Wolves 1-1 Southampton - Verdict Thread

[Norman Deeley]

Irrespective of points and where we are in the table, what TP says is the best summary. The evidence of your own eyes tells you that - City apart - we are nowhere near last season's form in the league.
I'm a Traore fan, but Doherty has to start at RWB as we simply look a better football team with him in that position.
The big issue for me is the summer recruitment, which was just a shambles. £20m for the Mendes twins which might or might not turn out to be good business but which simply wasn't what we needed. Vallejo who - as has been pointed out above - is simply too light and too short. Cutrone? You have to love him and he'll only improve, but was he really what we needed?

 

[arklowolf]

Was at the game yesterday, I thought a draw was about right. VAR might have got the verdicts right but it is spoiling the game imo. Johnny our best player. Boufal impressed me for them, Redmond looked busy but no real threat or end product.
We need Jota back in the starting line up asap.

 

[The Bear]

We finished 7th last season, we are currently one point off 7th. Not going to lose my mind about that.

Add two points for the VAR handball ruled out against Leicester which no-one saw, then we would have got the win there on last season's rules. That would put us 7th or 8th.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

We remain very tough to beat (only Liverpool and Arsenal have lost fewer PL games, and they're both yet to play this weekend), we've had to deal with a lot of challenges this season that didn't exist a year ago and we're safely in mid-table. The Man City result eclipses any of those we managed last season. I didn't expect a great deal more to be honest and there really isn't a great deal of difference to last year, the style is essentially the same (now we've ditched the incomprehensible and very short-lived long ball stuff) and we'll probably end up in a fairly similar position.

Seems a strange reaction to yesterday when we were the better team and played ok.

I mean I've seen Cav mentioned. He's currently not doing much for Fulham and they're 10th in the Championship. I don't think he was the answer to anything.

 

[The Bear]

Good post Grizz.

 

[prawnking]

we have injury issues at the back to contend with too

Maybe we should have recruited a decent defender in the summer then instead of going cheap on Roderick part 2 or expecting a futsal player to step up to the PL.

You're saying concerns about our unconvincing performances this season are uncalled for, but you were saying the same thing about concerns over our unconvincing recruitment in the summer. That kind of complacency is paraded as a virtue when it really isn't.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Complacency?

I just don't think we are as bad as is being painted, I'm afraid you'll have to deal with that.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

Maybe we should have recruited a decent defender in the summer then instead of going cheap on Roderick part 2 or expecting a futsal player to step up to the PL.

I imagine that we thought we had recruited a decent defender! For whatever reason he isn't displaying the form he did in the summer, for us.

I doubt his loan fee was cheap either and I'm not sure I read anyone worried about our defence once we'd signed him, nor should we be worrying too much about it now. It has conceded 1 goal in 4 matches and that includes playing one of the best teams in the world on their own patch.

 

[Johnny75]

I imagine if you were a Watford fan you'd be saying to critical fans on their forum that you're not going to lose your mind about only being 4 points adrift, but that would obviously be the wrong element to focus on. Aside from a great performance at Man City we just don't look right, and we're just discussing why.

You're not though are you? You come on here to moan and rant about how shit we are. You haven't identified why this is or had an opinion on why, you're just whining.

There are plenty of reasons why we're not clicking, try to think of at least one.

 

[arklowolf]

It was never going to be easy this season. Everyone knows how we play on the counter attack, everyone knows our players.
Up to Nuno to come up with some alternatives to the way we play occasionally.

 

[prawnking]

Complacency?

I just don't think we are as bad as is being painted, I'm afraid you'll have to deal with that.

I can deal perfectly well with you seeing things differently, I hope you and others can do the same

 

[Wilf Wolf]

If you are going to go with a very small squad any signings need to be genuine contenders for the first team. The jury is out on Cutrone and the others are a long way from challenging to start if everyone is fit. We're more likely to finish nearer 17th than 7th as things stand currently. We might not be losing many but unless we start creating more chances draws are more likely to become losses than wins.

Relying on Saiss to cover CH and CM is fine until he's injured. Vallejo looks like a rabbit in the car headlights when in possession so that leaves two barely tried youngsters to play CH. I'd be inclined to play Donck at CH but that leaves us very thin in midfield. Hopefully Bennett and Saiss will be fit very soon or it could really impact our season.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Opinions are opinions, I don't need to agree with everyone all the time (and certainly don't need anyone to agree with me). I'm always going to rail against what I feel is unfair though.

I didn't see a great deal wrong yesterday, bar the absolute mess of a goal conceded and the two other times Vallejo dropped us in it. The opposition are allowed to defend well and they certainly did against what has been our primary threat for much of the season (Adama). It's not like we scraped a point and played poor football, far from it.

As for Vallejo, as EP says I doubt he is cheap in the grand scheme of things and who can argue with the kind of CV he has? It just hasn't translated well at all so far, I'll happily say that he's not a proper option at the moment because he always looks liable to cost us. I'd rather play Kilman.

 

[prawnking]

You're not though are you? You come on here to moan and rant about how shit we are. You haven't identified why this is or had an opinion on why, you're just whining.

There are plenty of reasons why we're not clicking, try to think of at least one.

Blimey, pretty forceful overreaction here. I don't think my initial post in this thread really counts as either whiny or a rant, and was far from wholly negative.

I actually said we were looking hard to beat again, and as for a reason behind our general malaise, having poor stand-ins was mentioned, as well as the Traore conundrum. Is that okay for you?

 

[Deano]

We definitely aren't keeping the ball as well in midfield this season we look far less fluid. I'd say criticism yesterday is fair as I don't think we deserved to win the game. The stats show we had 4 shots (1 on target) to Southanptons 14. Southampton are a poor team.

 

[Johnny75]

It was never going to be easy this season. Everyone knows how we play on the counter attack, everyone knows our players.
Up to Nuno to come up with some alternatives to the way we play occasionally.

We do have an alternative. It's pretty much how we played in the championship 3-4-3. Our problem is our midfield in that we didn't create much yesterday. That has to be on the midfield.

Personally I would've taken Donck off rather than Neves and played Neves and Moutinho in midfield with Traore in the front 3, particularly as Soton were powderpuff in the midfield.

I think we need a midfielder and from what I've seen of Jordao he looks a good fit but we really should've done better in the summer there and that's on our shithouse sporting Director who isn't fit for purpose.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

I think Neves was carrying a knock from that challenge by Ings, probably why he went off instead on Donk.

 

[Boozad]

The high point of yesterday was hearing the Leander Dendoncker song for the first time, can't believe I haven't heard that before!

 

[Johnny75]

Blimey, pretty forceful overreaction here. I don't think my initial post in this thread really counts as either whiny or a rant, and was far from wholly negative.

I actually said we were looking hard to beat again, and as for a reason behind our general malaise, having poor stand-ins was mentioned, as well as the Traore conundrum. Is that okay for you?

Again you've said nothing. What's the Traore conundrum and why doesn't it work, do we have a general malaise? Why in your opinion is this happening as the stand-ins weren't playing yesterday?

You rarely say we play well, just whine and moan. Try to pick something positive from yesterday, there were plenty of those moments.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

We definitely aren't keeping the ball as well in midfield this season we look far less fluid. I'd say criticism yesterday is fair as I don't think we deserved to win the game. The stats show we had 4 shots (1 on target) to Southanptons 14. Southampton are a poor team.

We also had nearly 60% possession so how does that account for not keeping the ball well (if we're just grabbing stats with no real context)...

Oddly Southampton are pretty good away from home. The kind of record through 2019 that you would expect from a top half team. Rubbish at home though, they haven't won at St Mary's since they beat us.