[cite]Posted By: Rothko[/cite]We were solid, well organised, played decent football, and created enough chances to win most game.
Big up Parky, suppose Large Addick enjoyed the result though
didn't enjoy the result at all, I wanted us to win. Very pleased with the performance though, no complaints. Would've probably won except for their keeper although Weaver kept us in it too in the second half. Very encouraging though and very enjoyable.
It's not a matter of impatience it's because each game that passes is one game nearer the end of the season and if we aren't taking points from them the gap between us and safety is growing. We are chasing 21st.place and need to close the gap pretty sharpish.
Although he's not my choice as permanent manager, I thought Parky's post-match comments were very sound and he's trying so hard not to be Pardew Mk 2 that you have to respect him for that.
He didn't complain, blame others, or say it was just one of those seasons (which I think was the ultimate comment when we realised AP had lost not just the plot but his own self-belief that he could make it any better).
He welcomed a small but significant improvement in confidence. But he recognised the continued shortcomings and instead of dwelling on how we deserved a goal at the end of first half and were denied by great keeping he said :
"The one criticism I had was we didn't follow a few more things in and anticipate some second balls around the box better."
He also recognised that:
"we ran out of steam after the effort we'd put in for the first 45 minutes.”
Both observations spot on but more importantly, said not as Pardew-type excuses but as a serious analysis of why we didn't win and expressed in a sober, sensible spirit that inspires confidence that he's got a good chance of putting these failings right by next week.
He talked about work ethic , discipline, character and resilience. And he thanked the spectators.
He's got a good attitude and he's obviously working really hard to shake off his complicity in the failings of the old regime. All he needs now is a couple of wns. But they have to come in the next three games IMO else he won't be taking care much longer.
He stated: "Confidence doesn't come overnight. It's built brick by brick. We took positives from the game at Queens Park Rangers in midweek and you could see confidence is slowly coming back to the players.
"In the position we're in, it's about the work ethic of the team. You're never going to dominate the whole game so you've got to have discipline in the team.
"Today was a first clean sheet for 13 games and we've been struggling to keep the ball out of our net.”
This is the most important comment he made.
We are a team out of form and confidence it is important that those 2 ingrediants are installed back in to the team asap otherwise results WILL NOT come.
there where great positives to be taken from yesterday and the fans tolerance to some quiete periods was notable and positive
She gets excited by fish? Sounds like a rather infamous story in rock history involving Led Zeppelin...originally reported to have been a shark, but subsequently said by one who was there to have been a red snapper...
ps : anyone mystified or intrigued by the above reference will find the full sordid details of the story in my book, The Rough Guide To Led Zeppelin (pub. by Penguin/Rough Guides and a must-have bargain at just £9.99 ). Shamless self-promotion over.
[cite]Posted By: nigel w[/cite]She gets excited by fish? Sounds like a rather infamous story in rock history involving Led Zeppelin...originally reported to have been a shark, but subsequently said by one who was there to have been a red snapper...
ps : anyone mystified or intrigued by the above reference will find the full sordid details of the story in my book, The Rough Guide To Led Zeppelin (pub. by Penguin/Rough Guides and a must-have bargain at just £9.99 ). Shamless self-promotion over.
No, I don't think it was that at all before Mrs Tavern gets the wrong idea!!
Not going overboard as we didn't win and when we tired at the end we sat deeper and deeper resorting to the long ball which didn't stick and invited more pressure from which they could of scored but...
Up to 70 mins we were the better side, didn't concide or flap at set pieces and created a few if not a lot of chances.
Burton looked lively and was unlucky not to score with his overhead. Put himself about and was a real plus.
McEveley was an improvement on what we have seen and the whole back four with Fortune and Cranie was better.
Weaver did well and deserves praise despite once coming and not getting the ball when Hudson headed clear in the first half.
Semedo was busy and Bailey tried to make things happen. Should really have scored at the end. Real competition there now when Racon is fit.
Gillespie and Bouazza where both effective going forward and back and a shame none of the many balls played in could be converted. Gillespie brought a whole new element to the team, finding space, linking the play and putting dangerous balls into the box.
Gray was not, IMHO, as effective as he could have been but he was often crowded out by 2 or 3 Soton defenders.
Credit to Saints. Very young side who played football and got stronger as the game went on. Their 11 Surman was excellent and they defended well and in numbers.
Parky hasn't yet done enough to justify getting the job full time IMHO but it is unrealistic to think that he would have been given the job or sacked had we won 7- 0 or lost 7-0. One week and the board shouldn't, again IMHO, rush any decision to keep or get rid.
Agree with pretty much all of that match analysis , Henry, although I thought Bailey was the weakest link in midfield. It would be interesting to go back to some videos from the start of the season : was he really as good as we thought when he first arrived? Or were we willing him to be better than he really is - and we ended up convincing ourselves with our own spin? Or has he just lost confidence and form? Not sure. I think a fit Racon will replace him next week.
Definitely the most convincng back four we've put out this season. I think we were wrong about Cranie. He can stay in my book! Primus is the one who should shortly be heading back to the South Coast...
Gray didn't look quite right again but Burton was a surprise. Someone described his play as ''shrewd' and that's a good word.
The overall problem, though, is that every game since the Barnsley debacle we have been told we're improving (with the obvious major blip of Shef U). But it still hasn't been enough to win us more than two points out of the last 15. I think there are genuine signs of improvement. But unless it translates into a couple of wins in the next three games, we are going to be in a boy-who-cried-wolf type situation.
I hate the fish. The fish chant sounded a lot quieter so think it could be dying a death.
anyway i really enjoyed that. We ran out of steam at the end but great first half and lots of positives to take from that performance. The main one being we kept a clean sheet.
Hate to make the comparison but when Warnock arrived at Sell Out he stopped them losing with about 6 straight draws. They then kicked on from there and made the play-offs.
Not saying we are going to do that but not losing is the first step to winning.
Henry wrote: ''he stopped them losing with about 6 straight draws. They then kicked on from there and made the play-offs.Not saying we are going to do that...''
Even if we do follow Soton with five more straight draws, Henry, that still might not be enough to build a platform to stay up let alone make play-offs. It would take us into the last game of 2008 on 22 points from 25 games, extend our run without a win to 15 games - and probably leave us needing 31 points from 21 games just for survival.
Sorry, but we have to start winning games sooner than that. I'm sure Parky knows that and has been told so.
ps the other major difference is that Palace took decisive action much earlier than us and gave their new man time - Warnock took over in October as far as I remember. We go into December with no manager and a caretaker on whom the jury is still out.
[cite]Posted By: nigel w[/cite]Henry wrote: ''he stopped them losing with about 6 straight draws. They then kicked on from there and made the play-offs.Not saying we are going to do that...''
Even if we do follow Soton with five more straight draws, Henry, that still might not be enough to build a platform to stay up let alone make play-offs. It would take us into the last game of 2008 on 22 points from 25 games, extend our run without a win to 15 games - and probably leave us needing 31 points from 21 games just for survival.
Sorry, but we have to start winning games sooner than that. I'm sure Parky knows that and has been told so.
ps the other major difference is that Palace took decisive action much earlier than us and gave their new man time - Warnock took over in October as far as I remember. We go into December with no manager and a caretaker on whom the jury is still out.
Warnock - it's his 60th birthday tomorrow, 1 December - took over Palace in October 2007 - but they were still in the bottom 3 this time last year, so 6 weeks into the job, he was no instant miracle worker either.
But he did organise his team, get them working as a unit, starting with tightening up the defence.
Even Curbs worked on the principle that if you didn't concede, you didn't lose.
Isn't that what Parky is showing us he is doing now?
Okay, everybody from the Board to supporters is anxious about our current position - but the last 2 performances under Parky have shown the players much better organised and working as a team unit, matches that perhaps we should have won both. But we also didn't concede for the first time in 13 matches yesterday and quite likely would have won except for an exceptional display by the Saints keeper.
I feel it's gradually coming together though - we're only a whisker away from getting it right ,and the breaks finally falling for us.
The season doesn't end at Christmas fortunately - and in the meantime, a couple of wins can change the dynamics completely.
Oggy said:''the last 2 performances ... have shown the players much better organised and working as a team unit, matches that perhaps we should have won both."
With respect, Oggy, I could look back in the Charlton Life archives and find an almost identically worded post from you after the Argyle and Birmingham games. I'm not disagreeing with you, friend - merely pointing out the parallel !
Certainly agree with your last par about a couple of wins changing the dynamics. But we haven't had one win, let alone two, in ten games, and we have to start winning NOW, not some time around Christmas after we've given the team time to settle down under someone who is supposedly only a caretaker anyway.
We all want results, Nigel...... and ideally we want those results now.
Parky might have only been named caretaker last week, but if he's allowed to trade players, then he's very much fulfulling the manager's role with the Boards's blessing.
Absolutely I said something similar after the Argyle and Brum games, simply because the team performances were in stark contrast to the dross we'd grown used to seeing served up.
I live down in Cornwall, so usually can only see 10 or 12 matches a season - but I did witness the Burnley home match and was stunned by such a poor 1st half performance.
A couple of weeks later, I was at Argyle in dreadful wet and windy weather conditions but I witnessed a performance where I was proud to be an Addick, and a match which we truly should have won.
As I said, I witnessed both of those performances.
A similar performance was served up at Birmingham, where we went from hitting the inside of the post and 60 seconds later, an horrendous Weaver error - the difference between winning 3-1 and conceding a leveller. Football, as we know, is that fickle - that's called getting or not getting the breaks - and often is the fine line between success and failure.
QPR is a match that apparently we should have got something from, 2 defensive errors cost us goals and 2 sitters missed, scoring either of those would have put us 2-1 up late on.
Just about everybody came home from yesterday's match hugely encouraged by what they'd seen - remember the improved performances had previously all been away matches, so most of The Valley faithful hadn't seen these better performances.
Nevertheless back to Warnock/Palace last season, Palace were very much still in the relegation places after the same number of games played as we've played so far this season. And Warnock went about his job and was initially getting similar results compared to Parky at the moment - yet after a period of consolidating the team and getting better performances conceding fewer goals, their season finally took off and they reached the playoffs.
I'm not saying we're going to finish 5th like them last season - but it's still a tight division and there are 27 matches remaining to get it right.
Oggy, that's a really good post. But there are several major dfferences between the Warnock/Palace and Parky/Charlton scenarios.
Peter Taylor was sacked because he'd only managed 10 points from 10 games.
Warnock came in two days later with 36 games left so had serious time to turn it around.
We've got 17 points from 20 games, so we're twice as far into the season ...
and Warnock came in as manager, a position which as we enter December is currently vacant at Charlton while we test out someone because we're not sure if he's good enough to do the job..
Enjoyed the game yesterday, thought we deserved the 3 points and if it hadn't been for an inspired performance from kelvin davis, we would have got them. Sat on the upper tier and thoroughly enjoyed the atmoshpere, didn't hear any boos from where i was sitting, except for that bloody ref. Also nice not to be sat behind some bloke who complains constantly about every thing for the first time in 5 years. used to drive me mad!!!
Positives: Gray and Burton showed some good link up play in he first half, and Burton was unlucky with his overhead kick.
Boazza looked good, unlucky not to get on the score sheet, although i think he wasted his best chance with a poor touch and then instead of passing it took a poor shot on the turn in frustration.
Weaver, looked much more assured.
Mceverly looked good, made some good runs, defended well. He got sold short alot with passes yesterday. I think he was out of position a fair bit due to his lack of match fitness, you could see after a few of his runs he was absolutely knackered, couple more games and he should be firing on all cylinders.
Cranie looked a lot better yesterday and played well with gillespie who i also thought had a good game.
Semedo - bloody brilliant game, did not stop working throughout - think he was taken off due to exhaustion. Fortune and Hudson played well together.
Negatives - one player not mentioned so far - Nicky Bailey... He is a try hard, i'll give him that, but then again so is matt holland. Matt Holland not only tries hard, but unlike Bailey he doesn't make a string of unnecessary mistakes. So many times yesterday, Bailey played a poor pass, gave the ball away unnecessarily, mistakes that i don't think matty would have made. Matt is more experience in this division and has a lot of premiership experience. He may not be as young as he used to be, but he is a damn sight better than Bailey. According to reports from the beginning of the season, Bailey was looking good, i missed a few games at the beginning as i was not in the country, and all i have witnessed of the bloke so far is the aforementioned. I imagine when Racon is fully fit again he will slot in, instead of bailey.
As i said before though, a lot can be taken from the game, especially a clean sheet, and some good performances from the lads.
[cite]Posted By: moutuakilla[/cite]Semedo - bloody brilliant game, did not stop working throughout - think he was taken off due to exhaustion.
Fortune and Hudson played well together.
Negatives - one player not mentioned so far - Nicky Bailey...
He is a try hard, i'll give him that, but then again so is matt holland. Matt Holland not only tries hard, but unlike Bailey he doesn't make a string of unnecessary mistakes. So many times yesterday, Bailey played a poor pass, gave the ball away unnecessarily, mistakes that i don't think matty would have made. Matt is more experience in this division and has a lot of premiership experience. He may not be as young as he used to be, but he is a damn sight better than Bailey. According to reports from the beginning of the season, Bailey was looking good, i missed a few games at the beginning as i was not in the country, and all i have witnessed of the bloke so far is the aforementioned. I imagine when Racon is fully fit again he will slot in, instead of bailey.
As i said before though, a lot can be taken from the game, especially a clean sheet, and some good performances from the lads.
I agree with half of this bit. The Matt Holland bit. I would play Holland with Racon. Semedo is OK when he doesn't have the ball which speaks volumes. A lot of hard work but not much in the last third. Centre midfiled was our weakest department yesterday.
Centre midfield was ok until Bailey and Semedo dropped off the pace after about 20 mins into the second half. Bailey didn`t have a good game and Jose just ran out of puff imho. When that happened Southampton started to dominate.
[cite]Posted By: moutuakilla[/cite]Negatives - one player not mentioned so far - Nicky Bailey...
He is a try hard, i'll give him that, but then again so is matt holland. Matt Holland not only tries hard, but unlike Bailey he doesn't make a string of unnecessary mistakes. So many times yesterday, Bailey played a poor pass, gave the ball away unnecessarily, mistakes that i don't think matty would have made. Matt is more experience in this division and has a lot of premiership experience. He may not be as young as he used to be, but he is a damn sight better than Bailey. According to reports from the beginning of the season, Bailey was looking good, i missed a few games at the beginning as i was not in the country, and all i have witnessed of the bloke so far is the aforementioned. I imagine when Racon is fully fit again he will slot in, instead of bailey.
Fair enough that Holland doesn't make mistakes, but Bailey tries the harder passes which Holland never does.
Bailey's been inconsistent, had some great games but some poor ones as well. Then again most players have in our team.
Holland isn't really the answer, he's useful though, needs to be used in the right way, not relied upon. If Bailey finds some consistency he can be a very good player for us.
Agree that Bailey has potential, but he is giving away possession far to cheaply at present. Has good aggression to his game, just needs to add holding the right area and improved distribution and he will be a good un.
I like Semedo, a player prepared to do the no thrills stuff with no fuss.
McEveley and Burton were big plusses for me, and with FOrch and Boauzza our best players. Gillespie i've been pleased with as well.
The one thing no one has mentioned, we had a hell of a lot of outfield players on Saturday who not just didn't know each others games, are collectively woefully short of 90 minutes. That's whaty really showed in the last 20 minutes.
Goals have to be found from somewhere if we are to have a chance of doing anything this season, but if they can be found then i really think we could kick on.
Also thought Saints played lovely football for a young side. The cultured centre mid was a real player. When was the last time you've seen a team's keeper only ever roll the ball out ?
my concern is we only have one real in the box goal scorer (Dickson) at the club now and he is for some reason unknown to us, completely out of favour. This is what is missing in my view, clean sheet was pleasing tho and u got to start somewhere.
Comments
didn't enjoy the result at all, I wanted us to win. Very pleased with the performance though, no complaints. Would've probably won except for their keeper although Weaver kept us in it too in the second half. Very encouraging though and very enjoyable.
Positive and one of the best draws i have seen,
Their goalkeeper was good and we played well
Good stuff.. pleased to here it...
He didn't complain, blame others, or say it was just one of those seasons (which I think was the ultimate comment when we realised AP had lost not just the plot but his own self-belief that he could make it any better).
He welcomed a small but significant improvement in confidence. But he recognised the continued shortcomings and instead of dwelling on how we deserved a goal at the end of first half and were denied by great keeping he said :
"The one criticism I had was we didn't follow a few more things in and anticipate some second balls around the box better."
He also recognised that:
"we ran out of steam after the effort we'd put in for the first 45 minutes.”
Both observations spot on but more importantly, said not as Pardew-type excuses but as a serious analysis of why we didn't win and expressed in a sober, sensible spirit that inspires confidence that he's got a good chance of putting these failings right by next week.
He talked about work ethic , discipline, character and resilience. And he thanked the spectators.
He's got a good attitude and he's obviously working really hard to shake off his complicity in the failings of the old regime. All he needs now is a couple of wns. But they have to come in the next three games IMO else he won't be taking care much longer.
"In the position we're in, it's about the work ethic of the team. You're never going to dominate the whole game so you've got to have discipline in the team.
"Today was a first clean sheet for 13 games and we've been struggling to keep the ball out of our net.”
This is the most important comment he made.
We are a team out of form and confidence it is important that those 2 ingrediants are installed back in to the team asap otherwise results WILL NOT come.
there where great positives to be taken from yesterday and the fans tolerance to some quiete periods was notable and positive
So did I
Team looked up for it, played some committed and intelligent football before tiring badly.
The crowd got behind the team and the only downside was the "plastics" in the exec box next to me shouting "Fish" : - )
Im definately encouraged by these reports...
ps : anyone mystified or intrigued by the above reference will find the full sordid details of the story in my book, The Rough Guide To Led Zeppelin (pub. by Penguin/Rough Guides and a must-have bargain at just £9.99 ). Shamless self-promotion over.
No, I don't think it was that at all before Mrs Tavern gets the wrong idea!!
Not a Led Zepp fan but impressed.
Yes, I heard! : -)
Up to 70 mins we were the better side, didn't concide or flap at set pieces and created a few if not a lot of chances.
Burton looked lively and was unlucky not to score with his overhead. Put himself about and was a real plus.
McEveley was an improvement on what we have seen and the whole back four with Fortune and Cranie was better.
Weaver did well and deserves praise despite once coming and not getting the ball when Hudson headed clear in the first half.
Semedo was busy and Bailey tried to make things happen. Should really have scored at the end. Real competition there now when Racon is fit.
Gillespie and Bouazza where both effective going forward and back and a shame none of the many balls played in could be converted. Gillespie brought a whole new element to the team, finding space, linking the play and putting dangerous balls into the box.
Gray was not, IMHO, as effective as he could have been but he was often crowded out by 2 or 3 Soton defenders.
Credit to Saints. Very young side who played football and got stronger as the game went on. Their 11 Surman was excellent and they defended well and in numbers.
Parky hasn't yet done enough to justify getting the job full time IMHO but it is unrealistic to think that he would have been given the job or sacked had we won 7- 0 or lost 7-0. One week and the board shouldn't, again IMHO, rush any decision to keep or get rid.
Definitely the most convincng back four we've put out this season. I think we were wrong about Cranie. He can stay in my book! Primus is the one who should shortly be heading back to the South Coast...
Gray didn't look quite right again but Burton was a surprise. Someone described his play as ''shrewd' and that's a good word.
The overall problem, though, is that every game since the Barnsley debacle we have been told we're improving (with the obvious major blip of Shef U). But it still hasn't been enough to win us more than two points out of the last 15. I think there are genuine signs of improvement. But unless it translates into a couple of wins in the next three games, we are going to be in a boy-who-cried-wolf type situation.
anyway i really enjoyed that. We ran out of steam at the end but great first half and lots of positives to take from that performance. The main one being we kept a clean sheet.
Not saying we are going to do that but not losing is the first step to winning.
Even if we do follow Soton with five more straight draws, Henry, that still might not be enough to build a platform to stay up let alone make play-offs. It would take us into the last game of 2008 on 22 points from 25 games, extend our run without a win to 15 games - and probably leave us needing 31 points from 21 games just for survival.
Sorry, but we have to start winning games sooner than that. I'm sure Parky knows that and has been told so.
ps the other major difference is that Palace took decisive action much earlier than us and gave their new man time - Warnock took over in October as far as I remember. We go into December with no manager and a caretaker on whom the jury is still out.
Warnock - it's his 60th birthday tomorrow, 1 December - took over Palace in October 2007 - but they were still in the bottom 3 this time last year, so 6 weeks into the job, he was no instant miracle worker either.
But he did organise his team, get them working as a unit, starting with tightening up the defence.
Even Curbs worked on the principle that if you didn't concede, you didn't lose.
Isn't that what Parky is showing us he is doing now?
Okay, everybody from the Board to supporters is anxious about our current position - but the last 2 performances under Parky have shown the players much better organised and working as a team unit, matches that perhaps we should have won both. But we also didn't concede for the first time in 13 matches yesterday and quite likely would have won except for an exceptional display by the Saints keeper.
I feel it's gradually coming together though - we're only a whisker away from getting it right ,and the breaks finally falling for us.
The season doesn't end at Christmas fortunately - and in the meantime, a couple of wins can change the dynamics completely.
mind you wouldnt want a dirty one
With respect, Oggy, I could look back in the Charlton Life archives and find an almost identically worded post from you after the Argyle and Birmingham games. I'm not disagreeing with you, friend - merely pointing out the parallel !
Certainly agree with your last par about a couple of wins changing the dynamics. But we haven't had one win, let alone two, in ten games, and we have to start winning NOW, not some time around Christmas after we've given the team time to settle down under someone who is supposedly only a caretaker anyway.
Parky might have only been named caretaker last week, but if he's allowed to trade players, then he's very much fulfulling the manager's role with the Boards's blessing.
Absolutely I said something similar after the Argyle and Brum games, simply because the team performances were in stark contrast to the dross we'd grown used to seeing served up.
I live down in Cornwall, so usually can only see 10 or 12 matches a season - but I did witness the Burnley home match and was stunned by such a poor 1st half performance.
A couple of weeks later, I was at Argyle in dreadful wet and windy weather conditions but I witnessed a performance where I was proud to be an Addick, and a match which we truly should have won.
As I said, I witnessed both of those performances.
A similar performance was served up at Birmingham, where we went from hitting the inside of the post and 60 seconds later, an horrendous Weaver error - the difference between winning 3-1 and conceding a leveller. Football, as we know, is that fickle - that's called getting or not getting the breaks - and often is the fine line between success and failure.
QPR is a match that apparently we should have got something from, 2 defensive errors cost us goals and 2 sitters missed, scoring either of those would have put us 2-1 up late on.
Just about everybody came home from yesterday's match hugely encouraged by what they'd seen - remember the improved performances had previously all been away matches, so most of The Valley faithful hadn't seen these better performances.
Nevertheless back to Warnock/Palace last season, Palace were very much still in the relegation places after the same number of games played as we've played so far this season. And Warnock went about his job and was initially getting similar results compared to Parky at the moment - yet after a period of consolidating the team and getting better performances conceding fewer goals, their season finally took off and they reached the playoffs.
I'm not saying we're going to finish 5th like them last season - but it's still a tight division and there are 27 matches remaining to get it right.
And why not ? Palace did.
Peter Taylor was sacked because he'd only managed 10 points from 10 games.
Warnock came in two days later with 36 games left so had serious time to turn it around.
We've got 17 points from 20 games, so we're twice as far into the season ...
and Warnock came in as manager, a position which as we enter December is currently vacant at Charlton while we test out someone because we're not sure if he's good enough to do the job..
Positives:
Gray and Burton showed some good link up play in he first half, and Burton was unlucky with his overhead kick.
Boazza looked good, unlucky not to get on the score sheet, although i think he wasted his best chance with a poor touch and then instead of passing it took a poor shot on the turn in frustration.
Weaver, looked much more assured.
Mceverly looked good, made some good runs, defended well. He got sold short alot with passes yesterday. I think he was out of position a fair bit due to his lack of match fitness, you could see after a few of his runs he was absolutely knackered, couple more games and he should be firing on all cylinders.
Cranie looked a lot better yesterday and played well with gillespie who i also thought had a good game.
Semedo - bloody brilliant game, did not stop working throughout - think he was taken off due to exhaustion.
Fortune and Hudson played well together.
Negatives - one player not mentioned so far - Nicky Bailey...
He is a try hard, i'll give him that, but then again so is matt holland. Matt Holland not only tries hard, but unlike Bailey he doesn't make a string of unnecessary mistakes. So many times yesterday, Bailey played a poor pass, gave the ball away unnecessarily, mistakes that i don't think matty would have made. Matt is more experience in this division and has a lot of premiership experience. He may not be as young as he used to be, but he is a damn sight better than Bailey. According to reports from the beginning of the season, Bailey was looking good, i missed a few games at the beginning as i was not in the country, and all i have witnessed of the bloke so far is the aforementioned. I imagine when Racon is fully fit again he will slot in, instead of bailey.
As i said before though, a lot can be taken from the game, especially a clean sheet, and some good performances from the lads.
I agree with half of this bit. The Matt Holland bit. I would play Holland with Racon. Semedo is OK when he doesn't have the ball which speaks volumes. A lot of hard work but not much in the last third. Centre midfiled was our weakest department yesterday.
Fair enough that Holland doesn't make mistakes, but Bailey tries the harder passes which Holland never does.
Bailey's been inconsistent, had some great games but some poor ones as well. Then again most players have in our team.
Holland isn't really the answer, he's useful though, needs to be used in the right way, not relied upon. If Bailey finds some consistency he can be a very good player for us.
I like Semedo, a player prepared to do the no thrills stuff with no fuss.
McEveley and Burton were big plusses for me, and with FOrch and Boauzza our best players. Gillespie i've been pleased with as well.
The one thing no one has mentioned, we had a hell of a lot of outfield players on Saturday who not just didn't know each others games, are collectively woefully short of 90 minutes. That's whaty really showed in the last 20 minutes.
Goals have to be found from somewhere if we are to have a chance of doing anything this season, but if they can be found then i really think we could kick on.
Also thought Saints played lovely football for a young side. The cultured centre mid was a real player. When was the last time you've seen a team's keeper only ever roll the ball out ?