Saints vs Brentford - Match Thread

[trousers]

If Ward-Prowse comes out with the usual "we must learn from this" mantra in the captain's post match interview, I may well let out a small scream...

[John Boy Saint]

.......spoke too soon defaulted to the norm.

[IronCitySaint]

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by this. Complacency sets in every summer for at least the last 5/6 years which means not signing what is necessary. Doubt there will be any further signings so this is what we will have to go with this season. One area is always left way under strength and in recent years it has been the turn of goalkeeper followed by attack followed by defence. This year it is the midfield's turn. Ralf needs to get a grip of this quickly.

[badgerx16]

Nice to see all that hard work in pre-season paying off.

[Micky]

4 minutes ago, Killers Knee said:

Ralf launches the Kitchen sink

More a plastic bowl....

[sfc4prem]

Its the lack of guile and creativity that worries me most. All a side has to do these days against our boys is put 10 men behind the ball - we have no answers, no plan B.

[simo]

What is the point in 84th minute subs when you're 2 nil down?

[danjosaint]

Lost the plot like early part of last season 

[Disco Stu]

Well, well well...

[DT]

Concentrate on the league etc 

[WALK DMC]

1 hour ago, S-Clarke said:

Worst 45 under Ralph, nothing in this half. Those guys need to take a long hard look at themselves, they've believed the hype and took their foot off. Shocking, disgusting attitude.

The losers are coming back out to play.

Worst 45 ? .... Worse than Leicester ?  (first half or second .....) 

[ButtikonSaint]

Sad to see the team playing that way... really sad

[Pamplemousse]

Shocking stuff.

Need new signings and quick!!!

[trousers]

If this doesn't smoke out Glasgow I don't know what will 

[stevy777_x]

1 minute ago, Pamplemousse said:

Shocking stuff.

Need new signings and quick!!!

We don’t as the squad would get too big.

[saint lard]

Thomas Frank in ...Hasenhüttle out. 

[Baird of the land]

Hopefully there will be some changes for Spurs because that was dire. You can't keep rewarding appalling displays.

I'd say long is about the only player who came out with any credit imo, which is marginal anyway as Ralph deemed to give him only 5 minutes on the pitch.

[whelk]

Spurs 5/4 to beat us Sunday. Licence to print money although Spurs also v shit

[S-Clarke]

Just now, saint lard said:

Thomas Frank in ...Hasenhüttle out. 

Shhh.

[John Boy Saint]

2 minutes ago, Pamplemousse said:

Shocking stuff.

Need new signings and quick!!!

Whats the point - they are never ready to play the Saints system for weeks after they join. 

[trousers]

Just now, whelk said:

Spurs 5/4 to beat us Sunday. Licence to print money although Spurs also v shit

Nailed on Hojbjerg worldy for the winner I'd imagine

[IOWSaintDaz]

Terrible but predictable performance, no cutting edge throughout the team, Ings not looking anywhere near as sharp as in the backend of last season and our midfield absymal, Ralph and the boad need to sort this out or I can see us languishing down the bottom end all season, and why oh why use 2 subs on 83 minutes when you could clearly see young Tella struggling is beyond me, Spurs must be licking there lips and the prospect of playing us at the weekend

[stevy777_x]

1 minute ago, Pamplemousse said:

Shocking stuff.

Need new signings and quick!!!

We don’t as the squad would get too big.

[Pilchards]

Disgusting performance!

(1) Pick player that are in form

(2) We don’t have players that can come in for players who are out of form because we dont have any. 

(3) Two strikers on in the 83rd minute, seriously Ralph?

(4) McCarthy gives me the shakes as he’s bollox’s. two shots at him and he parries  them.

(5) Vestergaard was good Saturday but Ralph sticks to his favourites even if you’re playing shite.

(6) Redmond, oh for fuck sake FUCK OFF

(7) This message board is still bolloxs.

 

Edited 16 September, 2020 by Pilchards

[Secret Site Agent]

Dear Arseholes

 

You are a bunch of arseholes.  Call yourselves saints, you played like arseholes, were overrun as arseholes and lost as arseholes.

 

Please, please, please, let Spurs beat you 10 - nil.  It seems that only then do you arseholes start playing.

 

Lots of love

 

Us Arseholes on here that are only happy we didnt pay to see this areshole of a game.

 

 

Edited 16 September, 2020 by Secret Site Agent

[davefizzy14]

We are not on the levels we were during project restart. Need to get to those levels again. Got to bounce back quickly, hopefully Ralph will make some changes for Sunday. It's also evident we need to sign a CM.

Edited 16 September, 2020 by davefizzy14

[bpsaint]

Shambolic. Simple as that.

Not bed wetting just yet, but the Palace result I could take, first game, opponent sat back, wasn’t surprised at all. But that performance tonight, with pretty much a full strength line up against championship opponents? Fuming.

[Sarnia Cherie]

Let's hope Mr. Bale hasn't signed before Sunday.

[Micky]

I think one of the most annoying things over the last two games is that we've had time to get back into the games.  But we've just ambled through the games with no urgency whatsoever.  I know that Ralph always talks about being patient in games but while you're behind there's always a chance you're going to concede again.  None of the players looked to bothered tonight,  played the whole game one paced at 2 nil down. 

[LaptopSaint]

Early days but that was painful to watch. Why did I expect anything different?

We'll go on a run at some stage, finish between 11th and 14th and zzzzzzzz.

[Norm]

I didn’t comment on here after Palace as I didn’t want to be viewed as a ‘bed wetter’ but, I was dismayed at that ‘performance’ and hoped it was a one off. Seems it wasn’t, from comments made here.
The squad is overloaded with too many very average players, that was evident last season. Yet we have done little to address this.

[hypochondriac]

What's changed to cause such a dramatic shift in gears from where we were just a few weeks ago? Worrying that we can regress so much with no urgency whatsoever. I can't sit through and watch this tripe. I'm fine to lose but when we play like this for an extended number of games it's just a complete chore to watch. 

[cloggy saint]

Oh well, life goes on.

[Useful Idiot]

We look badly undercooked after an extremely poor pre-season.

 

Nobody seems up to match speed and they need to work hard to get sharp.

 

At the moment we look so far off the pace we'd struggle to compete against a match fit non-league side.

[Sidney Fudpucker the 3rd]

Completely embarrassing. Outplayed by a weakened Brentford team. 

Saints are the masters of selling players and not having a replacement lined up. McKennie, Ntcham, Choudhury... All talk. We clearly don't have anybody lined up and will probably end up taking a couple of midfielders on loan at the 11th hour just to dig us out of a hole. Clearly, our best option would have been to keep Reed and to actually give him game time.
Typical Saints. Get our hopes up with a decent run of games at the end of last season and then 6 weeks later look like a League two outfit. 

[CB Fry]

31 minutes ago, trousers said:

If this doesn't smoke out Glasgow I don't know what will 

£794 up tonight apparently.

[BallBoy]

Another thing. We do this every year and we make it so much harder to sign decent players from this position of weakness. Who wants to sign for a struggling team. That is assuming we actually have any money. 

[HarvSFC]

The dangers of finishing so strongly last season was that we were going to get complacent, but Jesus Christ, we exceeded expectations on how royally we could toss up the break between seasons.

Semmens has always talked a good game and has admitted to making mistakes previously, but then I think most of us on here would also be good talkers if we were replacing Ralph Kreuger. He now has further questions to ask if he has one of those behind closed doors meetings with select fans again:

Number one being, how costly was the shirt sponsor debacle. We are a club who is very much counting every penny. Every poster on here could see there was something off with LD Sports, yet the club did not do their due diligence on them, if they aren’t connected to Gao, then this is really poor.

He suggested in the last public fan forum that we would be appointing a director of football, who was already employed at a club to follow the appointment of Matt Crocker in a shake up at the top of the club. This has seemingly died a death.

Not necessarily a Semmens issue, but why was our preparation for this season so poor/bizarre? One pre-season match, while every other club was playing multiple. I don’t know why we thought just playing the one against Swansea was the way to go and why we had to be different from the rest of the pack, but it clearly has not worked and we are clearly playing catch-up. The communications with fans have also been bizarrely poor during this period. Not expecting the world, but you would think Danso was just a figment of our imagination, and everyone else who was released from last season’s squad.

Finally, why have we gone into a new season with only an unfit centre-back being our one addition to the squad. Not counting KWP, as he finished the season with us. This was a team who were fighting relegation the majority of last season… again and we are sticking with the squad. Even the best teams need to improve and keep refreshing their squads. Look at Tottenham now compared to two years ago… The unsellables is an okay excuse, but then look at most Premier League teams and they also have unsellables and are still adding to their side. Palace from Saturday, who are now in talks with Benrahma for £25m have Sakho, Benteke, Sorloth, Wickham and Riedawald… It was clear that we had identified McKennie as a midfield reinforcement, but he went to Juventus, okay, can’t blame the club there, we then move on to an alternative… Errrrr…..

For the team, I don’t think the Adams-Ings partnership works. It didn’t at the start of last season, Ings only bagged one in his first seven matches last season, then Adams was dropped and we know the rest… I think Adams is trying to make the same runs as Ings, he is, or at least was a goalscorer at Birmingham, so they are trying to do the same job. Whereas, and I know he isn’t a fan favourite on here, I think Long creates more space for Ings up top and keeps the defenders occupied more than Adams does as a nuisance more than anything.

The high defensive line, sweeper keeper is just a mess. Barcelona/Bayern Munich exposed how shit a high line can be and they’re using world class defenders, we simply cannot play it, as Stephens and Bednarek have only ever played well with whatever we were doing after we dropped the three at the back last season. Also, McCarthy just isn’t a very good footballer and got an early stupid booking as well as could have been lobbed early on, but fortunately the Brentford attacker went for a weak curler.

The Smallbone/Tella situation. It looks like we’re just using the youth team for the sake of it, because we have one. Neither are ready for the first team, if they ever will be and should be well away from our starting eleven.

I was thinking Redmond needed to be hooked for a couple of games before his injury to show he is in danger of losing his position in the team, as he has reverted to type, and dare I say even got worse than when he was booed off the pitch against Tottenham seeing some of his passes tonight (the one he put straight out for a throw-in on the halfway line with no pressure as well as putting the Brentford player through.) But, then who do we have to replace Redmond? Nobody. Potentially why his form has dropped off a cliff.

This was also our current strongest eleven minus Salisu and Armstrong playing against a Brentford side, who didn’t have three of their key players from last season in Watkins, Benrahama and Raya.

I think that’s it. You never know with Saints and we could actually step up against Tottenham and hopefully this is just a stupid reactionary post and I am forced to eat my words. But, this is how I feel after that shoddy performance. There will be no acknowledgement of the fans who paid £10 to watch that, fortunately I wasn’t one of them, but it seems like the players couldn’t be bothered without any fans there.

[CanadaSaint]

That was Leicester-like form but thankfully against a team lacking the quality and pace to punish us like they did.

It was the same pedestrian shit at the back, passing to eachother and often ending up playing it back to McCarthy for him to hoof it aimlessly. God, Stephens and Bednarek could have done that in the first place and at least we'd get the ball forward quicker. JWP's passing was dreadful, Redmond was awful, and Kyle Walker Peters didn't seem interested in attacking them down the flank. In fact, he's now caught the disease and turned into Kyle Walker Pass-Back.

I am struggling to remember us playing one early ball in the entire match.

It's hard to imagine that Ralph has lost the plot so suddenly, but that (and much of the Palace game) was a total reversion to bottom five football.

Unless we break up that duo at the back - playing their comfy you-to-me, me-to-you shit - it's hard to see this changing.

[SuperSAINT]

 

 

 

 

[hypochondriac]

To be honest if we lose ings this window then we might as well give up and accept relegation. Unfit players are grossly unprofessional. Awful. 

[SuperSAINT]

Just now, hypochondriac said:

To be honest if we lose ings this window then we might as well give up and accept relegation. Unfit players are grossly unprofessional. Awful. 

Not the most positive of post-match press conferences  

[hypochondriac]

Surely the club are also to blame if they've allowed the players to get to a point of being unfit during the break? 

[SaintsFan86]

This club is a joke, All the optimism has been completely sucked out of me! 

[Pilchards]

5 minutes ago, hypochondriac said:

To be honest if we lose ings this window then we might as well give up and accept relegation. Unfit players are grossly unprofessional. Awful. 

If they offered 25m we would snap there hands off because it would give us a chance to get in a younger striker for a better sell on profit for the future blah blah.

[Badger]

4 minutes ago, hypochondriac said:

Surely the club are also to blame if they've allowed the players to get to a point of being unfit during the break? 

How did we manage to keep the bastards fit over the lockdown period and then end up with them going to pot during a shorter break ? Defies belief.

[Pilchards]

Bet he plays the same 11 on Sunday despite saying they are unfit.

[hypochondriac]

3 minutes ago, Badger said:

How did we manage to keep the bastards fit over the lockdown period and then end up with them going to pot during a shorter break ? Defies belief.

It has to be complacency. Truly extraordinary that the club have allowed the pkayers to arrive back unfit. Fine all those who Ralph is referring to its a disgrace. 

[hypochondriac]

4 minutes ago, Pilchards said:

Bet he plays the same 11 on Sunday despite saying they are unfit.

Honestly though who else is there to play? We are bare bones on the bench and who wants to rely on long and Obafemi for anything? Vestergaard maybe? We don't have a replacement rb or lb, no other cms. It's a mess. 

[Baird of the land]

1 minute ago, hypochondriac said:

Honestly though who else is there to play? We are bare bones on the bench and who wants to rely on long and Obafemi for anything? Vestergaard maybe? We don't have a replacement rb or lb, no other cms. It's a mess. 

I’d say the likes of vestergaard and long at the very least. 

Given how bad our wingers have looked, i’d not Be opposed to someone like sims, who’s played a few pre-season games and did well in B team’s opening win.