Voting was locked for this match at midnight on Friday 19th March but you may still add your mini match reports. Note that members and non-members alike were able to vote.

Your Southampton v Brighton and Hove Albion Match Reports

halftimeorange added 16:51 - Mar 14 We really are in trouble but, I knew this already. There was no sense of purpose. I lost count the number of times we gave the ball away. Nobody had a good game and we were slow, aimless, Forster's kicking was wayward, there was no urgency and Ralph had no solution. To be comprehensively beaten by BHA marshalled by an ex-Saint who showed more skill and idea than our entire team is devastatingly disappointing. The Bournemouth game is now only useful as restoring confidence but, if we play like this again, I can't see us recovering until we're in the Championship.

8

ElijahK added 16:52 - Mar 14 Ok sorry but that Sheffield United game was simply just a fluke result after what we saw today! I mean questions do need to start being asked as we’ve won 1, drawn 1 and lost the 10! Over our last 12 (which is practically a third of our season!) games! And yeah he got us to first for the first time ever, but in the end we lost 9-0 AGAIN! And have somehow ended up in a relegation scrap!? I mean we didn’t play well whatsoever today and we’re now only 4 points ahead of Brighton! For me it’s all down to these next games as if we were to loose to a Bournemouth team that’s 5 points out of a championship playoff spot in the FA cup or can’t beat Burnley then that’s just too much! I mean nobody played that well, and hopefully it’s also shown to all those fans going on about Forster that the only reason he kept any clean sheets is simply because he has 8 shots to deal with in our 6 previous games, and should’ve saved that first goal for certain! Sheesh I’d loved to have seen Forster in goal for that Man City game!

-3

Sadoldgit added 16:58 - Mar 14 Forster seemed to react to the header very late. Should probably have gone in 2-1 down although we didn’t play too badly in the first half. Didn’t really turn up in the second and only showed urgency in the last couple of minutes. I wonder if the high energy game has burnt the team out as we don’t seem to have the legs to compete for 90+ minutes. It’s been a very strange season. We look a completely different side to the one that topped the league.

5

allsaint54 added 17:08 - Mar 14 Utter, utter dross. Right from the first minute we were 2nd best. Only started playing after BHA scored without creating a great deal. As for what is said at halftime I really don't know. The 2nd half showed no urgency, fight, spirit or creativity. Slow, ponderous build up with nothing but sideways & backwards passing. This has to be one of the worst performances of the season & there's been a few. You don't become a bad team overnight, but with just 4pts in the last 12 games we certainly are. With teams around us playing well it's now between us & Newcastle for final relegation spot & look what happened when we played them recently.

8

SaintPaulVW added 17:20 - Mar 14 Out coached and out played. Need a reset fast. To retool a famous anecdote, opposition team managers must by now be doing a Fergie at half time..."Lads,...it's Southampton...." Still at least the St Mary's crowd can't be blamed
8

I_would added 17:27 - Mar 14 Nothing to say about individual performances because there weren't any. This is when the manager steps up with a few words and some changes to help the boys. Instead he hung them out to dry blaming everything on them. Must have lost the dressing room. Needs to go sooner rather than too late. Had enough watching him shaking his head and chewing the inside of his gob off instead of rallying the troops. Go you're crap Ralph.

-5

codge added 17:29 - Mar 14 Really don’t know where we go from here, if we keep playing like this then we will need a lot of luck to stay up. In 66 years of watching Saints l have seen some bad games but at least we showed some fight but this team does not know how to play out from the back and when we do we end up with the ball back with the keeper. No imagination how to break down a defense and no urgency when we need it. As a game we were utter shite and starting to believe we are in big trouble.

12

Foreverred added 17:43 - Mar 14 To be fair to Forster he kept it at 1.1 just before half time when the Brighton lad should have scored. The first goal was down to Bertrand none challenge on dunk, giving him a free header, the second was poor marking by bednarek losing his marker, even McCarthy would not have save that. It was a poor performance all round, it’s easy to blame the keepers. Bertrand gave McCarthy no cover for Man City first last week also. Certain players are not doing their job, and it’s costing us dearly . Brighton wanted it more than us ,we need to show more passion in the coming weeks or we will be in a dog fight with Fulham , Newcastle and Brighton.

6

NewburySaint added 17:52 - Mar 14 Not a lot the optimists amongst us can take from this game-we deservedly lost against an average team (which probably tells you where Saints are at the moment) & were outplayed and out thought tactically.
6

beynali73 added 17:56 - Mar 14 Clueless, spineless, embarrassing, pathetic, directionless, incoherent. Fair play to Brighton they played as a team who knew their job both in the first half and the second half when they changed their formation. I'm gutted as I was confident with the team we put out would win this game. This match is not an outlier it's a barometer of the direction of the last two months. I've been supportive of Ralph but we are in trouble and I'm not confident that we will get more than 3/4 pts this season. Embarrassed and gutted. There is an inevitability about where we are going.

8

underweststand added 18:52 - Mar 14 Difficult to say anything positive, and as far as the player ratings go ..how do the rate the worst of the worst? Perhaps the only positive was having KWP back..at least he looked a site better than the previous options. Ché Adams three goals in three.. OK that's something to cheer after such a long goal drought, but that early season double act of " Ings and Adams" seems like a VERY distant memory. A semi-final place from beating Bournemouth ?.....now seems a lot more problematic.

13

SanMarco added 18:52 - Mar 14 I think even the optimists are finding it hard to pick any positives out of that fiasco. I have no idea what our strategy for getting an equalizer was in that last half hour - the players clearly didn't know either, did Ralph? We are at the end of the road of thinking that a few minutes high press and lots of fancy playing out from the back is going to get results. Opposition managers do not have to be tactical geniuses to do well against us. Brighton kept us quiet early on and then waited for the mistakes. Lallana was given the freedom of the park to create that winner. We look lightweight and clueless. Ralph has now got to prove his management skills by working out some tactics that work with the players he has. The law of averages says we will sneak a few more points out of the last nine - will that be enough? If it is then there needs to be a fundamental rethink in the summer. Ralph's approach is not working with these players. We have squabbled about 'plan Bs' in recent weeks but what we now need is an effective plan A - depressingly, I have no idea what that would be.

11

Flamingbankers added 19:56 - Mar 14 Saints are missing Romeu, his strength and solid tackling, and we haven't got anybody to replace him. This allows clever midfielders, like Llana today, to run into spaces and create easy pickings between our cumbersome centre halves. It also means Saints haven't got any impetus moving the ball through and beyond the midfield. The Stephens experiment was a failure at City (Ralph's strategy for that game was a failure). I think we have to bring back Lemina and have Jankewitz as a back up. Times are getting desperate not only because of our losing, largely winless run, but because we're playing just as poorly as we did before we hit form last year and this time I don't think we have the battlers, or players to bring in, to grind out the points. Seven plus points away from safety seems a long way at the moment. Managers can't always get a result because players make mistakes on the pitch, that's understandable, but managers can put players in their most effective positions so that we compete at an optimum level. Premier League Managers also have to have keen judgement make the right changes when they're needed and try to force a beneficial result - just like Potter today who managed an almost perfect game. Unfortunately, Ralph has been failing in both these areas for most of the last 15 matches. In the first half we played fairly well with a 4-4-2 formation but for some reason in the second Ralph only had Adams up front with the sub, a bewildered Redmond, ghosting around from side to side and a snubbed-out Djenepo. Brighton stopped any creation from Armstrong or runs from Tella or Minamino. The worst mistake for me were leaving Bertrand to mark Dunk on the edge of the area from a corner - allowing him to score and then do again although Saints were lucky to escape on the second occasion. No excuses for school boyish mistake. That Saints could have at least got a point even though they were mastered in the second half.

2

codge added 20:59 - Mar 14 Really don’t know where we go from here, if we keep playing like this then we will need a lot of luck to stay up. In 66 years of watching Saints l have seen some bad games but at least we showed some fight but this team does not know how to play out from the back and when we do we end up with the ball back with the keeper. No imagination how to break down a defense and no urgency when we need it. As a game we were utter shite and starting to believe we are in big trouble.

2

KriSaint added 21:43 - Mar 14 Too little movement, too slow forwarding the ball, too much tiredness (Stuey and Bertrand in particular), KWP and Diallo not back to full match fitness. Minamino too light-weight. Credit to Brighton for making it difficult for us and being clinical. Great goal by Che but he should have banged that huge chance in the second half up into the roof of the net. We need a rest and Ralph needs to make the players wholeheartedly believe that we can get 7 points from the remaining games. Which I'm sure he can and will. We will NOT do a Swansea....

1