Ivan Juric

[OldNick]

30 minutes ago, Dusic said:

Usually you are fairly balanced and reasonable but this is an odd one.

RM was the manager but he wasn't the person negotiating signing players and wasn't the Head of Recruitment. I doubt any of our genuine first team signings were first choices, we already know most of them weren't because we were clearly in for players like Delap, Carvalho, Clarke (just off the top of my head). Its fairly likely many were quite far down the list.

The blame for recruitment clearly lies at the door of Sport Republic. They failed RM in the summer, as much as he messed things up himself.

Re Juric...seems odd in our situation to get a manager who is very fixed in terms of formation when we knew we didnt have some profiles for his setup.

 

 

 

But surely Frazer, Downes, THB were very much ones that RM pressed for? He basically gave WHU the easiest uplift in a players value they could wish for, when he was caling for it the day after the Wembley game

[ErwinK1961]

2 minutes ago, OldNick said:

But surely Frazer, Downes, THB were very much ones that RM pressed for? He basically gave WHU the easiest uplift in a players value they could wish for, when he was caling for it the day after the Wembley game

Fraser I’ll give you, but I’d wager pretty much every saints fan wanted Downes and THB to be signed permanently (plus THB was pre agreed on promotion).

[Disco Stu]

19 hours ago, Football Special said:

 

[OldNick]

14 minutes ago, ErwinK1961 said:

Fraser I’ll give you, but I’d wager pretty much every saints fan wanted Downes and THB to be signed permanently (plus THB was pre agreed on promotion).

I think you are correct but RM did have his name on signing him. Wood also (who looks ok )

[S-Clarke]

50 minutes ago, Dusic said:

Usually you are fairly balanced and reasonable but this is an odd one.

RM was the manager but he wasn't the person negotiating signing players and wasn't the Head of Recruitment. I doubt any of our genuine first team signings were first choices, we already know most of them weren't because we were clearly in for players like Delap, Carvalho, Clarke (just off the top of my head). Its fairly likely many were quite far down the list.

The blame for recruitment clearly lies at the door of Sport Republic. They failed RM in the summer, as much as he messed things up himself.

Re Juric...seems odd in our situation to get a manager who is very fixed in terms of formation when we knew we didnt have some profiles for his setup.

 

 

 

It was well documented at the time that RM was a big part of the recruitment process in the summer, leading it in some aspects in light of no DoF. 

Of course recruitment is a club-wide debate, but RM had a hell of a lot of influence over our picks in the summer (Wood and Fraser as two examples). I don't think he appreciated the step up and seemed comfortable continuing with the same spine from the previous season, with the likes of BBD/Wood thrown in for good measure.

If Juric was here in the summer I'm fairly certain we'd have seen a lot more physicality come into the door. Our recruitment team entirely underestimated that requirement in the summer, the power and pace teams have at this level is now ridiculous.

[pimpin4rizeal]

I’m still not buying that our squad is just terrible .. didn’t Claude puel get a ton of clean sheets with stephens and bednarek?  Both have played in enough premier league seasons and never been this bad before,same goes for kwp..  central midfield you can certainly argue is one of our biggest issues but playing only two in there isn’t helping personally think fernandes is better as a midfielder dibling and sully are workable as wide fws. Cf isn’t great but onuachu can score goals if given the right service ..

point here is that our defenders have performed way better then they are this season . There still seems to be  something seriously up with the way we are setting up to ship so many goals, managers job should be at least make us hard to break down ., look at Burnley Saturday they were super well drilled, it wasn’t a team of superstars but they knew how to defend .. why can’t our managers seem to be able to grind results out ?

Edited Monday at 17:27 by pimpin4rizeal

[Green]

Rusk made us more solid in the Fulham game. 

[Lighthouse]

21 minutes ago, pimpin4rizeal said:

I’m still not buying that our squad is just terrible .. didn’t Claude puel get a ton of clean sheets with stephens and bednarek?  Both have played in enough premier league seasons and never been this bad before,same goes for kwp..  central midfield you can certainly argue is one of our biggest issues but playing only two in there isn’t helping personally think fernandes is better as a midfielder dibling and sully are workable as wide fws. Cf isn’t great but onuachu can score goals if given the right service ..

point here is that our defenders have performed way better then they are this season . There still seems to be  something seriously up with the way we are setting up to ship so many goals, managers job should be at least make us hard to break down ., look at Burnley Saturday they were super well drilled, it wasn’t a team of superstars but they knew how to defend .. why can’t our managers seem to be able to grind results out ?

Bednarek never played for Puel, who really didn’t keep that many clean sheets after we lost Fonte and Virgil for the season. He also had prime Romeu sat in front of the defence and he was far better than anything we’ve got now and we played very defensive football. Most of his clean sheets were 0-0s at home to teams like West Brom, Hull and Bournemouth.

None of our defenders have played better than they have this season, Stephen’s and Bednarek have always been a liability. The fact that Bree, Manning and Wood are getting games at all in the PL is just utterly laughable.

[Lee On Solent Saint]

55 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Most of his clean sheets were 0-0s at home to teams like West Brom, Hull and Bournemouth.

I'd be absolutely delighted with a nil nil draw against those wankers this weekend. Which just goes to show how far we have fallen.

[Green]

58 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Bednarek never played for Puel, who really didn’t keep that many clean sheets after we lost Fonte and Virgil for the season. He also had prime Romeu sat in front of the defence and he was far better than anything we’ve got now and we played very defensive football. Most of his clean sheets were 0-0s at home to teams like West Brom, Hull and Bournemouth.

None of our defenders have played better than they have this season, Stephen’s and Bednarek have always been a liability. The fact that Bree, Manning and Wood are getting games at all in the PL is just utterly laughable.

We had four clean sheets against Liverpool that season. 
 

The 0-0 against Man Utd was particularly dull and the 1-0 defeat against Stoke on the last day of the season.

[Lighthouse]

22 minutes ago, Green said:

We had four clean sheets against Liverpool that season. 
 

The 0-0 against Man Utd was particularly dull and the 1-0 defeat against Stoke on the last day of the season.

Liverpool in 2017 was nowhere near the level they’re at now and in two of those games we played Yoshida and Virgil in defence. If I’m remembering rightly, the league game against Anfield would have been about 5-0 if FF hadn’t had the game of his life.

In any case, the main point stands; Bednarek and Stephens have never been anything close to a competent defensive PL unit.

[pimpin4rizeal]

22 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Liverpool in 2017 was nowhere near the level they’re at now and in two of those games we played Yoshida and Virgil in defence. If I’m remembering rightly, the league game against Anfield would have been about 5-0 if FF hadn’t had the game of his life.

In any case, the main point stands; Bednarek and Stephens have never been anything close to a competent defensive PL unit.

Both played under hasenhuttl too I’m not trying to make out either are brilliant but they certainly fared better then this season .. for me we just seem to chose managers that can’t grind out a result .. Martin encouraged us to play suicidal passing around the back line and juric is totally giving up the midfield .. you don’t need superstars to have a well drilled defence 

[Dusic]

6 hours ago, S-Clarke said:

It was well documented at the time that RM was a big part of the recruitment process in the summer, leading it in some aspects in light of no DoF. 

Of course recruitment is a club-wide debate, but RM had a hell of a lot of influence over our picks in the summer (Wood and Fraser as two examples). I don't think he appreciated the step up and seemed comfortable continuing with the same spine from the previous season, with the likes of BBD/Wood thrown in for good measure.

If Juric was here in the summer I'm fairly certain we'd have seen a lot more physicality come into the door. Our recruitment team entirely underestimated that requirement in the summer, the power and pace teams have at this level is now ridiculous.

Juric plays a different style so would of course have signed some players of a different profile.

But as pointed out further up, pretty much every fan wanted us to sign THB and Downes.

Wood was a low risk £3m signing so will likely be very useful next season and clearly wasn't signed to be a key player. Fraser was a poor signing but also cheap, its not like we signed him instead of getting someone for £20m.

BBD and Archer on the other hand were obviously signings seen as starting XI options.

Just because we signed them it doesnt mean they were #1 on RM's list (they weren't). It means they were the deals the club was able to get done. Swap Delap for Archer and we definitely have more physicality and more points. My question would be why did Delap prefer to go to Ipswich over Saints? Why did they find £25m for a goalkeeper when we could have signed one on loan and spent that cash on a proper attacker? Why didn't they stump up 500k to bring Welington here in the summer? Why didnt they replace Wilcox properly when he left?

These are SR questions not RM ones.

 

[Lighthouse]

30 minutes ago, pimpin4rizeal said:

Both played under hasenhuttl too I’m not trying to make out either are brilliant but they certainly fared better then this season .. for me we just seem to chose managers that can’t grind out a result .. Martin encouraged us to play suicidal passing around the back line and juric is totally giving up the midfield .. you don’t need superstars to have a well drilled defence 

We just barely managed to paper over the cracks of Stephens and Bednarek through a combination of Hassenhutl being an excellent manager and having superior players like Bertrand, Romeu, Livramento and KWP around them. They were always a serious weakness and a whole team of Bednarek/Stephens standard players would have been relegated, even with Ralph in charge. Half the time they couldn’t even get into the team ahead of thoroughly average players, like Hoedt and Vestergaard. Two years ago we tried, and failed, to replace both of them with DCC and ABK.

To put it bluntly, they’re both crap and I don’t think any Saints manager has ever really wanted either in their team, we’ve just failed consistently to recruit better centre halves.

[Bob60]

39 minutes ago, pimpin4rizeal said:

Both played under hasenhuttl too I’m not trying to make out either are brilliant but they certainly fared better then this season .. for me we just seem to chose managers that can’t grind out a result .. Martin encouraged us to play suicidal passing around the back line and juric is totally giving up the midfield .. you don’t need superstars to have a well drilled defence 

I agree about the midfield but this has been a big problem for a few seasons and especially this one. 

The midfield options were have are sub standard to put it politely and I think this has caused/causes many of our issues.

They don't win the ball, turn and play forward or control games which makes the defence look when worse than it is.

[aintforever]

21 hours ago, Bob60 said:

I agree about the midfield but this has been a big problem for a few seasons and especially this one. 

The midfield options were have are sub standard to put it politely and I think this has caused/causes many of our issues.

They don't win the ball, turn and play forward or control games which makes the defence look when worse than it is.

This. Aribo, Downes, Smallbone and Lesley are all way short of being Premier League quality. Lesley may come good in time but between that lot there is no combination that’s going to be good enough.

A decent central midfielder would be first on my list for the summer.

 

 

Edited yesterday at 18:12 by aintforever

[Galway saint]

2 hours ago, Bob60 said:

I agree about the midfield but this has been a big problem for a few seasons and especially this one. 

The midfield options were have are sub standard to put it politely and I think this has caused/causes many of our issues.

They don't win the ball, turn and play forward or control games which makes the defence look when worse than it is.

We have never properly replaced Romeu or Ings for that matter and they left several years ago.

Its a toss up between what is the most dysfunctional; our midfield or attack.

We just haven't matched up with the pace and power in the PL

 

 

[pimpin4rizeal]

2 hours ago, Lighthouse said:

We just barely managed to paper over the cracks of Stephens and Bednarek through a combination of Hassenhutl being an excellent manager and having superior players like Bertrand, Romeu, Livramento and KWP around them. They were always a serious weakness and a whole team of Bednarek/Stephens standard players would have been relegated, even with Ralph in charge. Half the time they couldn’t even get into the team ahead of thoroughly average players, like Hoedt and Vestergaard. Two years ago we tried, and failed, to replace both of them with DCC and ABK.

To put it bluntly, they’re both crap and I don’t think any Saints manager has ever really wanted either in their team, we’ve just failed consistently to recruit better centre halves.

I think ABK did look a good upgrade initially but for whatever reasons he can’t get a look in now .. 

I just think there’s more to it then the actual defenders being crap I’ll agree they are lower end premiership players at best but the argument is they are not being helped at all by our managers this seasons tactics,we gave  away countless goals under Martin with passing out under pressure and now juric leaves the defence very exposed with the 2 cms there’s too much space and teams easily slice through us .. I’d be happy just to see us become well drilled like Burnley where Saturday . Credit to them once they got there goal they defended in numbers as a unit which we seem to never be able to do effectively 

how many times this season have we defended well as a unit ?  We just seem to get broken on and there’s no help for our defence 

Edited Monday at 23:09 by pimpin4rizeal

[Convict Colony]

10 hours ago, aintforever said:

This. Aribo, Downes, Smallbone and Wesley are all way short of being Premier League quality. Wesley may come good in time but between that lot there is no combination that’s going to be good enough.

A decent central midfielder would be first on my list for the summer.

 

 

Wesley ?

 

[Convict Colony]

Found this tactical analysis as Juric joined quite an interesting read https://totalfootballanalysis.com/team-analysis/ivan-juric-southampton-202425-tactical-analysis-tactics

Its just as a he was taking over in Dec but I found these quotes seems to summarise our midfield very well.

"Still, the Southampton player was never really getting there – the Saints’ first mistake was not having a second wave of pressing player(s) ready to engage."

"This example showed two key flaws from Southampton – a lack of tactical preparation for the press and a lack of individual ability to think and act in the moment."

"in terms of a lack of individual know-how – players recognise danger too late and, therefore, make their midfield unit far too easy to play through."

"Southampton’s positioning in midfield is not bad – the letdown here was individual execution in the counterpress following a turnover."

I am seeing a trend about out midfielders.

[IFHP]

I think the guy of fucking clueless and with him at the helm next season I don’t hold much hope . 
 

 

[Lee On Solent Saint]

8 hours ago, Convict Colony said:

Wesley ?

 

Dread Pirate Roberts

[Convict Colony]

48 minutes ago, Lee On Solent Saint said:

Dread Pirate Roberts

[gecko]

I'm torn on him at the moment. There's been some pretty decent performances under him, and some truly abject ones as well.

Trying to take variables out of our equation, his playbook is supposed to be broadly similar to the chap from Atalanta, having worked with him in the past - man-to-man marking, high press etc etc. A strategy that was/is clearly effective elsewhere, and against some very high level opposition - e.g. the undefeated Leverkusen, and they are currently sitting in 3rd in Serie A.

As a result, I'm not sure the whole strategy needs to be binned off, but there obviously needs to be some analysis and tweaking to make us more effective. I think we're in a very similar situation to Amorim at Utd. His play was obviously very successful at Sporting, so he needs to work out why it's not so effective in the EPL.

There's numerous reasons to explain it; pick and choose as many or more:

• The players aren't good enough - definitely true for us, we've already seen how crap they are before Juric arrived.
• The players arent' fit enough to play high press - probably, they're all blowing out their arse like the end of Hassenhuttl games, when we instigated the 70min fake injury/water break.
• The formation is a problem - I'm broadly fine with him having a preferred formation, but I am struggling to understand sticking religiously to it when it's leaving such gaping holes. And the pragmatic person in me would suggest that having a 4 at the back, to push another player into midfield is good, not just because it matches up against the opposition's likely formation (4-2-3-1 being the most popular in recent seasons), but because it's also what most defenders are used to playing in.
• Juric simply isn't as good a coach as Gasperini - again, almost certainly true. Some of the substitutions have been baffling, sure, but it's fair to say the depth of our squad is really poor

I really want him to succeed as I'd much rather watch the attacking football he promised over the dross we had in the early part of the season. But without any uptick in competitiveness it's going to be difficult to maintain any level of optimism if it's him going into next season.

On a more morbid note, if I have to see us lose every week I'd rather that it was because we were outplayed (like it is now) than from the never ending cock-ups we made at the back leading to goals (which it was before). I'm far less worried now about a terrible back pass, but it seems to have been replaced with an inevitable loss of possession on the halfway line, leading to break and likely goal when our one CB who has pushed right up is in no position to make the tackle.

I'll support him for a good while more for now.

[Charlie Wayman]

17 hours ago, IFHP said:

I think the guy of fucking clueless and with him at the helm next season I don’t hold much hope . 
 

 

Yeah but what do you realy think?

[danjosaint]

Trying to play like your still in SerieA won't work in EPL 

[Green]

There have been some passages of play which have represented a much better press but not seen consistently. 

Is that a case of not having the players, the players not having the fitness and/or ability? 

As mentioned before when Pochettino took over we could clearly see his style of play in his first game against Everton. Juric set us up differently in the West Ham game but overall we don’t appear to be much better defensively. 
 

[notnowcato]

Essentially the defence / midfield is not good enough no matter what the formation, philosophy, fitness level etc etc.

The gap between the best in the championship and 17th upwards in the EPL is massive.  Ipswich have probably made the best fist of getting the right players in, adopted and adapted a style and have a decent manager but even they are more than likely to go straight back down. 

[gecko]

2 hours ago, danjosaint said:

Trying to play like your still in SerieA won't work in EPL 

Not that I disagree, but the stats would suggest that Serie A clubs fair pretty well against EPL clubs historically. Granted we're comparing the best of both leagues because it's the only time they actually face-off; not the complete garbage that we are.

https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/news/0232-0e9534dc4737-2f7b42d91e2e-1000--italy-v-england-whose-clubs-are-best/ (2016)

Seem safe to conclude that a terrible EPL team (us) trying to play like we're in Serie A is going to work about as well as if we try to play like we're in the EPL.

[danjosaint]

It won't tho as SerieA bar prob 3 or 4 teams is a a fair bit slower and tactical than the EPL. In the EPL you have probably bar the 3 newly promoted most sides have a serious amount of physicality/pace/skill. With his favoured formation (for the EPL) you have to have 2 almost world class cms like Kante to hold the midfield together or you just get bypassed regardless if one of you cbs is stepping out. Amorim is finding out exactly the same and they've a damn site better cms than us as he's another basing his formation in a slower league 

[Sidney Fudpucker the 3rd]

Didn't want him, not with his reputation for poor relationships with players, which now seems to be rearing it's ugly head. 

I dont understand the logic in employing a manager who probably won't be our manager next season.

And so it starts again, the search for a manager who can get Saints promoted, convince the likes of Shea Charles and Ronnie Edwards that they have a future at Saints and also build a new team. 

I'd be surprised if Saints finish in the top half of the championship.next season. 

Edited 58 minutes ago by Sidney Fudpucker the 3rd

[Lighthouse]

2 minutes ago, Sidney Fudpucker the 3rd said:

Didn't want him, not with his reputation for poor relationships with players, which now seems to be rearing it's ugly head. 

I dont understand the logic in employing a manager who probably won't be our manager next season.

And so it starts again, the search for a manager who can get Saints promoted, convince the likes of Shea Charles and Ronnie Edwards that they have a future at Saints and also build a new team. 

I'd be surprised if Saints finish in the top half of the championship.next season. 

No you wouldn’t.

[Saint in Paradise]

6 minutes ago, Sidney Fudpucker the 3rd said:

I'd be surprised if Saints finish in the top half of the championship.next season. 

Well with the way things are at the moment I would be a tad OK if that happens. What I don't want is to

end up in the same situation as Luton are. I really don't want League One ever again.