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FC Midtjylland 1 Saints 0 - Post Match reaction


St Chalet

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Regardless of who we had out, it was a poor team selection - and, remarkably, an even worse performance.

 

I said we would have to get better or we were out and it turns out we managed to get even worse and we were duly dumped out of a competition that was my only interest in this season.

 

Now the prospect of a worse season than last beckons with a worse team. Not the clubs fault, but the very least we should have expected was Europa League group stages. Unacceptable.

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Without wishing to sound like a stereotypical arrogant fan of a Premier League club, I honestly can't believe that/this. I'm flabbergasted, not to mention crushed. I'm an optimist and prefer to cut people (managers, players, etc) slack, but Koeman's starting line-up has dumbfounded me - as has his reluctance to change it. I'm at a loss to make sense of what he has done here. Players with limited ability you can understand, but that was one of the worst managerial performances from memory. And the reluctance of the coaching staff (in light of his Koeman's injury) to get up off the bench and try to motivate the players irks me greatly.

 

As an aside, FC Midtjylland are one of the most cynical teams going. And that referring performance was woeful. Neither excuse our exit of course, just makes me even more bitter :lol:

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Formation was wrong, team selection was wrong, tactics were wrong, players seem unsure of what they are doing, everyones confidence seems to be shot to hell and we have a number of injuries to key personnel still.

 

Some of those can't be helped and reality is we have most of the squad we're gonna have for the season. Koeman and the rest of the coaching staff need to sort this out ASAP and for me an awful lot of the blame goes on them. Find your best 11, choose a formation and stick to it, the chopping and changing is not letting anyone get settled - the old players used to 4-2-3-1 are playing in formations they are unfamiliar with and the new guys don't seem to have got to grips with it either.

 

I know we are better than we are showing which is the most frustrating part of it :x gutting to go out on such a limp display.

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I'm normally reluctant to criticise the team, but that was bloody awful. Just lofting it up to Pelle with nobody playing off him just didn't work but it seemed to be our only tactic. Has Big Sam been giving coaching advice?

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Very very dissapointing. Not just tonight but so far this season.

 

I love the way how on BT Sport that Scouse ***** McManaman says Saints are a shadow of last seasons team. No **** Sherlock! We've got 7 of last years starting 11 either injured or poached by the big time Charlie's. Dickhead! On the flip side at least we're out of Europe and can concentrate on staying up.

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Credit where credit is due, Midtjylland were the much better team over the 2 legs. Impressive defending and organisation, and we couldn't break them down.

 

So disappointed to be out considering all the hard work of last season is now effectively meaningless, but at least it gives us the opportunity to focus on maintaining our league performance.

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One of few times I've thought Koeman absolutely b*llocked his tactics. Playing hoof aimless football against a team that plays aimless hoof football is dumb. They were probably delighted to see us play like that.

 

We look half the team of last year. All that effort gone in a flash. Pathetic!

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Just awful. We look a shadow of our former selves. We look knackered and its only mid-August. Very worrying.

 

Never thought I'd say it, but I'm losing a bit of faith in Ron. We were awful at the end of last season and we are still awful and incapable of scoring. He doesn't seem to know what to do at the moment.

 

We are 100% reliant on Pelle, he can't do it by himself. The service to him is quite frankly appalling and I feel a bit sorry for him if I'm honest.

 

With a supporting cast of Davis (never scores), JWP (never scores) and JRod (very very rusty) we were never destined to score to be honest.

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I know we are better than we are showing which is the most frustrating part of it :x gutting to go out on such a limp display.

 

That is the worry though. I don't know that we are better than that. If it was a one off performance like Sheffield United away last season then the annoyance is at freezing in such a big game for the fans. But the undertone to being gutted at the result is that it is yet another terrible result and performance this season and the concern is can we get better? A worse team than last season, the money has been spent padding out the squad with inferior players who can't even carry us past a bunch of Danish part-timers and now we're saddled with a bloated squad and poor quality in the team.

 

As gutting as it is to see our players go for big money at least we get to have those couple of seasons where they play well and the team do well. The more this goes on the more we're just slowly going back to being a lower-midtable team with nothing interesting going on.

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I was actually looking forward to an european adventure and would of settled for 16th if we could do well, now I'd just settle for 16th.

 

The tactics more than anything so this season have been embarrassing, our AM are horrendous and this transparent just cross it to the big man is fecking west ham with andy caroll through and through.

 

I'm an optimist but fark me that was a sh*t performance.

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Very disappointing that we didn't have the confidence to play our creative players and allow our class to shine through. We should not need to resort to League 2 football to outfight the opposition.

 

Koeman & Co have a lot to do to rebuild this team, and at this point, I am almost relieved that we won't have the Europa League to deal with.

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I think that there is more to this than a poor result, we've had many seasons of positivity in recent years but something is just not right at the moment; on and off the park. The Koeman brothers and the coaching staff look despondent and the players a group of individuals at best. We have good players coming back, but could do with signing some genuine first team options like Van Dijk and Austin, but I don't think we will.

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We've struggled in attack since Christmas - this is just the lowest point of a steady downward trajectory. We're hugely over-reliant on all of our attacking play going through Pelle, and we have no one behind him (barring Tadic in very occasional flourishes) who can take a player on and create space that way. As it is, we're trying to create space solely by passing it around among ourselves, but with players who are so slow and so conservative that the best positions we ever seem to fashion are crosses from about 20 yards out. If we can't successfully retrain Clasie to play in Davis/JWP's position, this is going to be a horribly dull season to watch.

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In a way I am glad we are out of Europe, but we were very, very poor. We have replaced recently departed quality players with players who are not as good. Is Caulker really a top class defender? Not on tonight's display. Some good displays but overall it was awful

 

To be fair, Caulker was never a replacement for Toby. He's cover for the injured Gardos. Hard to judge Clasie given that he hasn't played for us yet.

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Played like a league one team - I seriously would not put that performance any higher than that and whether that is down to Koeman's tactics or the skill level of the team we have left I don't know...probably both. Either way the result was inevitable given we were playing the Danish champions. The ref also missed a stone-wall penalty from a deliberate handball from JWP's free-kick among some of the worst play-acting and time-wasting I've seen for a long time from opposition. However, despite all that said, the best team won on the night.

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Koeman just can't see it. He thinks we are good. He can't see where there are problems.

 

....he has said that to wind up Kruger. Must be a bust up over our crap transfer dealings. RK clearly did not get the targets he wanted.

 

Bet he's off before the Norwich game.

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That was complete garbage, utter dross.

 

We were up against a physical, organised defensive team - we were crying out for some creativity to unlock their defence but we left our creative players on the bench and obsessively pursued a one dimensional lump-it-up-to-Pelle tactic which predictably failed.

 

The full backs were poor, Targett isn't up to it and Martina seemed to want to go backwards rather than forwards.

 

Caulker was a hoof merchant, lump it up to Graziano and don't even bother to provide any quality.

 

Playing 3 centre halves against their attack? Why didn't we play 2 and add Tadic/Juanmi to the attack instead? Very poor team selection.

 

Graziano tried his best to make the one dimensional attack work making flick ons all game long, shame none of the others made much of an effort to pick up his headers.

 

J-Rod looks very rusty, it's going to take him time to get back to full sharpness, quite why he was on when Tadic was on the bench was mystifying. Tadic actually made things tick when he came on, sadly he wasn't given a full game otherwise we might still be in the competition.

 

Stephen Davis was OK ish, Ward Prowse was OK ish but overall the midfield was not clever enough, creative enough, fast enough or tenacious enough.

 

Where was the quality crossing? Where were the through balls? Where were the one-twos and clever passing movements? Nowhere. Brain dead football.

 

We can't complain, we deserved to lose. We must improve and quickly otherwise it will be a long hard season.

 

Gutted, another cup competition we've ****ed away.

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I love the way how on BT Sport that Scouse ***** McManaman says Saints are a shadow of last seasons team. No **** Sherlock! We've got 7 of last years starting 11 either injured or poached by the big time Charlie's. Dickhead!
You could argue 8 of last years starting 11. Tadic would have started, but he is carrying some mystery injury.

 

Forster

Clyne - Fonte - Alderweireld - Bertrand

Wanyama - Morgan

Mane - Davis - Tadic

Pelle

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I feel sorry for Juanmi. He could still be living in southern Spain for ****'s sake.

 

Koeman's been on the strong meds judging by his post-match comments. Best team over two legs? - come on Ron!

 

Roll on Norwich and Milton Keynes. Back in Europe in the 2020s.

 

This made me chuckle thanks

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You could argue 8 of last years starting 11. Tadic would have started, but he is carrying some mystery injury.

 

Forster

Clyne - Fonte - Alderweireld - Bertrand

Wanyama - Morgan

Mane - Davis - Tadic

Pelle

 

I could also argue that they would all be instructed to lump it forward to pelle as soon as possible.

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