NPC Match 16 - Coventry 2 Southampton 4

Be Very Thankful....

Are we serious about this season?  Are we serious about winning the league or automatic promotion?  If we are then today is a ‘must win’ in a match, away at Coventry City.  Since starting off the season with two consecutive away wins, we have played five other away matches and not won.  You can make all the excuses you like about difficult fixtures and blah blah blah but the bottom line is that in order to finish in the top two, you have to win a decent proportion of your away matches and we haven’t…. so far.

I always enjoyed going to Highfield Road back in the day.  By the time you left the ground there was always a good chance that the cost of your match ticket, travel to the game and a couple of pints would be reimbursed by kind Coventry fans throwing money at you.  Strange lot – maybe their generosity is the root cause of them being skint, though more likely is that it’s due to a recent-ish connection between us and them.  SISU, a hedge fund, tried to buy Saints and failed before eventually buying Coventry.  I’m not entirely sure of the timeline but I think Ken Dulieu was involved with us at the time and now he’s Coventry chairman.  A quick scour of the web forums suggest that Coventry fans think that he’s the devil incarnate.  The SISU takeover has hardly delivered the success that Coventry were hoping for and they find themselves in the bottom three going into this game.

Nigel Adkins has had a little mini-shuffle of the pack for this game with Danny Fox and Jack Cork (two ex-Coventry players) coming back into the side at the expense of Dean Hammond and Dan Harding who drop to the bench and the seats behind the dugout in the stand, respectively.  A lot of the build-up to the game has focussed on Lukas Jutkiewicz, the Coventry striker who is a Saints fan and doesn’t care who knows it.  Respect for that Lukas but I hope you’re shit today.

I myself am ill and it’s nothing to do with alcohol.  I’m lying on my bed with Dave Merrington whispering sweet nothings in my ear, telling me what I don’t want to do.

Away we go and it’s all Saints with Coventry struggling to get a touch of the ball, let along creating anything remotely dangerous.  We’re passing it like a dream right from the start and Morgan hits our first chance wide on the volley having played a superb 1-2 with Sir Rickie.  More passing moves with virtually the whole team involved before Sir Rickie heads down and Chappers shanked an effort wide from an offside position.  He obviously knew he was offside, hence the lame finish.

We’re reached the half hour mark without really looking threatening so it’s now time to change that.   But first, another near miss as Lallana’s cross picks out Sir Rickie at the back post and his header back across it me by the Gulyman who nods it down and fractionally wide of the post.  It’s coming....

.... now.  Three minutes later and Danny Fox wins a throw and Crozzer on the line quickly gives him the ball back.  Fox throws and feeds the Gulyman on the left who juggles it past the bamboozled defender and crosses along the ground into the danger area.  Chappers slides in with a defender and the ball gets stuck under them by Chappers is up quickest to fire left footed under the keeper and into the far corner for 1-0.

Coventry’s response seems to be to let their heads go down and it could have been 2-0 a minute later as following another dazzling move and a Fox cross, Lallana’s header does what all Lallana headers do and drop harmlessly straight to the keeper.  No matter though as a Sir Rickie pass frees Lallana down the left who feeds the Gulyman to ride a challenge and get to the line before taking his time and rolling a simple pass back to Lallana for an easy finish for 2-0.  It’s nearly 3-0 as Fox blasts past a namby pamby tackle in the penalty area but he tries to take The Gulyman’s head off with the cross and it bounces wide and the Gulyman has a headache.  We reach half time as comfortably as you like, still leading 2-0 and the only question is how many will we get?

The second half starts and Coventry are of course going to give it a go with Northern Irish International and Star Trek villain, Klingon having a speculative free kick from miles out which Superkelv flaps round the post for a rather needless corner.  This shouldn’t have been catastrophic but it was as Big Jos lost Jutkewicz who stole in amongst 8 Saints players in the box to side foot home from 5 yards.

Coventry are fired up now, with the goal we presented them with and Starship Captain Klingon has his phasers set to stun as he fires wide this time.  Back come Saints with a couple of chances falling to Big Jos but he heads a Fox corner over, followed by another header over  following Fonte heading a cross back across the goal.

In our journey around League 1, we came across Clive Platt who is coming on as a sub for Coventry.  He’s a big donkey with no discernable ability as a footballer and as such, I knew he was going to score.  A bobbling ball forward causes a bit of panic and ends up behind Fonte who gets his foot on it to clear it out to the wing.  Unfortunately, it hits Frazer Richardson on the side of the head and instead of flying off for a corner or anywhere else harmless, it rebounds back into the centre of the penalty area to Platt who manages to get his big donkey feet in the right position to stab it in for 2-2 and his first goal since he was giving kids rides for a quid along the beach.

In a move which didn’t immediately scream “attacking intent”, Deano came on for Chappers which meant Morgan moving to the right.   All is right with the world again five minutes later as a cross from the right ends up on the left with Danny Fox who got himself a yard of space before curling in a brilliant cross for the unmarked Gulyman to rise and with a flick header into the far corner, we’re back in the lead again.

The Official Saints website has described this goal as being just like the one he scored against Middlesbrough.  Apart from the fact that it was a cross from the left and not the right and a flicked header and not a power header – they are completely correct.

A half chance for another goal passes by on 79 minutes as Lallana fires just wide before being replaced with Steve de Ridder.  Our famous Belgian takes all of 5 minutes to fasten onto Sir Rickie’s cross into the area to make it 4-2 as the defender and the goalkeeper waited for eachother to take change.  Schteeeeeeeeeeeeve!!! Game over.

There is time for a ‘Man of the match’ substitution as the Gulyman is replaced with David Connolly for the last couple of minutes, allowing him to take in the applause of the Saints travelling army and  the 25 or so Coventry fans left in the ground.  Those left hear the final whistle and the confirmation of a really important win for the mighty red and white machine.

Well have some of that then.  Like I said at the start, we had something to prove today and we did it.  It’s official, we can put the weaker sides to the sword in away matches – love it.  Nigel’s interview was very upbeat as you’d expect, revealing that he’d asked for 9 points from the last 3 matches and got them.  Is it just me but I’d have thought most managers would have been asking for 6, maybe 7.  OK Nigel, give me 21 from the next 7 games please including a 4-0 away win at Fratton Park.

Coventry manager Andy Thorn came up with the usual stuff that a lot of beaten managers have spouted after playing us which was that their side “gifted us the goals”.  Yeah, your side dozed off at a corner and gave the centre forward a free shot from 5 yards didn’t they.  Oh, hang on a minute, that was us... you got beat by a better team, just deal with it.  I wouldn’t tell him that to his face though.... big, hard looking bastard.

The next two away games are ones we should be looking to win as well at Bristol City and Doncaster.  Before those though we have an international break and a home game against those lovely boys from Brighton who have two weeks to work out how to avoid becoming consecutive home league scalp number 18.  This will be a tough one for us as we’ve lost and drawn in the last two home games against the Seagulls and I guess Gus will still be spitting feathers over something very minor.  Can you keep up?

Enjoy the abysmal England national team getting taught a lesson by Spain and see you in two weeks.

COYR.