Premier League Match 28 - Southampton 1 QPR 2

OK Bothroyd, 6 more fouls before I even think about a second yellow

Today was to be the Return of the Prodigal Son to one of his Spiritual Homes.  A Spiritual Home by the way, is defined as ‘any football club that can be commuted to from Sandbanks’.  Yes, Harry Redknapp is in town with his QPR side who are bottom of the league.  Not that anyone cares but it’s his birthday today and the only reason we know this is because of the amount of media fawning that goes on over the man.  It’s Mauricio Pochettino’s birthday as well and no one really cares about that either.

So, we had the return of Redknapp blah blah blah and more importantly, the chance to get three points against QPR.  In our last home game we beat the champions and so today’s match against a side almost certain to be relegated should be a doddle.  Somehow I knew it wasn’t going to be.  This is Southampton FC we are talking about.  There has been some positive news this week in that both Morgan Schneiderlin and Jason Puncheon have signed new contracts, which was a bit of a surprise to me as I expected us to want to know what division we are in next season before dishing out any new deals.  Regardless, it has to be good news.  In a final bit of pre-match news, I have a stinking cold so I apologise to anyone in the Kingsland who I may sneeze over.

If anything was predictable about today it’s that the second Redknapp appears on the QPR bench, then the chants from the Northam start.  Sloop John B is the tune and “we fucking hate you” is the lyric.  Let’s just get on with the game shall we.  Mauricio has shuffled the pack a bit with Punch returning in place of J-Rod, Gaston instead of Steve Davis, Jose for Big Jos and Luke Shaw is only fit enough for the bench and so Danny Fox is given a start as a reward for his match-turning performance at Newcastle last week.  Redknapp has selected England international Jay Bothroyd up front.  Yeah, you try and say “England International Jay Bothroyd” without laughing.

When we were in the Championship, we quite often had games won with three minutes to go and we then played a game whereby Corky had a shot and you had to guess which seat behind the goal it would land in or which advertising board it would hit.  The game got changed a bit today and he had our first shot but sadly, the result was the same as it scuffed wide and hit Bet365.  Lallana lashes wide after a long period of possession, which the Northam End booed right the way through.  Of course it was aimed at Redknapp who was stood up in the technical area but surely it’s better to support the efforts of you own team? We really should have taken the lead though when minutes as Sir Rickie got his head on a floated cross from Gaston and headed down to where Punch was shoved over by Mbia as the ball rolled along the six yard line.  Question for Howard Webb – How did Punch miss the ball?

We’re looking good and QPR are looking organized but uninspiring and I’m giving forth the opinion that if we get the first goal then they’ll crumble and we’ll win quite comfortably.  Then we get caught out horribly by a long diagonal ball from the left by Hoillet which floats over Foxy to Loic Remy.  Bizarrely, Foxy runs to the goal line and so the first Saints player to confront Remy is Artur and Remy smashes it past him and into the net despite Foxy’s admittedly decent effort to keep it out.  Having suspected that QPR would not have the spirit to chase the game if they were behind, it’s obvious that they have a tactic for defending a lead and this is to kick the shit out of anything that moves.  Still, we should be alright as we’ve got World Cup referee Howard Webb in charge today which is a surprise in itself as this game has no bearing on Manchester United in any way.

QPR are playing us at our own game a bit by closing us down and in response, we’re continually passing sideways and not getting anywhere until someone decides to hit it long at Sir Rickie who is 6 foot 3 but he may as well be 4 ft 3 playing against Chris Samba who is some unit and he’ll be happy all day if all he has to do is head away balls that are coming straight at him.  Meanwhile, QPR’s kick-to-kill approach goes too far as Clyne passes the ball infield and Bothroyd completely wipes him out.  All that can be said in its defence is that it’s one-footed but it’s late and high and nasty and it should have been a red card.  With acceptable standard of tackling established by Mr Webb, Mbia now has carte blanche to steam through Morgan and only pick up a yellow card.

Gaston is looking decent for us and is working hard but not looking decent are Sir Rickie, Punch and Lallana who are really giving us nothing at all and we really don’t look like getting back into this anytime soon.  To be fair to us though, its hard to get any flowing football going when you are being fouled every thirty seconds and Traore becomes the third player to go into the book for hauling back Punch as he looked to get in behind him.   Next up we have a collision between Clint Hill and Lallana which Webb evidently didn’t see.  The Saints players who were nearby were not happy with the challenge and lets put it this way, Lallana was looking at the ball that was out on the right wing and Hill was looking straight at Lallana.

Bothroyd keeps fouling people without any danger of picking up a second yellow before Lallana, who evidently doesn’t know what day it is, has to be substituted and replaced with J-Rod.  If you were being unkind, you could say that Adam didn’t appear to know which way he was kicking before he got the smack round the head.  J-Rod’s introduction brings a more direct approach and right on half time we get back into it as J-Rod hammers in a shot from 30 yards, Cesar makes a total bollocks of it shovelling it back into play and Gaston is there to deftly chip it over the prone keeper to make it 1-1.  If the ball was a cake then Cesar would have swallowed it up.  There is just time for Jose to go into the book for blocking off a run by Bothroyd – it’s a really obvious and deserved booking so it’s therefore a bit of a surprise that Howard Webb spots it.  I’d just like to say, Well done Howard.

Half time and after a few games where they’ve not been as irritating, the Chuckle Brothers are back in town or one of them is anyway.  We’ve had “Licky Rambert” and “Cack Jork” and other classics like “bolling rall” and “cellow yard”.  All deeply funny and hilarious and you could count the people who were laughing at it on the toes of a South African athlete who has recently shot his girlfriend.  As I mentioned, I’m not feeling well and am pondering how I can make a deliberate spoonerism out of “Shut the Fuck Up”.

It’s Saints on the front foot again in the second half but again it’s all from long range and not much going on in the final third.  Our first effort to worry Cesar is from that lethal striker Jose Fonte who latches onto a loose ball about 25 yards our and lashes it just wide of the near post.  It’s fair to say that our most threatening attacking player is J-Rod and he picks up the ball on the left hand edge of the box after decent play by Foxy and curls one over Cesar and sadly, just over the bar as well.

On the hour mark, QPR make it into our half and Foxy manages to injure himself and so Shaw is on.  He links up with J-Rod ten minutes later who continues his one man mission to carry our attack by hammering in another shot which bounces in front of Cesar and he once again shovels it back into play but there’s no one there.  The timewasting has started now oh yes.  Cesar got a dead leg in an earlier challenge but it doesn’t take 5 minutes to get off the sodding pitch does it?  Rob Green comes on to replace him.  James Ward-Prowse comes on for the clearly tiring Gaston which is not a substitution I’d have made with Steven Davis still on the bench.

With 12 minutes to go, the Gods of Football take a dump on us again as Ji Sung Park picks up a loose ball on the right and drives forward.  Yoshida is favourite to win the ball but he goes into the tackle with his wrong foot and Park slides in and keeps the ball, then crossing along the six yard line for Bothroyd to tap into an empty net.  Fucking hell.  Two shots, two goals.

Mbia keeps fouling people and getting away with it and Bosingwa in particular is taking the piss with timewasting at throw-ins.  I lose count of the times Howard Webb tells him to get on with it whilst pointing to his watch and doesn’t book him.  We have a brief flurry with five minutes to go and a JWP corner is well met by Maya but typical of our luck today, Green pulls off a superb one handed reaction save to claw it away and I don’t reckon fatty would have saved that.  6 minutes of injury time is shown on the 4^th officials board and I notice Clint Hill going nuts at Webb whilst the game is going on.  What the fuck did you expect you moron?  He needn’t have worried though as we produce the square root of fuck all in those 6 minutes, not even forcing Green to touch the ball and so the game died with a whimper.

Having made my way from the ground, I got back to the car in time to hear Pochettino’s interview but I couldn’t be arsed with it and switched it off.  I’ll read it later so I don’t have to listen to five minutes of Spanish before the interpreter gives a one line answer.  Jose Fonte was put forward as the player to be interviewed and he pointed out that we controlled the game which we did – unfortunately Jose we did next to sod all with the possession we had.  I found it interesting though that he pointedly blamed the lack of movement up front and this is spot on.  Sir Rickie and Punch had shocking games and Lallana wasn’t much better when he was on.  J-Rod was decent and Gaston was ok until he got tired.  The stats say that we had 19 shots in this game – what it doesn’t say is that apart from Maya’s header at the end, none were from closer than 25 yards.

I guess you can conclude that QPR defended their box well and they did but we didn’t make them work.  Bosingwa and Traore and not good defenders and Hill is a Championship player.  Only Samba is decent and he’s especially decent if you just lob balls up for him to head away.  You can’t knock QPR’s approach – they are in the last chance saloon and they battled for 96 minutes and nicked the result.  They’ll have to do more than that to get enough results to stay up (you won’t have 2 shots and score 2 goals every day) but today, what they did was enough.

I guess it’s time to start talking about League Tables as we enter the final stretch – well, we’re three points and a better goal difference above the third bottom side and if today has told you anything, it’s that the relegation battle is going to the last match of the season for us – it’s the Southampton Way and needs to be incorporated into the new Ipad App of the same name.

I will now avoid Match of The Day, avoid Saintsweb and avoid Twitter as my day has been bad enough without bedwetting and Redknapp fawning in the media.  As for Redknapp – I don’t really understand how we can support the team straight after Nigel Adkins got sacked and then spend most of the game baiting Redknapp (who won’t have cared in the slightest).  For me it’s something that happened 8 years ago and whilst I’ll never really like the man, I can’t be arsed with getting too hot under to collar about something that happened 8 years ago.  We’re in a better place than when he arrived and in a better place than when he left.  However, we now have some serious work to do over the final 11 matches to ensure that this better place is retained for next year.  To paraphrase Alex Ferguson…”Football!....fucking shit bollocks”.

Next up, Norwich away who will be looking at beating us as a way of putting some serious daylight between themselves and the bottom 3.  I’d take a point now but you know that we’ll go out to win it as is the way with Pochettino’s style of football.