Give us a song Phil...
The Official Saints website has been entirely predictable and scoured the squad for a player who used to play for the opposition. They didn’t have to look too far to come up with Chappers who managed to do a ten minute interview without mentioning Darren Ferguson once. Fergie Lite of course bombed him out of PNE, then sold him to us for a pittance and then got fired from PNE after he’d done most of the hard work to ensure they got relegated. I ended the last blog entry by stating that Phil Brown is a bit of a knob and he undoubtedly is (a perma-tanned, all singing and dancing “everybody look at me” knob) but he’s a definite improvement on Fergie Lite.
The day had not gone too well for yours truly, starting with the experience on turning up for work in Brighton and realising that I had odd shoes on. This was not good considering it was one black and one brown and not just two different black ones that I may have got away with. So, looking like an extra from Miami Vice in my squash shoes, I had to listen to the Brighton fans banging on about their tie with Liverpool when they weren’t taking the piss. Fast forward to the end of the day and it’s time to catch the 5.33 from Brighton only they’ve cancelled the bastard due to incompetence. Railway employees are programmed to say one thing when faced with a pissed off customer and that is “ticket office”. The next train was to Pompey so I managed to get Dad to pick me up at Havant at 7.10 (where I kept my SFC shirt safely hidden in my bag as I went through immigration) and we pegged it down the motorway, arriving at SMS and only missing 5 minutes.
Radio Merrington said that in fact I’d been underestimating the amount of team changes as in fact, we’d made 10 and so had they. Bart was of course in goal and the defence looked solid with Butters, Big Jos, Aaron Martin and Dicko. Predictably the midfield contained Morgan and Chappers with Steve de Ridder and Lee Holmes on the wings. Still quite a string team and then we got to the forwards of Ben Reeves making his debut and Johnno Pace. Alarm bells of the loud clanging variety. I didn’t know much about Reeves other than up until recently he’s been a left back and there was no way that Johnno was going to be any good at leading the line on his own.
Saints started well with De Ridder and Holmes looking lively and Schneiderlin and Chaplow looking dominant in the middle. Johnno Pace had an early chance to show what he could do when Martin boomed a clearance forward and Johnno let it run before making up about 10 yards on the defender and keeping the ball in. Sadly, this was to prove the highlight of his display.
When he controlled the ball properly, Lee Holmes was getting into some good positions on the left and got some crosses in but the difference between today and a League game was really noticeable. In a league game, if the left winger (Lallana) gets a cross in then the chances are that Lambert, Connolly and Gulyman would all be in the box and possibly one of Cork or Hammond as well. Today there was Johnno who can’t head the ball for shit and maybe de Ridder and that was about it. Reeves was neat and tidy but playing far too deep and we looked pretty toothless up front as a result.
We took the lead just before the half hour as Holmes took a corner from the right which flew over everyone except Reeves who had peeled away beyond the back post. His nod back across was met by Big Jos who flicked it home for his first SFC goal. Jos then got on with the job marshalling the defence which he is doing with more and more authority with the more games he plays.
De Ridder then broke away against the left back who just grabbed him and took the booking. They couldn’t live with him at all at this point and then a second Preston defender got booked for exactly the same thing. Knowing now that they couldn’t grab him again, de Ridder broke away down the right and failed to get his head up and butchered a clear chance on goal when he turned the opposite way to where Holmes and Johnno were, screaming for a pass.
We had a minor alarm right on half time when we were treated to a performance by the Flying Bialkowski Circus Act who came flying out after a corner in impressive fashion, lacking only in that there wasn’t any contact with the white round thing. The referee’s half time whistle echoed round the 24,000 empty seats and it was time to have the piss that had been required since a 5 o’clock pint on Brighton station.
It doesn’t matter what 11 players we have on the pitch, we seem to be in the habit of starting the second half slowly s it all got very scrappy. Preston managed to get in our half for a bit and somehow managed to equalize when Bart could only parry an effort and the ball seemed to squirt between 3 Saints defenders and hit a forward on the shin and bobble into the net. Ridiculous goal though I expect Phil (and his tan) was warming up his vocal chords.
The scrap continued for 5 minutes or so and it was noticeable that many of the Saints players that showed up well in the first half had disappeared. Johnno was running around up front like Forrest Gump in a perfect exhibition of how to be where the ball isn’t. Reeves was dropping deeper and deeper but not getting involved and Holmes and de Ridder had faded. What you need when the game is going nowhere is some talent to come on from the bench and luckily we had some as Lallana came on for de Ridder.
His first touch was to come off the left wing and cushion a pass to Holmes and his second was to get on the end of the subsequent cross and bury the header past the keeper to make it 2-1 making it about 45 seconds on the pitch for one goal. Well, Nigel like his subs to have an impact doesn’t he.
Big Jos appeared to go down with cramp straight after the goal and was replaced by Jose Fonte and five minutes more passed before Johnno Pace was put out of his misery and replaced with Sir Rickie. The rest of the game was in truth, played out comfortably despite Preston throwing on Neil Mellor to try and give them something up front. Chappers was getting under their skin a bit which is what tends to happen when you go into Bald Psycho mode and start leaving your foot in. It was funny seeing the Preston midfielders taking turns to try and kick him.
The expected last few minutes onslaught didn’t really happen as whenever Preston got the ball, they seemed to just give it back to us. Aaron Martin and Fonte showed up well in dealing with the few balls that were tossed into the box and the ref eventually blew to end what was in truth, a rather limp kind of game.
Well…. We won and we’re through to the last 16 which is all that matters really. The players that you knew would be decent (Hooiveld, Chaplow, Schneiderlin, Martin, de Ridder) were decent and the fringe players who don’t usually make the bench, on the whole demonstrated why. Butters and Dicko both showed flashes of good play, mixed in with extreme rustiness and a few wayward passes. Surprisingly for such and experienced player, Butters also managed to dive in and get skinned a couple of times. Ben Reeves had a decent enough debut but really tired at the start of the second half before getting a 2nd wind towards the end. He’s one of the 5ft 7inch blonde clones that Dr Nicola produces in the lab at Staplewood but he certainly isn’t a forward though and neither on tonights evidence is Johnno Pace who barely touched the ball in the second half. Lee Holmes is an odd one as he mixed up decent crosses with bad first touches but overall, I can’t see him challenging for a first team spot any time soon. Maybe he needs a regular run of games out on loan somewhere.
The draw for the next round is on Saturday, when we will be away at Burnley in the league where I expect we will see a few team changes, 10 to be exact. If I had to pick one player from today who may get a start on Saturday it would be Chappers but I can’t see Nigel changing the winning League team just yet. I wonder what Phil sang to the Preston boys on the bus home…
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