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What line will you use when we finish 8th?


Aziz Yebda

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I'd be disappointed considering our early season form but when you think of the upheaval and panic we had in the summer, I'd have readily taken 8th back then. Without proper 1st team reinforcements, I'm not convinced we are even ready for Europe yet and Les' comments about supplementing our European squad with the youth team doesn't do anything to dispel those thoughts.

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I'd be disappointed considering our early season form but when you think of the upheaval and panic we had in the summer' date=' I'd have readily taken 8th back then. Without proper 1st team reinforcements, I'm not convinced we are even ready for Europe yet and Les' comments about supplementing our European squad with the youth team doesn't do anything to dispel those thoughts.[/quote']

 

I have been of that opinion for some time now, but have been lambasted for speaking out. Mind you I am far from being a lone voice now.

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Seems like a cop-out if you say it out loud to a non-Saints fan, but i do wonder if the motivation, either consciously or sub-consciously, dropped once the Champions League shot drifted away.

 

Whatever Koeman and the team say about finishing in Europe, we have surprisingly poor in recent games against average teams and lacked drive and motivation. The only recent game we went at it was Spurs, which clearly we were desperate to win and should have, which shows they can get up for it at this stage of the season and it isn't just poor form.

 

That said, if someone said that to me and they supported a team like us, i'd tell that them they were talking b****cks and were just playing s**t.

 

However you look at it:

 

1) 8th would be a great result considering where we started the season

2) It will also be a huge disappointment for us as supporters considering how the season has panned out (if not for the management perhaps)

 

Let's face it, if we were doing what Swansea are now in terms of their run of form, and still ended in 8th, we'd be pretty happy with life.

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1 Did not replace JRod when it was pretty obvious he was out for the season.

2 Paid 12M for a proven 6 goal a season striker.

3 Paid 10m for a keeper who is only slightly better than what we had.

4 Did replace the poor back up keepers with someone better.

5 Did not replace Lallana with a goal scoring midfielder

6 Replaced the ineffective Ramerez with three similar ineffective players.

7 Did not get the deadwood of the books.

8 Did not strengthen in Jan to cover for suspensions and injuries.

9 Become complacent with regards to European qualification ( re this weekends newspaper story regarding playing the U21,s )

10 Koemans limited ability to recruit players from outside of the Dutch league.

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If we sink to 8th the story should be : goalkeeping, goalkeeping, goalkeeping

 

On April 11th.. we were in 5th place, at 56 points, with the league's best defense (22 goals allowed, to Chelsea's 26).

 

4 matches later..

 

we are in 7th place, 1 point earned, 8 goals allowed, no longer the league's best defense (30 goals allowed to Chelsea's 28).

 

we gave up more than a 1/3 of our total goals allowed for the season in just 4 matches.

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L

1 Did not replace JRod when it was pretty obvious he was out for the season.

2 Paid 12M for a proven 6 goal a season striker.

3 Paid 10m for a keeper who is only slightly better than what we had.

4 Did replace the poor back up keepers with someone better.

5 Did not replace Lallana with a goal scoring midfielder

6 Replaced the ineffective Ramerez with three similar ineffective players.

7 Did not get the deadwood of the books.

8 Did not strengthen in Jan to cover for suspensions and injuries.

9 Become complacent with regards to European qualification ( re this weekends newspaper story regarding playing the U21,s )

10 Koemans limited ability to recruit players from outside of the Dutch league.

 

Very good points also.... Even as a Saints supporter I have grown tired of the rather arrogant and complacent rhetoric right across the management structure lately...

We truly are not as good as we think we are and management need to take quite a long hard look at themselves. Our buys have been largely quite odd and mostly average players who we spent quite large sums of money on.....

We have not addressed obvious tactical inadequacy particularly in the final third where Pelle has the movement required to trouble defenders and yet we have continued adnorsium with this failed tactic for months on end. I fully expect it to continue for the final two games too with the same end result.

Koeman seems to lack the ability to work round challenges or perhaps more worryingly he can't see the issues...

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1 Did not replace JRod when it was pretty obvious he was out for the season.

2 Paid 12M for a proven 6 goal a season striker.

3 Paid 10m for a keeper who is only slightly better than what we had.

4 Did replace the poor back up keepers with someone better.

5 Did not replace Lallana with a goal scoring midfielder

6 Replaced the ineffective Ramerez with three similar ineffective players.

7 Did not get the deadwood of the books.

8 Did not strengthen in Jan to cover for suspensions and injuries.

9 Become complacent with regards to European qualification ( re this weekends newspaper story regarding playing the U21,s )

10 Koemans limited ability to recruit players from outside of the Dutch league.

 

3: But also younger at 27. Boruc is 35, and only has a season or two left at the top level. We bought Forster's future service.

4: I assume you mean "didn't"? If the Boruc situation had been better handled we would have had a decent back up, but alas it wasn't.

7: Well, we either sold, loaned or released Lee, Guly, Jos, Forte and Sharp. There was quite a clear out in the summer, it just went unnoticed because of the first-team departures. Gaston, Osvaldo and Mayuka remain, but at least the first two are being paid by other teams for the time being.

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We ran out of squad depth.

 

It's been fairly obvious in the past couple of months or so that we're 4 or 5 players short of a squad needed to challenge at the pointy end of the table. If we'd had more success in bringing in players to challenge the one's we already had then I'm sure we'd be knocking on the door of 4th place today.

 

The mistake in not recognising that Pelle', Toby, Clyne, Tadic were getting knackered and their form was dropping off, overestimating the capabilities of JWP, Elia and Davis, not having a decent-enough back-up keeper and thinking that we could rest on the laurels of the amazing achievements earlier in the season would be enough to secure a top 6 spot, all are contributing to our loss of form and lack of desire now.

 

This summer, we need to make sure, regardless of Europa league or not, that we don't fall into the same errors again by having a rose tinted view of the depth of the squad. It's become very clear that we need to add as well as replace.

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We ran out of squad depth.

 

It's been fairly obvious in the past couple of months or so that we're 4 or 5 players short of a squad needed to challenge at the pointy end of the table. If we'd had more success in bringing in players to challenge the one's we already had then I'm sure we'd be knocking on the door of 4th place today.

 

The mistake in not recognising that Pelle', Toby, Clyne, Tadic were getting knackered and their form was dropping off, overestimating the capabilities of JWP, Elia and Davis, not having a decent-enough back-up keeper and thinking that we could rest on the laurels of the amazing achievements earlier in the season would be enough to secure a top 6 spot, all are contributing to our loss of form and lack of desire now.

 

This summer, we need to make sure, regardless of Europa league or not, that we don't fall into the same errors again by having a rose tinted view of the depth of the squad. It's become very clear that we need to add as well as replace.

Our squad will never really be any deeper than it is now.

 

We're not a big enough club to have huge numbers of top 8 standard players sat on the bench.

Edited by CB Fry
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We havent scored many goals in the second half of the season. As soon as Forster got injured those clean shets were in danger of drying up so the 1-0 wins were going to be harder. And so its proved. No back up keeper is the root of it all in my opinion.

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5 ) That's the position I predicted last summer, so happy in that respect with relegation talk that was rampant at the time. It's just a shame not to capitalise on the good start, or after faltering, to give more time to the newer/younger members of the squad so that they could have at least 500 minutes under their belt this season.

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Deffo no.4

 

Three things....

Poor team selections by Koeman

Selection of Pelle despite his obvious limitations.

Selling Jack Cork - idiotic.

Plus, it would appear lack team preparation and motivation for about the last three months...

 

1 Did not replace JRod when it was pretty obvious he was out for the season.

2 Paid 12M for a proven 6 goal a season striker.

3 Paid 10m for a keeper who is only slightly better than what we had.

4 Did replace the poor back up keepers with someone better.

5 Did not replace Lallana with a goal scoring midfielder

6 Replaced the ineffective Ramerez with three similar ineffective players.

7 Did not get the deadwood of the books.

8 Did not strengthen in Jan to cover for suspensions and injuries.

9 Become complacent with regards to European qualification ( re this weekends newspaper story regarding playing the U21,s )

10 Koemans limited ability to recruit players from outside of the Dutch league.

 

I am genuinely not sure if some posts on this thread are jokes, or maybe written by children?

 

Clearly a disappointing end, to a clearly very good season. Anyone with a brain knew we had a chance of staying in to 4 or 5 but most likely would drop to around 6th, 7th. Of course 8th would seem an anti climax due to positions we have held all season.

 

However, these pathetic criticisms are based on your raised expectations due to the good things you saw rather than being objective.

 

To suggest our season would be hugely different by having Cork on the bench is ridiculous.

 

Take yourself back to the summer... If we had signed and managed as badly as some say we would not have had our best prem season, Koeman would not be widely tipped for manager of the season.

 

Batman you seem to relish putting our players down (Mane for example) and bigging up players of other teams.

 

Disappointing, anti climax - yes. But not a bad season, and one most could see coming

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Well I can't speak for anyone else, but this fan certainly doesn't give a flying ferkin about the 'Europa League' or whatever it is called now. Frankly the (non) performance the players are putting in suggests that they don't much care either. Even the club down-playing the possibility of increasing squad size next season hardly points to a real ambition to prosper in this competition - whatever they might say in public.

 

Spurs are welcome to the bloody thing - I hope they enjoy all those Thursdays in Serbia and losing to West Brom on the Sunday.

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We could well finish 6th, although I have said for months we would finish 7th.

 

However, should we finish 8th I would say,

 

Well done Swansea; what a finish to the season you have managed to put together. Unbelievable.

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We don't want Europa League as a club - I thought that was pretty obvious? As soon as Liverpool didn't get to the Cup Final there was a chance that 7th wouldn't get Europa, hence Saints and Spurs form...
Did you watch our last home game against Spurs? Plenty of effort on show there.

 

I can well believe a few of the players aren't too fussed about Europa, but the club and Koeman will definitely want it.

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We don't want Europa League as a club - I thought that was pretty obvious? As soon as Liverpool didn't get to the Cup Final there was a chance that 7th wouldn't get Europa, hence Saints and Spurs form...

 

We've been cack for a while - well before the prospect of CL football was extinguished, leaving us only with Europa and well before Forster got injured, though his injury certainly exposed the cracks.

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