Premier League Match 3 - Norwich 1 Southampton 0

Norwich away - Shit Refs, we always get Shit Refs

Norwich away and memories of some carrot crunching local bumpkin trying to take my head off with a pool cue come flooding back.  I’d committed the crime of not understanding that it was ‘winner stays on’ on a completely empty table with no one around and the other crime of ‘not being from round here’.  Happy days.   This game has been a billed a bit of a ‘battle of the big spenders’ with both clubs not being afraid to speculate to accumulate.  Norwich have brought in a few more than us with Leroy Fer, Gary Hooper, Nathan Redmond and Ricky van Wolfswinkel among those arriving.  Grant Holt has left which means no one can give him shit for the horrible collapsing tree effort he pulled last year to give Twattenburg the opportunity to make it all about him and give a last minute penalty.  As the next few minutes showed though, sometimes cheats don’t prosper as Holt’s kick was saved by the King.

Having said a bit about a dishonest player, let’s talk about the complete opposite.  Dean Hammond has left Saints and gone to Leicester City which is a great move for him.  When the history of this football club is updated it will show that there are just two players who’ve lifted a trophy for Saints as captain and these are Peter Rodrigues and Dean Hammond.  For that alone his status should be assured.  Signed pretty soon after Markus and Nicola came to town, he took over as on-field captain and added a presence that was vital to us in two seasons in League 1 and one in the Championship.  He broke things up in midfield, won headers and played it simple.  He also chipped in with a few goals and would probably have scored a few more but was restricted to a defensive midfield role by Pards and Nigel.   He wasn’t appreciated by many fans as he did the ‘ugly’ things that you need someone to do to be a successful team in League 1 and the Championship.  Some standout goals were the one in the Championship on day 1 versus Leeds, the header against Brighton which he slightly over-celebrated and would up that very strange set of supporters from Sussex and the one at Peterborough away where he ran onto a low corner and expertly clipped it over the keeper first time.   He did have some dodgy moment including wearing a neck warming jumper thing which just looked wrong and he legendarily said “it’s been fucking brilliant” on live TV just as we got promoted to the Premier League.  Though he never played again for Saints after that game, he made a massive contribution to getting us to where we are now.  I managed to blag a ticket to the celebration dinner following the League 1 promotion season and Deano was on my table.  A more down to earth and genuinely nice guy you couldn’t wish to meet.  One thing he told us that evening was that as a 17 year old, he played for Brighton in the last ever game at The Dell.

Slightly less interesting as far as I’m concerned is that a Saints Academy product has just become the most expensive player in the World as Gareth Bale finally moved to Real Madrid for a stupid amount of money.  So – your country in bankrupt, the banks that finance the club have been bailed out by the government and therefore the people and you spend 100 million euro on a left footed, direct-running, shoot-on-sight, good in the air, athletic, very fast attacking midfielder – and you already have Cristiano Ronaldo.  Seriously though, he was very respectful when he played against us last year (despite scoring twice the bastard) and he’s released a nice statement complimenting the club on his departure.  Good luck Gareth.

To the game today and Mauricio has predictably picked Dani Osvaldo to start in place of J-Rod.  The rest of the team is as expected but it’s slightly strange to see Chambers and Fox starting at full backs with the first choices of Clyne and Shaw on the bench.  Two full backs on the bench means no place at all for Jack Cork who in the space of three matches has gone from being one of the first names on the team sheet to not being in the 18.  Why have two full backs on the bench, especially when Clyne can play on both sides?

Away we go and it’s like a training exercise.  Norwich attack, we stop them, give them the ball back and then they have another go.  There’s an early warning as Nathan Redmond picks up the ball after a dodgy JWP touch and leaves him for dead before cracking a shot just wide of the near post.  The first quarter of an hour is horrible with Saints stuck in 1^st gear and giving away free kicks a-plenty to allow Norwich to pin us back.  Following the first of many Snodgrarse sniper incidents and a delivery into the box, the ball lands at the feet of Fer who stabs his shot away but it’s well blocked in trademark fashion by a King Artur starjump and so we survive.

From our first real incursion into the Norwich defensive third, Adam Lallana smashes in a shot from the edge of the box and Bradley Johnson charges it down like a volleyball player going for a block.  He’s charged out with both hands above his head and his arms are outstretched and at chest height as the ball hits both of them.  Great save but a definite penalty.   Oh no it isn’t - Howard Webb has a perfect view from 5 yards away and hasn’t given it.  It’s such a shite piece of refereeing.  Hands in unnatural position – check, ball hits hands – check, deliberate – check, hands moving towards the ball – check, perfect view for the ref – check, inside the box – check, award penalty – no! Wanker.

Dani Osvaldo is struggling to get into the game as he and Sir Rickie interchange positions but he’s attempting a scissor kick in the middle of the 6 yard box when trying to get on the end of a JWP cross but unfortunately for him and us, the cross is nicked away by the last defender and doesn’t reach him.  After our little spell, back come Norwich and they have a half hearted penalty shout of their own as first van Wolfswinkel nods down Whittaker’s cross and it hits Calum Chambers hand about 2 yards away and right in front of his chest and then Morgan superbly tackles Fer as he’s about to shoot.  Whittaker is being a pain on the right and getting forward well as Foxy has no cover in front of him at all.  The Norwich full back gets to the line and then seems to have no clue as to what to do and lashes it across where it flicks off Chambers for a corner.

It sounds like its end to end but it really isn’t.  It’s kind of a dull game but Saints give us hope for improvement on 40 minutes as a JWP free kick drops into a decent area and is half cleared to the lurking Lallana on the edge of the box who creams a left footed volley past everyone including a static Ruddy and sees it smack the post and bounce out.  A great effort and unlucky in complete contrast to our final effort of the half which is a pot shot from Wanyama which is probably still in orbit somewhere over The Wash.  Half time and unlike last time here, we don’t have 11 players and a manager round the referee which is what Howard Webb deserves to be honest.

Saints are the better side in the opening exchanges of the second half and Dani Osvaldo appears to have woken up.  First he controls and rolls a defender before getting a shot away which Ruddy does well to push away.  Then he tries his luck from range but it’s a daisycutter which is a simple enough save for the keeper.

Dejan Lovren is the one Saints new boy who I have absolutely no qualms about and he’s trying to make things happen for us in attack by setting off on a mazy from his own half and getting into the Norwich box before being crowded out.  We are then again denied by officials as a flag goes up for offside when Sir Rickie is about three yards onside but the shot he smacks in is well parried out by Ruddy.

Virtually all of the attacking thrust from Norwich is coming down their left through Redmond who hangs up another cross for the painfully crap Elmander to put wide.  The contrast between Redmond on one wing and Snodgrarse on the other is stark – one player runs at defenders and beats them and plays with a smile on his face, the other looks for any slight contact, dives on the floor when he gets the faintest brush and then scowls at the referee and everyone else.

60 minutes and we’re in the Gaston Zone and it’s time for him to come on and it’s time for our best player and main attacking threat to be taken off as Lallana is replaced.  It’s a bemusing one to say the least when there are at least 3 more deserving candidates to get hooked in Sir Rickie, Dani O and JWP and you could make a case for removing Big Vic or Morgan as well.  Gaston wins a free kick with his first run into the danger area though but Sir Rickie’s free kick is in keeping with the rest of his performance and craps straight into the wall, which in Sir Rickie’s defence, Howard Webb had let stand about 6 yards away.

The one danger man Norwich have then does for us as Redmond cuts in from the left, past JWP and before Wanyama can get anwhere near, hits a shot that rockets along the ground and in at the near post.  At first glance it looks like King Artur should have stopped it but it’s a very good strike and right in the corner.  It is reminiscent of Bale’s goal for Spurs against us last year as it came from nowhere and was as a result of direct running at pace and us not closing him down.

So – what have we got?  Well, we have Steve Davis and J-Rod coming on for the disappointing Morgan and Dani Osvaldo.  The final 10 minutes don’t really see an Alamo siege on the Norwich goal as we’d have liked.  Lovren feeds Sir Rickie who clips a lovely ball into J-Rod whose touch took it through to the keeper and that was about it as we failed to make any impression on the Norwich rearguard.  The final action of the game is for Norwich to break as we commit men forwards and King Artur pulled off a decent save from Redmond before they broke again and Snodgrarse is clean through as Jose goes into Portuguese Man of War mode and hurls himself in front of him and basically body checks him off the ball.  Serves the whiny diving bastard right - It’s a penalty all day long but Webb has another shithouse shocker and doesn’t give it.  Watching Snodgrarse’s ‘chewing a wasp’ face is the one positive I’ll take out of this game.

So, just like last year we come away from Norwich talking about the referee – what a surprise!  Howard Webb is widely held to be England’s best referee but he wasn’t today as he was fucking crap.  It strikes me that Howard doesn’t want to give big decisions in case he gets them wrong and he doesn’t seem to get that not giving something is also wrong.  How on earth he doesn’t give a penalty for Johnson’s handball gets more and more incredible every time you see it.  He also of course should have given Norwich one in the last minute and he bottled that one as well.  He spent the rest of the game giving petty fouls for fuck all in areas of the pitch which don’t matter as much.  I remember his non-refereeing of the 2010 World Cup final and wonder what exactly impresses the referee assessors if he’s the top man.

Interestingly, this comes on a weekend where recently retired referee Mark Halsey has hit the news for refusing to sign a gagging order.  The FA don’t want him to talk about his career but fair play to him that he wants to.  He infamously failed to send of Callum MacManaman for Wigan last year for a horror tackle that he missed which occurred in the first half.  He said that he found out about his mistake at half time from Sky and this compromised his refereeing in the second half when he should have sent off a Newcastle player but felt he couldn’t in the interest of fairness (and he probably felt that he would have got lynched).  I wonder if Howard found out that he should have given Saints a penalty and that meant he didn’t give Norwich one which they deserved in the last minute.  I’d like to think that he didn’t give it because Snodgrarse spends the whole game diving around but the chances are that he had another agenda.

Saints were disappointing today, started slowly and really struggled to chase the game once we went behind.  Shaw and Clyne were missed because of the pace they inject into the side and Mauricio is struggling to find the correct balance in the front 6.  We started today talking about Dean Hammond and that he won the ball and kept it simple.  Victor Wanyama is our Premier League equivalent and he needs to hand over more of the creative responsibility to JWP, Morgan and Adam Lallana once he’s won the ball.  The manager needs to get it right as to what combinations will suit the game in front of him.  Here’s some questions: Can Sir Rickie and Dani Osvaldo play together ?, Do we need J-Rod’s pace in the side ?, Does Morgan and Victor work in the centre?, Does Corky come in for JWP to allow you to play the maverick Gaston... or Guly even?

Overall – today was a very tight game that but for a crap refereeing non-decision and the width of a post, we could easily have won even though we didn’t play very well.  They had Redmond to run at us at pace and cause problems and we had no one like that.  Norwich took their decent chance and that was the difference between the two sides.  When it’s two evenly match sides, it comes down to the fine margins.  It isn’t the end of the world as we were hardly going to go the whole season without losing were we? 

Meanwhile, on FM13, Bedwetter City have won their third game in succession in the Premier League and the manager is up for the Manager of the Month Award.