CAN SAINTS KEEP UP THE PRESSURE BY TAKING 3 POINTS FROM LIVERPOOL GAME?

http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/southampton/news/37903/?

At the moment the vibes are telling me we can win this, but hope it's not too early for the vibes to be accurate.......

Its unfortunate we are playing them when they have few injuries, Sturridge is back and seem to have a decent squad, if they didn't have Rodgers as manager would be in top 3.

I cant see us winning this as not convinced we will take our chances, defensively will need to be at our best and think a 1 1 draw would be a decent result, not enough though if we want to finish top 4

Fingers crossed on this one.

Man United lose but Arsenal win pushing us down to 5th. A win against Liverpool would put us up to 3rd. Hope the vibes are right again......a 2-0 win would do nicely please.

Afraid those vibes were not right Mike but could have been so different if the game had not been ruined by the worst refereeing display this season. I have seen some poor performances but this really was bordering on the line between pure incompetent and undoubted bias, which in a referee should not be allowed to not be reviewed. Three penalty shouts denied, all 3 were in my view penalties, the first after just a minute Duricic was through and clipped from behind, yes he went down to easily, yes he should have stayed on his feet and shot but the Liverpool player clipped him, it is not referees job to decide not to give a penalty if a player goes down to easily it was a foul, second penalty again Durucic taken down and for me a stone wall penalty, how on earth Friend cannot give as he had a perfect view as did the linesman starts to think this is more than just an incompetent referee but one with another agenda, third hand ball by Lovren, in front of us, definite penalty and ref seemed to look for the lino to give and ran away. After the second penalty claim he gave a corner, Ward Prowse went to take and he stopped play as he wanted ball in the circle. Ball was clearly touching the line and in the circle and all the referee did was made it obvious he had an agenda, made himself look stupid but of course stopped the momentum, gave Liverpool time to organise.

A decent ref would have given us 3 pens, an average ref would have given us 2, a poor ref would have given 1, to give none suggests a ref with an agenda, be that anti saints or one with an allegiance to Liverpool which has been claimed before by others.

Hopefully with the other poor performances by referees this weekend the Premeir League will act but I doubt it, they do not have the courage, or perhaps worried what they might find. The reality is we have the Premier League one of the best in the world yet an amateur and sub standard refereeing association. Personally I would welcome paying more for foreign referees and sack the likes of Friend, otherwise we will continue to be subject to poor referees, actually earning very good money who seem to be above any criticism and any consequence for awful performance.

as for the game, first half saints were easily the better side, Clyne and Duriciic having fun on the Liverpool left where they were poor. However we didn't create many clear cut chances a few corners which came to nothing, a soft shot from Clyne and the same old play of trying to make to clever and failing to shoot when the opportunity was there. getting the ball from the back was to slow and when players di make runs they were simply not spotted. Davis in particular hit to many passes backwards and was quite static when receiving the ball meaning unable to quickly hit a long pass to a player moving. Duricic showed some decent touches but quite like Tadic is quite light weight and offers nothing to the midfield battle, again similar to Elia.

Saints were unlucky to go behind to a good strike from Coutinho who I said before the game would be the threat, but as well as being skilful he puts in a shift. Lallana and Lovren did look like £20m over rated players both booked and if we had played Long sure Lovren would have been sent off but just Pelle was never going to work. Second half Schneiderlin came on for Davis but I would have preferred to leave Davis on and move him forward to collect the ball from Pelle who was so isolated and taken off Elia or Duricic. huffed and puffed but again no one stood up and took responsibility for taking a shot. Classic was a free kick in a good position just outside the box. Elia ran over the ball fooling no one then Schneiderlin played a pass along the ground to no one to run out for a goal kick. Goal was easily in sight and any other club would have gone for goal, towards the end saints fans were chanting "shoot in a minute, we're going to shoot in a minute" think that sums up the frustration. Has to be a training ground issue that Koeman needs to address, Mane came on for JWP which was again odd as meant we had just 2 effective midfield players so no surprises we were unable to pick up the loose balls in midfield. Second goal was a comedy of errors with saints players falling over and giving ball away in own box, danger seemed to have gone when Target slipped and passed to who scored, even then Forster seemed to fall over as shot wasn't that good.

Need to change the 4 3 3 formation , go to 4 solid players in midfield with Pelle and Long/Mane as proper strikers or 3 5 2 and use the full backs. Targett struggled today and will be good to have Bertrand back and hopefully Toby so 3 5 2 could be on with Clyne and Bertrand playing as wing backs

Forster 6 no chance for first goal didn't however inspire confidence
Clyne 6 decent first half not so attacking second
Fonte 7 miles better than Lovren
Yoshida 6 battled away poor distribution
Targett 5 really struggled today, tough game for a youngster, did some good stuff so is promise
Davis 6 did a lot of good stuff but spoiled with poor distribution and added nothing going forward
Wanyama 7 only midfield player not be bossed around but no support
Duriricic 6 nice touches but lightweight, predict will score maybe 1 or 2 goals at best,
Ward prowse 6 still cannot tackle, I would prefer Reed to replace him
Elia 6 to inconsistent some decent runs but only beat his defender a couple of times and out wide is no goal threat
Pelle 5 service was pretty poor but he needs to get in the box, couple of times decent crosses got in and he was nowhere

Subs
Schneiderlin 6 gradually getting back but needs more time, worry is he is thinking of his next move already
Mane 6 did at least cause some problems frustrating at times. didn't start as turned up late Koeman told Solent after game, sort his attitude out
Tadic 6 would have been Long if still 1 nil, hit one free kick which at least made goalie make a save

Well the vibes were right about 2-0 but wrong way around unfortunately. There were 3 Prem League matches Sunday and 5 of the 6 teams scored 2 goals, guess which one didn't........

Thanks for the report Matty, agree with a lot of what you say. Will be good to see Bertrand back, so silly of him to get his red card. Hopefully Toby will be back soon, now that Maya is doing better he should be good enough to partner Fonte in most matches and I should rather like to see Toby tried in midfield more. I agree with you Matty that Harrison Reed deserves a chance, I would choose him before Ward-Prowse and think with experience he is a better long-term prospect than Davis.

I was surprised RK didn't use Long for the last half-hour today, he would have been more of a threat than Pelle. Unless he isn't fit yet.....

Thanks Matty, a good report.