Leeds 1-0 Saints - Match Thread

[OttawaSaint]

1 minute ago, Colinjb said:

The only solace I can gain, over the last two games if we had lost at Chelsea but won at Elland Road we would not have felt as bad. But this way around it does feel rather terminal.

It's not the same though because we've given Leeds a team in the mess with us 3 free points. Other way around and Leeds are 3pts closer to us.

[S-Clarke]

1 minute ago, macca155 said:

 

I'm also worried about the money the club has spent so far on players. Must be north of £100 million. Going to be very exposed if relegated. 2005 vibes anyone.

We've got about £100m+ to make from player sales, so I'm not too worried in that sense. Weirdly a much more valuable squad than we went down with last time, but will end up with less points. Bit weird. 

[Mr X]

I can cope with the championship as it was always coming after the Jones appointment. What I can't cope with is the guy responsible for that still being at the club ready to repeat that disastrous decision, the club should be making it a priority to part ways with rasmus!

[Chez]

Sulemana was even worse than his Chelsea display, which was bad. Haven't seen any criticism of him so far. £20m and he has been completely invisible for two games. Got to do much more.

[Saint Matty 76]

Just now, sydney_saint said:

Too many players on the pitch that are there for their defensive work, and predictly led to an extremely blunt attack. Moi hasn't got a goal or an assist for a very long time, and that is clearly not gonna change anytime soon. AMN offers almost nothing going forward and KWP is by far the superior player. A defensive set up makes sense against Chelsea, but we should have been braver today.

Spot on. The selection for Chelsea should not have been the same for Leeds.

[OttawaSaint]

3 minutes ago, Chez said:

Who was it down in the bottom corner (AMN or Diallo) that was so casual, letting Harrison find Firpo with ease? Fucking killed us.

Yep and it was Shitnarek's initial balls up that led to the ball being in that corner. Easy clearance.

Edited 25 February, 2023 by OttawaSaint

[niceandfriendly]

16 minutes ago, Roo1976 said:

living near Fratton Park knew the final score .................loud cheer went up.......................fuck.

Bless them. What league are they even in these days? 

[Micky]

2 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Who though? They’re not good enough for premier league clubs so no one will want them and they’ll be on premier league contracts so not many championship clubs could afford them. We’re stuck with them. The only ones who will go will be the better players Lavia, KWP, Ward-Prowse maybe Salisu and the ones out of contact, Walcott, Elyanoussi I think. We’re stuck with the rest, having spent years clearing out the deadwood we seem to have acquired just as much in the last year. 

Exactly.  This is the first problem that we are going to have next season.  The very little quality that we do have will go and we will be left with some very poor players in a very tough league.  I really do not see any quick fix to this and fear we will see even lower leagues than the championship fairly soon.

[Baird of the land]

Just now, Chez said:

Sulemana was even worse than his Chelsea display, which was bad. Haven't seen any criticism of him so far. £20m and he has been completely invisible for two games. Got to do much more.

Had some Saints coaching for a couple of weeks, to get running with the ball out of him.

[MAY-Z]

1 minute ago, S-Clarke said:

We will almost certainly struggle to shift the Diallos, Bednareks and Armstrong etc. But there will be takers in Moussa (for some reason) and probably Adams.

Then you've got the inevitable sales of JWP, Lavia, ABK, Salisu, KWP. We're certainly going to have a huge turnover in the summer, lots of money to reinvest as well. Let's hope the people in charge make the right calls this time, although history suggests they won't.

It’s so hard to tell if our signings are any good as they keep getting integrated with the same solid crap around them

 

the players never really seem to be playing in a system that suits, out squad probably looks best suited to 433 but jones wanted back five, Selles seems to want 4222, no one seems to want to stick the best players in their best positions 

[ally_uk]

Where are the goals supposed to come from in this team. Take Prowses free kicks out the equation and we are pretty impotent up top. 

Secondly watching the game today the thing that stood out for me is our midfield was easily overrun.

We need a destroyer type player oh wait didn't we have one? Romeu we sure could do with him right now especially on a relegation battle.

Was absolute stupid to get rid without a experienced replacement with guile and leadership qualities.

 

[Vancouver Saint]

We are down. Can't complain about that result - Leeds the better team, hungrier, more possession, more chances. 

Sad that we will lose Lavia who is brilliant.

Selles showing limitations - doing exactly what he did for Chelsea was not what we required for this game. Bednarek a liability - why did he not block that weak shot?. Ely a waste of a shirt. Alcarez doesn't get a game when we need energy and attacking momentum? 

Shouldn't forget we will go down because of a catastrophic error of judgement by SR to hire Jones. Any one of us could have done better - and cost less than £4M. Unforgivable.

[S-Clarke]

2 minutes ago, Chez said:

Sulemana was even worse than his Chelsea display, which was bad. Haven't seen any criticism of him so far. £20m and he has been completely invisible for two games. Got to do much more.

He was dire for sure, lots of headless running. Too central, not pulling out wide. Seems to be playing as a two alongside Big Paul, likely in the assumption that flick ons will be won and he'll run onto it. Probably about as good chance of creating a chance as we have anywhere else tbf, but I'd like to see him deployed wide and running at players, because centrally he cannot use his pace.

[saintant]

I didn't watch the game but it's easy to judge just how poor we were from the comments in this thread. After last week's brilliant win and talk of a very good week in training it is very disappointing that we couldn't even give a poor Leeds side, without a win since November, a decent game. Ruben Selles looked the real deal last week yet this week we return to square one - it's the life of a Saints fan in recent years I'm afraid - too many false dawns. I'd never play Bednarek again because he continues to make the same mistake of standing right on top of his goalkeeper in his line of sight and failing to charge out to block a shot - he's done it time and time again. Poor as we played it was a scrappy one nil win from Leeds so the sad fact is we clearly didn't need to do very much to have beaten them. As I said previously I'd have taken 3 points from Chelsea and Leeds away but only with a decent performance today and we didn't get it so relegation seems inevitable. I'm sure we'll hear the usual after match platitudes but today was just nowhere near good enough against a relegation rival.

[woodsaint1]

20 minutes ago, HKsaint said:

Did we have a chance to get ings?

Wouldnt matter, we dont get the ball into threatening positions to even give our strikers a chance

[SotonianWill]

 

[badgerx16]

9 minutes ago, Colinjb said:

The only solace I can gain, over the last two games if we had lost at Chelsea but won at Elland Road we would not have felt as bad. But this way around it does feel rather terminal.

And if we had drawn both we would be worse off.

[macca155]

6 minutes ago, S-Clarke said:

We've got about £100m+ to make from player sales, so I'm not too worried in that sense. Weirdly a much more valuable squad than we went down with last time, but will end up with less points. Bit weird. 

I guess JWP, KWP, and Lavia will balance the books.

That's our three best players!

[Holmes_and_Watson]

Another narrow scoreline against us, to add to the pile of similar scorelines this season. That's the Selles influence and what he was brought in for under Ralph. We don't get hammered. Sadly, the rest of the performance was closer to what it was under NJ than it was under RH.

I can see the logic in the lineup, assuming KWP isn't quite 100% and there's a genuine preference over DCC, rather than club politics. But all the old limitations were shown up, with the added bonus of a couple of new players who clearly haven't gelled yet.

We were set up to contain more than attack. But with no effective plan on what to do with the ball, and some sloppy errors, the first half was nearly all Leeds. That gap between the decision to make the subs and them coming on coincided with Leeds tiring a little, and Sulemana and Onuachu actually getting a little joy as we moved forward a bit. Mara looked more lively when he came on and Walcott once offered a nearly good delivery. But those, and a JWP corner, are the scraps we had today.

We had no effective way of getting past Leeds' midfield until just before all the subs. We had a little moment, then made our own subs. They had all of a minute of promise, before Leeds once again took control.

I'll need to see the goal again. Should Baz have saved it? Should his posisitoning have been better, so as not to be blindsided? Should Janny B have ben where he was? What happened to let the ball come in for the shot? I did think Janny B was clearly fouled in the previous play, and got nothing for it. But that's no comfort if we can;t defend what's in front of us.

Once in front, we offered nothing at all. Leeds fully controlled the game until the final whistle.

A big disapointment every game is that we've seen the majority of these players play beyond their limitations in a high energy, higly drilled set up. Yet, for whatever reason, when that was found out a bit, it was beyond everyone at the club to come up with an effective solution, despite half a dozen other clubs, across Europe, going through a similar transition.

Our squad simply isn;t good enough to soak up pressure and get a goal on the counter. It seems like a massive victory when it comes off, rather than a clear sign that we should be trying something else on the back of all the narrow defeats. If anything, it works better against the bigger teams, who may overcommit at home convinced of their superiority.

Leeds have had loads of weaknesses this season, and we failed to exploit any of them. They worked harder, completed some passes and eventually, with little firepower themselves got the winner from all that space we gave them all game.

It's the same feeling I got after watching Ralph's games early in the season, strikerless and before all those January pennies were spent. Looking to sneak a victory and hope givign away control, space and cohesion doesn't cost us. I can only hope Selles has more exapansive attacking options in his tactics locker, as it was a bit of a shambles in that respect today. We didn't lay a finger on them.

[John Boy Saint]

Did we leave our name and address on the way out for Leeds to apply for gift aid.

[The Kraken]

I can’t think of one player on the saints side who I’d give more than 4 out of 10 today. All of them were just woefully below par, we were second best from start to finish. Even JWP had a bit of a stinker by his standards. Bazunu fluffed the in,y thing he had to do, Bednarek did a Bednarek, but we were never going to score if we’d have played for another 90 minutes. Absolutely abject performance, got hustled and bullied out of everything.

[Jack]

Garbage. 
 

KWP on the bench with a donkey CM at right back. Moi in the side who does nothing, week in week out. It’s like we didn’t believe we could go there and get something. 3 managers on the spin who see something in players that not a single fan rates, it’s bizarre. 
 

Just want to see our best players played in their best positions with some decent tactical briefing. 

[beatlesaint]

I honestly thought, after last week, we would give it a real go up there and come away with a point at worse. 
 

Fkin wake up call that was. 
The end is nigh and it will put the tin hat on it if that smirking bastard Rodgers delvers the fatal blow next week.

[whelk]

1 minute ago, The Kraken said:

I can’t think of one player on the saints side who I’d give more than 4 out of 10 today. All of them were just woefully below par, we were second best from start to finish. Even JWP had a bit of a stinker by his standards. Bazunu fluffed the in,y thing he had to do, Bednarek did a Bednarek, but we were never going to score if we’d have played for another 90 minutes. Absolutely abject performance, got hustled and bullied out of everything.

Yep no one can have complaints, we are the worst side in league and deserve to go

[Wade Garrett]

Sulemana looked good v Wolves playing wide, where he gets a bit more space to get the run on the full back.

Why the fuck is he being played as a centre forward?

[Saint NL]

1 minute ago, beatlesaint said:

I honestly thought, after last week, we would give it a real go up there

That was the worst part.

I can accept low quality, but there was low effort and the players didn't seem up for it.

 

[Mr X]

Shame we can't just sign up to the championship now and not bother having to suffer 14 or so more games of this shit... You just know saints being saints they are going to pull of a shock result against a big team to prolong the false hope and agony! 

[Mixedkebab]

The whole club stinks, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact problem but there is a mentally weak culture that has existed since we lost Fonte and one or two others that’s gradually got worse and worse

this lot have shown they have the ability but when the pressure is on they always blow it 

[mezzer80]

Normal service has resume from the players, just not good enough, no fight, no passion, no fire against a team that has not won since November, a big clear out of players in the summer is needed for the championship

[Convict Colony]

Ok the brain dump no one asked for:

Bazunu - Thought he did ok and his distribution was good, thought he was unlucky that bednerak was in the way of the shot so whilst he got a hand to it it wasnt enough, dont think he was at fault for the goal as people think as bednerak was like 2m infront of him so didnt have much time to react.

AMN - Thought he did rather well for a midfielder in the RB position, saw off gnoto and was very solid, still cant be sure if I blame him and mara for not stopping the through ball or whoever was meant to be picking up the leeds players chatting  on the edge of the box for the goal but overall was good.

ABK - Thought he was a 50/50 type player today, somethings when for him and others he was exposed, think he will be better when Salisu is back as he knows there is the 1-1 king behind him and he can push forward but he did some good defending today so gets a pass today.

Bednerak - Actually I thought after 1min he started well but then he started playing like he had clown shoes on for the other 89mins, he does defend well when its blocks etc but he has that teenager whose big for his body vibe the rest of the time as he is clumsy as fuck constantly, he could be through on goal and kick it into his face - he's our own phil jones and knowing our luck will be our starting CB and club capt in the championship next season.

Perraud - Am with @Chez on this, perraud tries hard, he is very french but i find he cant cross a ball without hitting the person standing 5m's away and can't really defend - if KWP is the barometer for the right then Perraud offers nothing like him would be a good squad player in the EPL but will be our starting LB in the championship.

Lavia - Joe Shields erection would of got harder today after that result, Lavia is too good and will go with the best wishes from myself absolute beast.

JWP - Not much happening for JWP today, saw a bit more captaining going on but not much influence in the play, not sure how we didnt link up with the forwards better but hey JWP can't do it all himself.

Dumb - Armstrong - Terrible - His fault is normally that he loses the ball in the centre circle but today he regressed and started losing it deep in our half, he is the scottish redmond and should be 10000000000000000000000000% dropped for the next game.

& Dumber - Moi - I think both Moi and Stuey should change their names to turnover as I have never seen 2 players who give the ball straight to the opposition as much, yes he might retain the shape of the team well etc but the offer nothing to the forwards.  The ball stops with them and the oppo attacks again Tall paul must wish he was back in Genk.

Sulemana - The person who is talent in the quote about  hard work beating talent - lazy as shit today, nothing came off and to be honest i think for the rest of the team they expect him to create mircales from terrible balls (maybe thats just me), didnt work hard enough and I would expect him to be dropped or at least played as a winger in the next game he's not a no.10 if we play no balls to paul.

Tall Paul - Thought when he saw a football he looked composed, good feet again etc so unlucky to get pulled but serisouly the crosses he got was like 1 good one from armstrong all game,  we could buy Haaland and wonder why he doesnt score when mahraz keeps losing the ball in his half, actually felt sorry for him today.

Selles - Ok I get you stuck with the team who work well last week and you used all 5 subs but I want us to have players on the pitch next week whose first instinct is to attack, feed strikers, winger etc - you get a pass today as I thought Diallo/Mara/Walcott gave us something different but if you pick Stu/Moi and Jan next game I am out bro.

Saintsweb - Defo less knicker wetting today but I am not sure if that was due to the absentee posters or our new chill vibe.  Best comment still was the jimmy sommerville could play for leeds, I would expect tomorrow the 15yr old teenage angst will show up and spend all day complaining but as saints fans how often have we been good really ?

Red Wine - Was nice - brought it out at half time and performed like a top class hooker, smooth, fast and goes down well - thanks Hardy's.

Edited 25 February, 2023 by Convict Colony

[OttawaSaint]

Sick to death of supporting this team.

Couldn't we, just once have pulled a rabbit out of a hat with Selles and cruised to a swashbuckling 3-0 win to getvthe confidence flowing though the club and condemn Leeds to more misery? Nah, of course not.

 

[Chez]

3 minutes ago, S-Clarke said:

He was dire for sure, lots of headless running. Too central, not pulling out wide. Seems to be playing as a two alongside Big Paul, likely in the assumption that flick ons will be won and he'll run onto it. Probably about as good chance of creating a chance as we have anywhere else tbf, but I'd like to see him deployed wide and running at players, because centrally he cannot use his pace.

Can't say I was terribly impressed with Onuachu either, although clearly he is reliant on someone putting a chance on a plate for him, because he ain't going to create anything himself. But our midfield doesn't seem to be good enough to get behind teams or create enough crossing opportunities. And when we do, the crossing is crap.  I think there was a one good opportunity for Onuachu in the first half when we played the ball over the top and it looked like he was in, but sadly he wasn't because he was too slow and the chance was gone. When Mara came on he was too loose with the ball, trying to be too fancy. He kept trying it and there was a couple of nice bits of skill and turns to be fair, but still nothing was created. Very frustrating. We some how look even less threatening than ever. How is that possible?

[Andrew Watson]

Back to reality with another no show performance, I said we would come bottom after Brighton game, we really are a poor side. As much as Bazanu was at fault with goal, what the hell was that useless individual Bednarek doing.

[OttawaSaint]

5 minutes ago, Saint NL said:

That was the worst part.

I can accept low quality, but there was low effort and the players didn't seem up for it.

 

Yep. No intensity at all. 5 minutes of injury time and they just wanted it to be over.  How many times have we seen a team throw the fucking kitchen sink at us in time added on?

Shit players with shit mentality. Going diwn!

[Chez]

11 minutes ago, Holmes_and_Watson said:

Sadly, the rest of the performance was closer to what it was under NJ than it was under RH.

 

It was exactly the kind of performance we were getting under RH for the last 25 games or more. It demonstrated our lack of quality throughout the side, which is why we gave the ball away, couldn't beat the press, created nothing and offered pretty much no threat at all. 

[saintant]

3 minutes ago, Andrew Watson said:

Back to reality with another no show performance, I said we would come bottom after Brighton game, we really are a poor side. As much as Bazanu was at fault with goal, what the hell was that useless individual Bednarek doing.

The sad thing is Bednarek will almost certainly be in the starting line up again next week.

[Vancouver Saint]

31 minutes ago, CanadaSaint said:

Watching us fucking around at the back and using Bednarek as the pivot for initiating the transition to attack (🤣) makes me think that Selles might have been one of the problems. Until we play KWP/ABK/Salisu/Perrault, every game will look like this. You could time our transition to attack with a sundial.

This. Absolutely. When I saw Bednarek and Elyounoussi were playing I knew Selles didn't have it. Also no Alcarez?! I get why no KWP as rusty and not match fit after injury - but Walcott before an Edozie, seriously?

[mack rill]

39 minutes ago, Roo1976 said:

living near Fratton Park knew the final score .................loud cheer went up.......................fuck.

fuckall to do with your game we scored a late 4th 

[Sheaf Saint]

Just so poor all over the pitch today. A glaring lack of quality throughout the side.

In their final years in the PL before they finally went down, I used to think of Sunderland as 'the turd that wouldn't flush'.

That's basically us now isn't it 🥺

[captainchris]

59 minutes ago, northam soul said:

Still fucking useless going forward, nothing has changed no matter who is in charge or who is on the pitch.

 

The team selections and process look remarkably familiar. Selles has had a considerable influence over the time he has been here you can see this…

That is why we needed to wait rather than rush into handing out contracts to present coaches who we know have tendencies to favour players who make us weaker. You all know who they are…

 

 

[geoffnut]

Doesn't matter who the manager is, this is the worst Saints side in years.

Relegation beckons.

 

[Chez]

2 minutes ago, mack rill said:

fuckall to do with your game we scored a late 4th 

So a tackle wont be your season's major highlight then? 

[Mr X]

1 minute ago, geoffnut said:

Doesn't matter who the manager is, this is the worst Saints side in years.

Relegation beckons.

 

It is.... We have such talented youngsters but hardly any grit or experience in the team

[Wade Garrett]

1 minute ago, captainchris said:

The team selections and process look remarkably familiar. Selles has had a considerable influence over the time he has been here you can see this…

That is why we needed to wait rather than rush into handing out contracts to present coaches who we know have tendencies to favour players who make us weaker. You all know who they are…

 

 

To be fair, he only has the job until the end of the season because nobody half decent wants the it.

[pimpin4rizeal]

For me a lot of question marks over the team selection too. 
I take it selles has watched us all season but ..

moi is utterly pointless as a creative 10 and this should be obvious                        
bazunu couldn’t catch a cold and this should be obvious                                      
bednarek is shit and this should be obvious 

one of things I actually thought made sense under jones was I think the 4-3-3 is the most suited formation for us lavia jwo and Alcaraz is a very nice midfield trio and helps us win the mf battle but now Alcaraz back on the bench and we are back to a 2 in the middle .. also gotta question kwp on the bench .

kamaldeen. Didn’t really seem to know what he was doing with his runs or linking up. Think he may well be better used as a wide man in a 4-3-3

paul was ok but just no service whatsoever .. 

we are not really managing to get anything out of our January signings at the moment though Orsic also out in the wilderness 

[Mr X]

Even rasmus surely knows we are going down now! 

[S-Clarke]

1 minute ago, Mr X said:

It is.... We have such talented youngsters but hardly any grit or experience in the team

This will always be the frustrating thing for me, we have clearly bought some talented young players but we have overestimated the quality of the established players that would be in and around them. Theo Walcott and Elyounoussi ffs.

[cloggy saint]

1 minute ago, Mr X said:

Even rasmus surely knows we are going down now! 

We're 4 points from safety, hardly insurmountable.

[S-Clarke]

4 minutes ago, cloggy saint said:

We're 4 points from safety, hardly insurmountable.

You have to make that 5 points given the GD gap, so 2 wins needed. We've blown games against Wolves, Forest, Leeds - those key ones against teams around us, so I don't see how it can't be seen as insurmountable when we are constantly giving our opposition more points to move away.

No one is saying that we won't win a game again this season, I'm sure we will and maybe a couple, but given where we are today and what is needed I can't see those wins/points accounting for much more than 30 points tops to be honest.

Edited 25 February, 2023 by S-Clarke

[Mr X]

3 minutes ago, cloggy saint said:

We're 4 points from safety, hardly insurmountable.

Not just the defeat though is it it's the manner of it, had we created lots of shots on goal and just been unlucky or put in any kind of decent shift but we didn't turn up