rocheyb
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MY ANNUS HORRIBILIS
Everything was going brilliantly for Southampton Football Club up until Friday 25th March, 2022:
We had banked the Capital One Cup for the fourth consecutive season, with a 2-1 win against Stoke City; as the reigning Premier League champions, we were leading the table again by 5 points with 8 games to go, with a game in-hand over our nearest challenger, Manchester United; we were going well in the FA Cup, with bottom-of-the-table Wolves awaiting our attention in the semi-final; and a very winnable Champions League Quarter-Final also lay in-store, against a Manchester City side that we'd already beaten 6-0 earlier in the season.
Then it all went wrong. Dreadfully, terribly, unexpectedly, horribly, some-would-even-say-maliciously wrong. And I don't know why. The screenshots tell the story in short-form. If you've got the stomach for it, I've already posted more gorey details in the Frustrations thread, but make sure you come back here when you've read it:
View attachment 380218 View attachment 380217 View attachment 380216 View attachment 380215
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot.../143779-post-your-frustations-thread-246.html (scroll down to view the post by rocheyb)
So what was behind this late-season collapse?
Was it the tactics? My trusty 4-4-1-1 all the way until I switched to 4-5-1 Assymetric for the final league game at Newcastle United? in which, it turned out, their late, late equaliser ultimately cost me the title. Am I guilty of ignoring my own earlier advice about using more than one tactic?
Was it the players? There was no Morgan Schneiderlin this season after his departure to Genoa, with Diego Reyes (primarily a DM) and the comparatively inexperienced academy graduate, Shane Westley, rotating into that Ball-Winning Midfielder role, alongside new captain James Ward-Prowse as the Deep-Lying Playmaker. Erik Gomez?s 70-million departure to Man United had fired them along all season, but it didn't stop us from being well ahead of them in March, with his replacement, Yvo Lucas, helping himself to a respectful 15 goals in his first season with The Saints, and the more established Christoffer Jorgensen hitting a personal record 26 - contributing to a Premier League record total of 100 goals by season's end.
View attachment 380214 View attachment 380213 View attachment 380212
Giammarco Stangoni, the World Player of the Year, had been excellent up to early March, with 21 goals and a whole bunch of assists - but why did his performances suddenly deteriorate? Had other teams sussed him (me, us) out, and found a way to nullify Stangoni, in particular, to limit his impact on matches?
Had the squad rotation policy become stale? Perhaps I had inadvertently stopped rotating players effectively, so when called upon to inject new momentum into our floundering season, too many of them were not sufficiently match fit or tactically attuned to do so, leaving first-choice players to labour-on despite failing stamina and accumulated bumps and bruises.
Or, had that run of often high-scoring victories during the first three-quarters of the season bred an over-confidence throughout the squad - or the club - so intense, that even I failed to recognise the early signs of our imminent downfall during a one-goal-in-four-matches glitch prior to an unprecedented three consecutive defeats, that included an embarrassing 1-2 home reverse against that very same bottom-of-the-table Wolverhampton Wanderers, despite being 1-0 up until the 85th minute?
We had been uncharacteristically free from injury during April and into May - our previously annual centre-back crisis not materialising this year, meaning that Diego Reyes played virtually all of his minutes in midfield, while my four designated central defenders were in constant rotation as they had been all season.
Whatever it was: IT. MUST. NOT. HAPPEN. AGAIN... EVER.
Everything was going brilliantly for Southampton Football Club up until Friday 25th March, 2022:
We had banked the Capital One Cup for the fourth consecutive season, with a 2-1 win against Stoke City; as the reigning Premier League champions, we were leading the table again by 5 points with 8 games to go, with a game in-hand over our nearest challenger, Manchester United; we were going well in the FA Cup, with bottom-of-the-table Wolves awaiting our attention in the semi-final; and a very winnable Champions League Quarter-Final also lay in-store, against a Manchester City side that we'd already beaten 6-0 earlier in the season.
Then it all went wrong. Dreadfully, terribly, unexpectedly, horribly, some-would-even-say-maliciously wrong. And I don't know why. The screenshots tell the story in short-form. If you've got the stomach for it, I've already posted more gorey details in the Frustrations thread, but make sure you come back here when you've read it:
View attachment 380218 View attachment 380217 View attachment 380216 View attachment 380215
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot.../143779-post-your-frustations-thread-246.html (scroll down to view the post by rocheyb)
So what was behind this late-season collapse?
Was it the tactics? My trusty 4-4-1-1 all the way until I switched to 4-5-1 Assymetric for the final league game at Newcastle United? in which, it turned out, their late, late equaliser ultimately cost me the title. Am I guilty of ignoring my own earlier advice about using more than one tactic?
Was it the players? There was no Morgan Schneiderlin this season after his departure to Genoa, with Diego Reyes (primarily a DM) and the comparatively inexperienced academy graduate, Shane Westley, rotating into that Ball-Winning Midfielder role, alongside new captain James Ward-Prowse as the Deep-Lying Playmaker. Erik Gomez?s 70-million departure to Man United had fired them along all season, but it didn't stop us from being well ahead of them in March, with his replacement, Yvo Lucas, helping himself to a respectful 15 goals in his first season with The Saints, and the more established Christoffer Jorgensen hitting a personal record 26 - contributing to a Premier League record total of 100 goals by season's end.
View attachment 380214 View attachment 380213 View attachment 380212
Giammarco Stangoni, the World Player of the Year, had been excellent up to early March, with 21 goals and a whole bunch of assists - but why did his performances suddenly deteriorate? Had other teams sussed him (me, us) out, and found a way to nullify Stangoni, in particular, to limit his impact on matches?
Had the squad rotation policy become stale? Perhaps I had inadvertently stopped rotating players effectively, so when called upon to inject new momentum into our floundering season, too many of them were not sufficiently match fit or tactically attuned to do so, leaving first-choice players to labour-on despite failing stamina and accumulated bumps and bruises.
Or, had that run of often high-scoring victories during the first three-quarters of the season bred an over-confidence throughout the squad - or the club - so intense, that even I failed to recognise the early signs of our imminent downfall during a one-goal-in-four-matches glitch prior to an unprecedented three consecutive defeats, that included an embarrassing 1-2 home reverse against that very same bottom-of-the-table Wolverhampton Wanderers, despite being 1-0 up until the 85th minute?
We had been uncharacteristically free from injury during April and into May - our previously annual centre-back crisis not materialising this year, meaning that Diego Reyes played virtually all of his minutes in midfield, while my four designated central defenders were in constant rotation as they had been all season.
Whatever it was: IT. MUST. NOT. HAPPEN. AGAIN... EVER.
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