Ramsey is showing real promise, Gallagher & Slattery are not. For once WP looked more aggressive and determined and won are tackles. Romeu as usual putting in a shift and a half in both defence and attack. At times in the second half we looked a class above but soon ran out of steam and fell back into our old habits.

1

As RH said "If you are 2-0 up in both legs and fail to win, maybe you don't deserve to win". Too many fringe players in the team, Cedric is a right back and not a left back and you could see that certain players are not good enough. El younoussi was not even there for 3/4 of the match before he just did the odd good thing. Johnson put in a great cross for Long but was clearly removed at half time so he didnt get sent off. Sammy G offered nothing and Slattery looked totally lost. I thought JWP was great but apart from that a bit of an off day.

2

Our play was quiet fluent for the first 30 minutes of the second half. Some of the best I have seen this season. Stephens & Vesty played it nicely out from the back.

Gunn will be very disappointed with Derby´s first goal, I think. Nobody seemed to touch the ball from that cross into the box over our defence from the free kick, and the ball just ended in the back of the net :(

0

You moaning f***tards. Singling out players to be scapegoats for every bad result. That's the best you can do trying to explain what went wrong? Get some brains, and start backing the players and the team. You make me sick!

-5

Very good Saints team selection and formation with 3 in form industrial central midfielders of which 2 of them played 120 minutes 3 days ago without showing heavy legs today.
Annoying that we didn´t get a clean sheet in the end, but apart from that a great team performance. Let´s keep momentum and take one game at a time and see how far we can go.
Very happy to see JWP be successful and score such a great goal. I had the feeling that he would get a goal today from distance. He deserves it, and with 2 physically strong midfielders working close to him, he has a great platform to shine from.

5

A scrappy ugly affair but Saints were clearly the better of two poor sides. Fatigue had obviously taken its toll on a few of our players and the rested ones were clearly more prominent and energetic, none-the-less most gave it 100% and that was good to see. I would have like to have seen more quality on the ball and a less frenetic (headless chicken?) approach to the game but we got a result and in the circumstances we couldn't ask for more.

Big shout out for JWP, who seems to be thriving under Hasenhüttl. MotM performance from Jan Bednarek who let nothing past him all day and won every header he went for with superb timing.

6

Well, thought we'd have a good chance to win this, but we never got out of the traps. After 5 minutes PNE had 3 corners and we had hardly been in their half. I think our first proper attack, i.e. passing to another hooped shirt, progressing up the field, creating a chance, came in the 30th minute. We had a brief spell at the end of the first half when Freeman injected some energy, and the beginning of the second when Smith won a couple of flick ons, when we might have got going, but frankly PNE easily deserved this and could have had a 5th, but for Bidwell's saving tackle at the end.

Perhaps were saving ourselves for the cup!

0

good performance and an entertaining game. we are getting there under Ralf

3

F U C K I N G
AWFUL

0

Great win today and good that it was despite going 2 up again - but hey we did that at Leicester too.

Everton offered little to be fair and we had the best of the chances throughout the game, including a couple of chances from Ings that were well saved, a Redmond why that hit the post and an interception that also hit the post.

We eventually took the lead early in the 2nd half. Great work from JWP to win the ball in the middle of the park and he then used strength I didn't know he had, to shrug off a challenge, take the ball on and then lash it into the top left corner from 22 yards.

The 2nd arrived courtesy of another interception / tackle that went towards goal. This time it went in instead of hitting the post. I thought Redmond got it initially, but the shrugging celebration kind of gave it away !!

Surprised at how poor Everton were, or how poor we made them look. Their 2 x £40+m superstars were totally ineffective (despite Sigurdsson tap in) and as for Richarlison, he was the worst player on the pitch and was rightly subbed.

Everton changed things towards the end and threatened a little and eventually pulled one back as we went into injury time when a ball into the box wasn't cleared and it fell to Sigurdsson. It wouldn't have mattered as much if Long hadn't seen his close range volley well saved, but we held on again for not only a win, but a home win !!

Good to have PEH back, who made a difference in the middle. Most of the team did well though, especially as some had played for 2 hours on Wednesday.

I don't know what the ref was doing near the end - not only going to collect the ball for Everton, but then allowing them to take a free kick from the wrong place in injury time (we've got previous after all).

Nice break now to rest and work on Ralfesque tactics. Some key games coming up and we can into them with confidence.

8