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Burnley 3-0 Saints - Reactions

Lighthouse

By Lighthouse,
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qwertyell

qwertyell

Posted
Posted

I mean, we've added a Championship player and two kids - did anyone really expect a massive increase in the quality of performance from basically the same crap squad that have almost relegated us two seasons running?

 

FWIW I like our three signings, but the fundamental weaknesses remain as stark as ever: we have a bunch of individually horrible centre backs who are somehow even worse as a collective. And there's not a lot of quality on the ball throughout the team to really do much of any worth with our monopoly on possession - and we're presently shipping out midfielders for fun to limit our options further.

 

I think Vestergaard might even be poorer at defending than Stephens. It's the expectation that at £20m and 6' 6" he might actually be good at something - anything - that constantly disappoints.

 

Going to be another grim season, folks.

 

Sent from my F3311 using Tapatalk

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kyle04

kyle04

Posted
Posted

Both teams looked S**t to be fair, typical 1st game rustiness, difficult conditions etc etc.

Burnley took advantage of our ingrained inability to defend properly, but all over the pitch we were very poor. Our passing was woeful and no ideas up front front.

I would say a few difficult games coming up, but on this showing every game is gonna be hard. There was nothing whatsoever to give any optimism for this season.

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The Cat

The Cat

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Thought we shaded it until the first goal and then just fell apart.

 

Burnley were pretty terrible until they scored from punting it up in the air. It should have been a routine clearance but yet again our inept centre backs found a way to let them have a shot that should also have been comfortably saved.

 

After that it was nothing short of appalling.

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Crab Lungs

Crab Lungs

Posted
Posted
I mean, we've added a Championship player and two kids - did anyone really expect a massive increase in the quality of performance from basically the same crap squad that have almost relegated us two seasons running?

 

FWIW I like our three signings, but the fundamental weaknesses remain as stark as ever: we have a bunch of individually horrible centre backs who are somehow even worse as a collective. And there's not a lot of quality on the ball throughout the team to really do much of any worth with our monopoly on possession - and we're presently shipping out midfielders for fun to limit our options further.

 

I think Vestergaard might even be poorer at defending than Stephens. It's the expectation that at £20m and 6' 6" he might actually be good at something - anything - that constantly disappoints.

 

Going to be another grim season, folks.

 

Sent from my F3311 using Tapatalk

 

7 or 8/10 window mate. We’re on course for 6th

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Saint_Tony

Saint_Tony

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First game or not, it's embarrassing and unacceptable. To still be in a position where the likes of Stephens are playing is a disgrace.

 

We will get hammered next week too. Pressure on Ralph already. Make no mistake it's going to be a long season battling relegation if we don't improve drastically.

 

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Wade Garrett

Wade Garrett

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Easy for Burnley to beat us ......we are not are hard side to beat and that is our problem. Their 2nd goal was a joke! All standing ballwatching ... Am i the only one that thinks Angus Gunn is nothing special ? Was no where near any of their goals

 

No you’re not. I wasn’t at all convinced by him last season. Our best keeper in the last few years was McCarthy when he came into the side under Hughes. Sadly, he didn’t maintain his form last season.

 

Gunn is young and will hopefully improve under the new coach. De Gea struggled at a similar age. Too soon to write him off.

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CanadaSaint

CanadaSaint

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My expectations dropped when I saw PEH was out, but they dropped more when I saw he'd picked a CD trio without the only real "reader" he has - Yoshi. The three he picked are reactors, and two of them (Vest and Stephens) are very slow ones at that.

 

I'm shocked that Ralph did that today. I'll be stunned and disgusted if he plays that threesome again.

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Professor

Professor

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The optimism quickly turns back to depression with our squad, who look OK in training, but aren’t so good when faced with another team on the pitch. But why do people immediately try to allocate blame? Even if half the team aren’t good enough players can’t be returned to the seller and the club can’t spend money beyond its resources to replace them. The manager has to do the best he can with what he has.

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Crab Lungs

Crab Lungs

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No you’re not. I wasn’t at all convinced by him last season. Our best keeper in the last few years was McCarthy when he came into the side under Hughes. Sadly, he didn’t maintain his form last season.

 

Gunn is young and will hopefully improve under the new coach. De Gea struggled at a similar age. Too soon to write him off.

 

Gunn is cr4p but has designer stubble so is a top 4 gk on here.

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The Cat

The Cat

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Posted
Anyone else think Valery is massively overrated? Not just going by today because everyone was utter dog sh1te but in general, I honestly don't think he's that good.

 

No, he's a good player. In fact was one of the only players today that had an ok game.

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Shandy_Top_89

Shandy_Top_89

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Giving the side the benefit of the doubt for now and hopefully that will ultimately prove to be a freak opening day result, as does happen.

 

Indicators are that we haven't addressed any of the faults from last season though, which isn't a major surprise given the lukewarm transfer window.

 

Still an unacceptable result and performance, however if anyone can extract a performance out of this turd its Ralph.

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Plumstead_Saint

Plumstead_Saint

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Anyone else think Valery is massively overrated? Not just going by today because everyone was utter dog sh1te but in general, I honestly don't think he's that good.

Got to disagree with that. One of the better players today for me, and played well consistently last season once he got the red mist out of his system.

Disappointed as the rest of you after watching that, especially by Adams and Ings. I hope they'll improve with a better midfield and/or better conditions for flair players.

Redmond did his usual too many touches but battled and looked the most likely to score by a long chalk.

Though Bertrand was poor today.

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St Louis

St Louis

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Anyone else think Valery is massively overrated? Not just going by today because everyone was utter dog sh1te but in general, I honestly don't think he's that good.

 

Agreed!

I honestly would replace Gunn, Valery, Vestergaard, Romeu and Ings next week with... McCarthy, Yoshi, Cedric, Hojberg and Boufal. And I’m not just being knee jerk after today, I honestly think the latter 5 are upgrades on what we started with today.

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Crab Lungs

Crab Lungs

Posted
Posted
Agreed!

I honestly would replace Gunn, Valery, Vestergaard, Romeu and Ings next week with... McCarthy, Yoshi, Cedric, Hojberg and Boufal. And I’m not just being knee jerk after today, I honestly think the latter 5 are upgrades on what we started with today.

 

They are and you’re right

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Yorkshire Saint

Yorkshire Saint

Posted
Posted

Just got in the car outside the ground.

 

O dear...first 20 minutes looked very good. If Che scores then we are away...but then it started to slip. Second half I thought we would come out strong towards some strong support and it just ever started. All 3 goals were a disgrace and highlight the problems of recent years.

 

Gunn 4 ... poor for the goals and just not commanding enough for me.

Valery 5. Tried his best

Bertrand 5. Ok.

Stephen's 4. Awful second half and moaning and gunn etc to much

Jan 4

Bederak 5 apart from the goals played ok

JWP 5, nice touches but not strong enough cm against a team like burnley.

Oriel 6 solid

Redmond 5. Didn't do much by his own standards.

Adam's 5 being generous .. should have scored early but looked nervous

Ings 5 didn't have much impact but some nice touches

 

Boufal 5

Obafemi 5

Hojberg 5

 

Weather 0

Fans 8

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Sidney Fudpucker the 3rd

Sidney Fudpucker the 3rd

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Face facts. Ralph has got it totally wrong. He's gone on about us not creating enough, which is true, but the priority should have been a proper rebuild of the defence. It doesn't matter how many goals you score if you can't defend... Let's be honest, we didn't look any better up front today than we did last season. We've leaked goals for the last 2 seasons and somehow we're started the season with with the same shambolic mess that we ended last season with. As if a 20 year old Austrian defender signed on deadline day is going to be the answer to our problems?

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oldsaint

oldsaint

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Real eye opener how poor we really are we have the worst three CBs in the PL the least attacking midfield our forwards are left isolated and made to look poor . RH made errors picking this team we need skill ,flair and adventure in our midfield not JWP he is so negative .To get anything out of this group of players it got to be a 442 formation with emphasis on attacking as well as defending. We need to concentrate on scoring goals to counter the ones we will give away every match with this poor defence . Faster movement on the ball no passing back into our half when we are attacking and a more positive attitude from the 11 chosen players when on the pitch otherwise relegation and Savage will be right.

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S-Clarke

S-Clarke

Posted
Posted

The same problems, the same issues. Repeated.

 

Bad things happen, the entire team wilts. They can’t react or pick themselves up, they just wilt and let more **** happen. The character within this squad has been diabolical for 3 years, there’s no real leadership, no real guys shouting and geeing anyone up. It’s depressing and demoralising to watch.

 

Defensively a flaming shambles, but what do you expect when you’ve got Vestergard and Stephens as two of the starters? Vestergard in particular is again showcasing Ross Wilsons amazing ability to pick a player. He doesn’t and hasn’t ever looked suited for this league.

 

I also wish the club would stop trying to flog the dead horse which is Stephens. Slow, clumsy, poor positional sense. There’s no real attributes there which equal a competent centre back.

 

So, when your back includes players like that, you will wilt at the first sign of pressure or attack. Then there isn’t the character throughout the rest of the side to pick themselves up.

I imagine Ralph is going into them hard right now, he needs to – but you have to wonder what he can actually do? This is a limited bunch and he is performing miracles given the fact we’re still at this level. His lack of real genuine backing in the window has been disappointing and I’m sure he’s also disappointed.

 

The club have assumed for too long that we have a good spine of players (JWP, Romeu, Redmond, Hoj, Bertrand) – but I don’t think these are genuinely spine players, they’re not really leaders and they’re not in the mould of your Jose Fonte or Van Dijks. Good players, but they wilt too quickly and the club have persevered with certain individuals for far too long. They need better quality around them, they’re not able to do it themselves.

 

On wards to the next one then, should be 3 points there. Oh wait. Good start to the season beckons and we’ll be playing catch-up come October. A good season seems like a distant dream to be honest.

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Donatello

Donatello

Posted
Posted

Jesus, that got out of hand. I turned off after 2-0 before Vestergard could decide to help Burnley further by slamming the ball into our net :mcinnes: This season is going to be a ongoing battle between playing 3 CBs, and 2 CBs, with the end result probably being largely the same, i.e. getting d*cked. God knows what we should do. At the very least, Yoshida needs to come in, and I'd have McCarthy over Gunn personally. I suppose a JWP/Hoj/Rom midfield would be mobile and solid enough, whilst allowing greater support for the front 3.

 

On the plus side, decent first half.

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Wes Tender

Wes Tender

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Posted

We were the better team for an hour playing some attractive passing football, Romeu holding the midfield, Valery allowed loads of space on the right and Bertrand and Redmond posing lots of problems on the left. Burnley had only one shot in the first half, and that was high and wide. We had a great strike from Redmond which Pope did very well to save. VAR came to our rescue twice, once when Bambi Stephens slipped allowing them to score, but the linesman rightly flagged it offside and he was vindicated, the second time when a slightly late and high tackle by Adams was deemed not to be a red. The trouble with VAR in such situations, is that it always looks worse in slow motion and perhaps seen in real time it was deemed to be just slightly mistimed with no intent.

 

Starting the second half 0-0, it looked as if the match could easily end as a scoreless draw, or that we might even sneak a goal, but then a typical Burnley hoof it up the pitch ball caught us out and typically Barnes was the one to score. Having made the breakthrough,they seemed to lift their game, whereas we appeared to drop our heads, resulting in us conceding a couple more times without posing much threat in the remaining time to the whistle, despite Hasenhuttl rolling the dice having brought on Obafemi, Hojbjberg and Boufal.

 

What was disappointing is that Adams and Ings didn't produce more threat compared to Barnes, our main threat being Redmond once again. I understand that Hojbjerg had been ill during the week, so sensible that he didn't start, but we hadn't missed him for the first hour. When he came on, he almost gifted Burnley a goal with a comical defensive error, so hopefully he is fully recovered when we play Liverpool. Personally, I wonder why we don't play Yoshida instead of Stephens and also I wondered whether Armstrong and Long might have been two players capable of having an impact against a workmanlike team like Burnley. Boufal is a player with good skills, but was almost invisible as he hardly touched the ball since coming on.

 

Although disappointing to start the season with a 3 goal deficit without response, it is far too early to gauge what Djenepo and Danso might bring to the team.

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suewhistle

suewhistle

Posted
Posted

Ho hum. That was a bit like watching football down the local playing fields where the taller, stronger and more experienced team wins, often with a big hoof to take advantage of the wind; but you don't expect it to be your own tallest player to make such a hash. First half was OK but the collapse was embarrassing, and we need to be far stronger in midfield. Let's hope PEH's illness is just a short term one as he didn't look right when he came on. Maybe Yoshida in defence and Danso can push forward a bit?

 

There do seem to be a few on here who enjoy a good gloom fest, mainly so they can point the finger at all the optimists and say I told you so. Personally I stand at the middle of the see-saw, that way I don't go up and down so far.. Definitely a learning experience though.

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Vancouver Saint

Vancouver Saint

Posted
Posted

First goal changed the game completely. Lots of over-reaction today. We were the better footballing team first half - by far the better in the first 20 minutes. Honestly, how many of us saw 3-0 for Burnley at half time?

 

Heads went totally down after that first goal...on a mistake (wind took it looked like?)...then very well-struck, but I'm in the 'Gunn could have done better camp'. Second goal started from a ridiculous pass to non-one from Bertrand who I thought was poor today. If Adam's first minute chance had gone in...if Pope hadn't pulled off a world class save from Redmond the first goal would have been ours and the whole story different.

 

That said - our defence is crap. Heads went down way too easily. So predictable that any shot on target = a goal against. Last two goals from Bertrand errors. Gunn doesn't 'command his box' and instil confidence. Adams...hmm...didn't do enough for me to feel he's going to be a difference-maker...Ings invisible, predictable substitution...Romeu only real solid player for us today. Bednarek did nothing wrong. Agree Yoshida should be in. Redmond still our best player potentially. Shows how much we miss the flair and bit of a motivated, in-form Lemina. Hope he comes back somehow.

 

Onwards

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