20 Mar 2022 18:59:18
As Saints fans I think we should be proud of the effort today, games change on small margins and City were helped by a terrible mistake by Stevens for the first goal and then Salusu giving away a really soft penalty, this combined with bad misses by Adam Armstrong and then Che Adams was enough for city to run out easy winners in the end .We should look at where we are when you consider the players City have at there disposal I felt that we gave them a very hard game and if we can maintain that level of effort we will win more than we lose I jt hope that the season just doesn't fade away now and that we can build for next season


1.) 21 Mar 2022
21 Mar 2022 11:39:46
Norfolk Saint.
I fully appreciate we were playing an amazing team, but I just feel we have lost our fluid, dynamic play. I was proud of our pressing and the problems it’s caused City, but to be honest that was where my proudness ended.
The press up front was fast and with enthusiasm, but over much of the pitch, our chasing down players, going in for tackles, was very half hearted. This game City so much space it was criminal.
I would like to have seen Perraud left back and KWP right back. Perraud is very quick and aggressive and overlaps beautifully.
Back to the pressing; when our press managed to overturn the ball, so often that was followed by a wayward pass, poor decision making.
Long up front knows exactly what his role is, he takes up good positions and is always looking to flick on. Someone needed to tell Armstrong this, who’s positional play is awful; he was so often 25/30 feet from Long that it wasn’t working. Armstrong has lost his scoring touch, but that doesn’t mean he should be trying to score at every opportunity. There was one attack where we had two players steaming up the pitch and into great positions, unmarked in the box and AA shot again! He needs time out in maybe the B team to regain his scoring, the first time is not the place; alternately sell him at some point. Lambert worked buying from the lower divisions, AA doesn’t.

When Ralph was warming up subs at about 30!minutes, I honestly thought he’d accepted it wasn’t working and he was going to make changes. Either shore up defence by going to a back three,or take off Stephens who was awful and bring on Valery.

Trouble was he started with the wrong two up front, so that’s 2 of your 3 permitted subs - huge and naive mistake my Ralph.


2.) 22 Mar 2022
22 Mar 2022 11:13:12
I agree with south hants Rich although I think we could have used five subs with it being a cup game,l wish we had started with Che Adams instead of Adam Armstrong,not sure about Broja he seems to have lost his spark at the moment, happens a lot with young players who start to believe all the publicity around them


3.) 24 Mar 2022
24 Mar 2022 00:46:05
Has it really got to this - that we should be proud of the boys because they tried hard, worked hard and pressed hard. All of that should be a given - anything less would be unacceptable.
I’m not proud of our performance against City - with a Danny Ings type finisher we may well have had a better result - the finishing was dire. The defending was abysmal - Jack Stephens was exposed for what he is - no where near good enough at this level.
Pride is not about finishing second unless you’ve truly left everything out there - our team have little clue what that even means. All of them far too gracious in defeat - I commented recently on the excessive hugging and kissing the opponents in the aftermath of defeat. Our season is over and unless there is a wholesale injection of new blood and vigour, we will have a difficult season ahead.