't the defence at any point today.

 

Unfortunately will be a few weeks before we can play this if Shaw's injury looks as bad as the way he hobbled off. Apart from that we looked promising today. Think again best form of defence will be attack

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It was alright, decent work out. Can't read too much into it either way. Wanyama looks like a beast, will add to us a fair bit I reckon. Lovren looked a tad slow at times.

 

Shaw's injury looked really bad, don't think we'll be seeing him for a while.

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Still crazy to judge a result with that many changes. Nice to create plenty though and take some chances. Don't go along with the cries for new defenders whenever we concede. As for Shaw, I'd like to know exactly who people think we could sign as back up to an 18 year old. Fox may not be great but a reserve of that experience is pretty handy. The criticism he gets is ridiculous, he's put in some good and bad performances but is a decent enough committed player. No loss was 'his fault', it's a team game FFS.

 

Problem is if shaw is out for a few weeks, I would not be comfortable with fox playing that many games. He's ok for the odd game here and there but not for a prolonged period. He is constantly out of position and the rest of the defence have to compensate for him. All in my opinion of course and I would love for him to prove me wrong

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Problem is if shaw is out for a few weeks, I would not be comfortable with fox playing that many games. He's ok for the odd game here and there but not for a prolonged period. He is constantly out of position and the rest of the defence have to compensate for him. All in my opinion of course and I would love for him to prove me wrong

 

 

Much as I said in many interseason threads, Shaw is too fragile as of yet to be relied upon for a 40/45 match season. We should have signed a left/right back in the vein of Kyle Naughton.

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Good game, enjoyed that.

 

Rodriguez, Lallana and Lambert looked very strong as a front three. Lambert's movement made a huge difference to our ability going forward - his runs gave Lallana and Rodriguez a platform to show their best. He didn't get on the ball much but remains a crucial player cause we couldn't get our passing around the box to quite the same level without him.

 

Sociedad didn't look quite right to me, gifted a couple of their goals.

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Problem is if shaw is out for a few weeks, I would not be comfortable with fox playing that many games. He's ok for the odd game here and there but not for a prolonged period. He is constantly out of position and the rest of the defence have to compensate for him. All in my opinion of course and I would love for him to prove me wrong
Fox's tackle early in the first half :facepalm:
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Much as I said in many interseason threads, Shaw is too fragile as of yet to be relied upon for a 40/45 match season. We should have signed a left/right back in the vein of Kyle Naughton.

 

And I'm guessing Matt targett isn't quite ready yet. Shame, really don't rate fox at all, can you tell?!

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Just back from the match. Overall, I'd say that we were good value for the win, which considering the quality of the opposition is most encouraging. We played better in the first half and I believe that most of that line-up will be the preferred starters next week.

 

Clyne will hopefully come back soon, but Chambers didn't do too badly in his place. Lovren and Wanyama also looked to be slotting in quite nicely too. Wanyama is a very big commanding player and held the ball up well and generally delivered it well to his team mates, doing the simple stuff well. Over the course of the match my impressions were that Rodrigues was very sharp and caused them a lot of problems. Ricky was OK, but there was a bit of a ruck involving him and a defender where Ricky pushed him with both hands in the chest a couple of times. The referee consulted the linesman and eventually he gave them each a card, but what was Ricky thinking? Schneiderlin also had an excellent game with 3 or 4 superb long cross pitch passes to set up attacks and also his usual array of tackles, blocks and interceptions. Rodrigues and Ward-Prowse both had decent long range shots on target, the one by Rodrigues particularly audacious and had the goallie back-peddling.

 

With all of the second half substitutions, the game had lost impetus by half way through the second half and just as I was thinking that we lacked pace out wide, on come Puncheon, Isgrove and Mayuka! Puncheon in particular was the player to really make a difference as he is prepared to run at players with the ball at his feet, attack the box and cause defenders problems. There was a superb save by Boruc early on which should have been a goal for Real, but equally there was one of our shots cleared off the line and a couple of increbible last ditch tackles, one from Lovren and another from one of their defenders where if either had not been timed to perfection, either a goal or a penalty would have ensued. A bad defensive mistake from the usually reliable Cork should have handed them a goal on a plate, but the missed shot was comic. So the match might even have produced another two or three goals.

 

Shaw going off injured again is a bit of a worry, but Fox didn't do too badly in his place, although RS's style of play included several early balls hit long to their pacey forwards and as a tactic, I thought that Fox would have been done for pace, but thankfully that never happened.

 

Overall, very encouraging that during pre-season we have played some Champions League teams and given a good account of ourselves. Friendly matches don't mean that much, but equally the teams we beat would have been playing to win themselves.

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