Capital One Cup 2nd Round - Barnsley 1 Southampton 5

Little African bloke levitates after shock goal !

Between the weekend and tonight there had been further acknowledgement that other people in the game are beginning to sit up and take notice of what's going on here on the South Coast: Sir Rickie got picked for England again with Luke Shaw and JWP getting picked for the England Under 21s, the latter for the first time though Shaw hasn' t actually played for them yet due to persistent injuries when called up.  Calum Chambers was as usual, in the Under 19s.  So, the future is bright but for now, we're going back to the past.

It’s like going back in time 2 years (or is it 200 years) as we visit Championship side Barnsley in the 2^nd Round of the Capital One Cup.  Every year we say the same things about how great it would be to have a cup run and every year it’s the same and we field a team of 14 year olds until we get knocked out.  Under Nigel Adkins, the cup competitions were a waste of time as he was always chasing league success which is fine, but it didn’t make it any easier to take when we got humiliated at Leeds last year in this competition and then followed that up by giving up at half time when we played Chelsea at home in the FA Cup. 

So, this was Mauricio Pochettino’s first Cap One Cup game and he followed suit with 9 changes to the starting team with only Jose and J-Rod remaining.  I thnk we can assume that Jose was only in because Big Jos had a cold and I have a suspicion that J-Rod was in because he was likely to be on the bench on Saturday.  The difference between now and last year though is that we have a much stronger squad with Yoshida, Clyne, Foxy, Corky, Steve Davis, Gaston and Superkelv being first choices for parts of last year. In addition we have Lloyd Isgrove making a first start and of course, the Little African Bloke will get the chance to answer the age old question: “Can he do it in a midweek game in Yorkshire”?.

Barnsley have a couple of familiar players with Chris O’Grady playing up front who I remember playing very well and scoring for Rochdale in their 2-0 win at St.Mary’s in League 1 which was the first part of the double they did over us that season.  That game was two and a half years ago and Rochdale are now in League 2 with the Skates and we are in the Premier League in another example of how quickly things can change in football.  They also have Jacob Mellis who was brought in on loan by Alan Pardew.  He was at Chelsea and got picked for England age group teams because he was at Chelsea – well it must have been that because it sure wasn’t because he was any good.  He’s filed alongside Nicholas Bignall and Jordan Robertson as loan players we had to were really really shtt.  They had Mike Pollitt in goal who is 41 and signed about half an hour before kick off.  The keeper he reaplced must be really bad.

Tonight, to add to the 2 years ago vibe,  I will be old-skool due to a lack of internet stream and be in the company of Merringtitus via Saints Player.  I think I can bear listening to this because Dejan Lovren is not playing so there is less chance of a Dave climax on the radio.  Barnsley are bottom of the Championship and have let in loads of goals in their games so far so it’s looking good as J-Rod puts Gaston through in the first minute only for the enigma to be put off by the approaching pensioner Pollitt between the sticks and roll it wide.  Should have been a goal says Dave and it’s hard to argue with him.

Following our early chance the game settles down into the expected pattern which means all our attacks break down with Gaston or the Little African Bloke losing the ball.  On the quarter hour Barnsley have their first sight on goal as O’Grady flicks on and Pedersen fires wide.  Our inital promise appears to have fizzled out and the Tykes are doing most of the attacking until just before the half hour mark when a decent move forwards involving Fox, Davis and Corky ends with Isgrove laying the ball back (sort of) to Steven Davis who buried it diagonally across Pollitt and into the far corner for 1-0.

It’s now all us and several chances to make it 2-0 are snuffed out with a careless final pass or something pointless like Corky having a shot which ended up in the side netting.  Then J-Rod shows his League form by taking aim from 30 yards and smashing one straight down the keepers throat.  The great question of whether the Little African Bloke was actually playing was answered by Big Dave who went into a lengthy dissection of why he wasn’t touching the ball and was to all intents and purposes, shit.  The gist was that he’s slow on the uptake and has no football brain or as it’s known amongst Saints fans, Bradley Wright-Phillips.  If Ali Dia was George Weah’s cousin then Mayuka must be George Weah’s cousins dog walking friends sisters third cousin twice removed, or as FourFourTwo magazine put him, the 85^th best player in the World.

It’s all Saints as we approach the break with Gaston hooking a Fox cross just wide with an excellent improvised attempt on goal and then trying his luck from 30 yards with a shot that ended up in the Yorkshire Dales.  There is just time for Dave Merrington to assert for the 25^th time, that Gaston should have scored in the first minute.  Half time and 1-0 up and happy days.

The second half began with Saints looking to put the game to bed and J-Rod immediately turned past a defender and then fired wide in a change to hitting it straight at the keeper.  Much to my surprise, the next time he got it after a move involving Corky and Steven Davis, he curled a superb finish into the far corner of the net to make it 2-0 and, you would have thought, killed Barnsley off.  We’ve changed formation a bit with Jay going up front and the Little African Bloke coming over to the right so he could be poor in other areas of the pitch.  Jay was on fire now though and he controlled, turned and smacked a shot against the post which was a precursor to Dawson rumbling up the pitch, picking up an O’Grady knock down and with no-one closing him down, he took a decent pot shot from 25 yards which skidded off the turf and beat the dive of Superkelv.

We responded with working the ball to the Little African Bloke who showed us how they scuff a shot in Zambia before Gaston was hacked over on the edge of the box and his free kick was headed wide by the wall which in this part of the world, means a goal kick.  Barnsley threw on two subs and for 5 minutes they made a right game of it with a couple of near misses but it was one sub too many for them when another forward was thrown on in place of a midfielder so they went to a kind of 4-2-1-3 formation.  Whilst they were adapting, Gaston picked a pass out to the right and amazingly, the Little African Bloke took it in his stride, cut in via a lucky deflection off his heel and buried it past Pollitt before embarking on some impressive gymnastics which makes you wonder about his chosen sport.

With 20 to go it’s substitution time with Isgrove making way for Omar Rowe who Merringtitus immediately compares to Nathan Dyer in that he’s small, fast and nicks mobile phones out of handbags.  It’s a quiet period of the game and so Dave tries to say that Yoshida is decent because he just gets on with it with no fuss but instead he comes across all homo-erotic again and gets all whispery and panting over Maya’s “manliness”.    Soon it’s time for J-Rod to come off to be replaced with Harrison Reed who is a neat passing midfield player who of course is a “young Paul Scholes” though whether he’d have this tag if didn’t have ginger hair is open to debate.

It’s nearly a dream debut for Rowe as Davis passes up the chance to shoot to feed the youngster but his shot is blocked by Pollitt when he really shouldn’t have given him a prayer.  As we enter the 90^th minute it looks like the Little African Bloke is going to score a second after great play by Reed fed the Zambian who was unceremoniously turfed up in the air by McNulty to give us a penalty.  I was expecting Gaston to take it but up stepped Steve Davis to score via Pollitt’s glove to make it 4-1.  With Jake Sinclair coming on for the Little African Bloke, the scoreline was then given an even more flattering sheen a minute later as we won the ball back and quickly advanced to the right hand edge of the box where Gaston dropped the shoulder, rounded Pollitt before lifting a lovely finish into the net to make it five.  There was still time for a totally dispirited Barnsley to cough up another chance but again Rowe was denied by the keeper.

After the final whistle, the Saints players showed their appreciation to the travelling fans by throwing their shirts into the crowd.  I remember Francis Benali once trying to throw his to a team mate but it went off sideways and landed in the crowd.

So, a 5-1 away win against a Championship side, with 9 players rested and another four 18 year old Academy kids getting on the pitch, three English, one Welsh.  Out of the 14 players used tonight, 7 were English and there were 3 other British players, one each from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.  It’s not bad is it.

The Don had decided not to pay the overtime for the Interpreter to travel up to Barnsley for an evening game so the post match duties were handled by Jesus Perez.  It appears that the Capital One Cup is really a night for the reserves to be brought out.  Other results in the Cup were largely uninteresting but spare a thought for Nigel Adkins who picked a stronger side for Reading than he ever did in the cup for Saints and they got buried 6-0 by Peterborough who are currently in League 1.  Something tells me that that margin of defeat is down to the players instead of the manager.

As I write we have just been drawn at home to Bristol City so expect a similar line-up in the next round but with the squad depth we have now, expect us to get through to the 4^th Round despite Bristol City being one of the sides who we never did terribly well against in the Championship.  Times are different now.  Next up is Norwich City away in the Premier.  I think we may see a few changes for that.