Premier League Match 4 - Southampton 0 West Ham 0

Kevin Nolan appeals for Morgan to be Sent Off

First of all, apologies that this is a bit late.  For my sins I went to watch the last cricket of the season and went to watch England v Australia at the Rose Bowl.  It was completely shit and I froze my arse off as England lost pathetically.  I guess the person who arranges a day / night cricket international in mid September is the same person who arranges a World Cup in Qatar,  Anyway…..

A game against West Ham used to be one to look forward to.  You knew it would be a good game and be fairly open.  You also knew that they would probably be a bit of a soft touch and if you were 100% at it, that you would win.  Times change but Fat Sam doesn’t.  West Ham will be hard to beat, will get stuck right in and it won’t be for the faint hearted.  The will bark, bollock and bite, smash it long and waste half the game taking an age over every restart.

We have our first Sky o’clock kick off time for the season with it being Sunday at 4pm.  I accept that but I don’t accept the fact that our home game with Swansea has been moved to a Sunday with a 1.30 pm kick off.  Despite repeated tweets to the FA, the Premier League and Saints, I have not been given the courtesy of an answer regarding why.  Of course, we all have a good idea why but it would be nice if someone admitted it.   I have no problem with Sunday afternoon kick offs when we are on Sky or BT Sport or whatever but I have a massive issue with these lunchtime o’clock kick offs because it means that I can’t go.  Aside from being pissed off at the financial loss of an adult and a child season ticket that I’ve paid for going begging, it’s a football related reason as well and it’s grass-roots football which is the issue which is one of the things that the FA and the Premier League are supposed to be keen on protecting and improving.  I help run my son’s Under 10 football team and we play on Sunday mornings.  On the Swansea Sunday we are playing at 12.30 so we have a choice of kids football and no Saints or going to Saints and leaving the team shorn of one player and a manager.  It’s not just that though as four or five other lads are season ticket holders as well so I’m sure that whatever happens, the kids team will be very weak or not have enough players.   I’m sure it will affect the opposition team as well.  

Saints v Swansea is on Sunday because Swansea are in the Europa League which is played on a Thursday night so it has a separate day for TV coverage despite it being a competition that no one aside from teams that are in it gives a fuck about.  Play it on a Wednesday when there are no Champions League Fixtures!  The 1.30 kick off is probably down to foreign TV deals and the FA want to sell both a 1.30 game and the traditional (for the last 20 years) Sunday 4pm game.  So FA and Greg Dyke, Premier League and Richard Scudamore - don’t crap on about the importance of grass roots football and blaming foreigners for all our ills and then allow the Premier League to arrange kick off times to suit foreign markets which craps all over grass roots football in this country.  Rant over til next time.  

To today and the weather is nasty and so are the opposition.  Fat Sam in charge and Kevin Nolan as captain with a supporting cast including Joey O’Brien and perennial substitute Matt Taylor.  Andy Carroll has got injured again so he’s not playing and I for one, along with Dejan Lovren and Jose Fonte am pleased about that as no matter how one dimensional he is, he’s a right handful to play against and West Ham will be weaker without him.  On the face of it, West Ham don’t seem to have sold out their allocation which is a surprise as usually they do.  Maybe it’s because some would rather sit and watch the Fat Sam shit football they serve up from the pub or at home, rather than pay a fortune to watch it live.  It’s not just them though, there are gaps all over our areas as well which should tell whoever makes pricing decisions that maybe the line in the sand has been reached for many people.  

Mauricio has shuffled things a bit since our last game with the first choice full backs returning in the form of Clyne and Shaw and some tinkering elsewhere with J-Rod returning at the expense of JWP.  I guess this means that Lallana will be on all the set pieces.

When you play West Ham, as always you want a strong referee who is not going to let them get away with it and referee Marriner watches Noble cynically hack Shaw down in the first couple of minutes and does nothing aside from giving a free kick.  Big Sigh! Here we go.

We then put ourselves under pressure when there should have been none when under no pressure at all, Big Vic attempts to roll a ball out to Clyne on the right and just passes it straight to Jarvis to give West Ham some rare possession in the oppositions half.  It ends up being worked right to Demel and Diame who are against Shaw who has no help at all from either Adam Lallana or J-Rod as Diame tricks his way past before trying to make a hole through King Artur at his near post which isn’t happening.

It’s already been proved that we can’t trust the referee to alter West Ham’s approach so we have one option left which is to score an early goal which will force them to play a bit.  Football breaks out between Morgan, Big Vic and Sir Rickie and J-Rod gets down the left using his pace to burn Demel and lays back an excellent ball to the onrushing Dani Osvaldo near the penalty spot and his sidefooted effort is somehow deflected over the bar by Jaaskelainen.  It’s a great save but he really shouldn’t have been given a prayer of getting anywhere near it.

West Ham have Ravel Morrison in midfield who managed to get Sir Alex to give up on him at Man United.  Fergie said that he has the ability but his attitude is shite, so it’s quite something for him to have given up on a player with enough ability.  So here he is, making his Prem debut for West Ham and he’s one of those knobs who has his first name on his shirt instead of his surname – can’t be too harsh as we have Gaston – and getting right into the West Ham way by trashing through the back of England’s Number 9.  Andre Marriner again produces fuck all.

We get a change presented to us just after that as the nomally reliable Collins falls on his arse and Sir Rickie is away.  He plays in Osvaldo and via a deflection it finds its way back to Sir Rickie whose volley is accurate but shanked a bit and an easy save in the end.  We have more West Ham-isms from the book of Allardyce.  This particular Fat Sam rule is that if there is any contact at all you have to lay on the floor for about 10 minutes as Maiga is doing after a collision with Lovren.  Mind you, I get the impression with Dejan that if he hits you, you stay hit.

Diame manages to achieve what I was beginning to think was impossible as Lallana got away from him and he just trashed him.  He was about as close to the ball as I was in the stand and miraculously, Mr Marriner got a yellow card out.   In a rare bit of ball-on-the-ground-in-our-half, West Ham slide in Jarvis and the flag goes up straight away.  King Artur starjumps his shot away and Nolan chips in the rebound but no drama but it may have wound Nolan up a bit which is always a good thing.

We were then grateful for Marriner being a shit referee as Morgan slid in on Diame and caught him.  There was a bit of ball involved but not much and the way he went in has seen players sent off plenty of times.  The dickhead didn’t even give a free kick though and the flag-twat who was about 5 yards away just stood there with an “I’m only here for throw-ins and offsides” written all over his face.  We got away with one there but the bonus was that it sent arch-wanker Kevin Nolan into a fit of puce-faced pretend rage and finger pointing aggression.  His face goes that colour because his shorts are too tight and all the blood is forced up into his face.

The half ends with ‘Ravel’ firing over the bar and a wonderful bit of football by Nolan when under no pressure, he attempts to chip a pass out to Diame on the wing and puts it about 20 yards over his head.  I guess Andy Carroll may have reached that.

It’s properly pissing down as the second half starts and Saints have obviously had a rocket up their arse and start well.  Big Vic rumbles forward and hits one from 25 yards which unfortunately is straight and Jaaskelainen comfortably pushes it over the bar.  From the corner, Lallana’s delivery is met by a diving Sir Rickie and his header crashes back off the post and we’re all up in arms as Big Vic’s follow up is blocked by what looked like Collins’ arm.  Later replays prove that it hit him in the chest and then brushed his arm so the ref got that one right.

We’re rolling now and it seems like it will just be matter of time.  J-Rod finds space on the right and feeds Osvaldo who weights a perfect pass into Lallana.  It’s crying out to be hit first time but he takes a touch and it’s shite and the ball runs through to the keeper.  There’s another near thing straight afterwards as Sir Rickie pings a superb ball over the full back to J-Rod whose cross is met by Osvaldo whose shot it once again blocked by bloody Collins before Morgan’s acrobatic overhead effort is flicked over the bar by Reid.

Mr Marriner remembers where his cards are as Mark Noble gets a yellow one and then Big Vic clumsily hoofs a Hammer up in the air but it was ‘Ravel’ so he deserved it.  Fat Sam brings on Vaz Te for Maiga who has been playing the role Sir Rickie played for England in Ukraine whereby you have the whole half of the pitch to yourself and are expected to do something with a diet of shite service.  Joey O’Brien then reminds us that Kevin Nolan has a rival for the title of ‘Biggest Wanker in the West Ham side’ by making no attempt to play the ball and smashing through Lallana.  Joey’s main attribute is time-wasting though which he’s truly brilliant at.

A pattern is emerging now and it’s getting annoying after more superb football, J-Rod’s cross is met by Morgan with a kind of scissor-volley which looks in all the way but Jaaskelainen takes off again and tips it round the post.  It’s about time he bloody retired for Christ’s sake.

The Mauricio substitution of rule of “Lallana will come off no matter how well he’s playing” comes into effect and off he goes with JWP replacing him.  Gaston Ramirez remains on the bench and J-Rod remains on the pitch but that bloody goalkeeper is at it again as Sir Rickie gets put away on the left hand edge of the penalty area and bends a shot towards the far top corner which Jaaskelainen yet again manages to push away.  There’s a ball boy behind the goal who I think we should put upfront because it’s remarkable that Jaaskelainen can make brilliant save after brilliant save after brilliant save but every time he gets the ball from the ball boy, he fumbles it.  That’s a strange one and no mistake.

Chambers is on for Shaw as the clock ticks down, well it would do if Winston Reid would let it and stop lying on the ground needing treatment.  He and Jose throw themselves at a JWP free kick and he stays down, then he goes down again a minute later with what looks like cramp but he’s soon back on with no apparent ill effects.  Oh look it’s Matt Taylor and my kid asks me what the chant is that starts up immediately as soon as he appears…. “errrr… he used to play for Pompey, let’s leave it at that”.  And then we nearly fucking lost as after a spell of us not clearing the ball, a cut back from the dead ball line finds Collins about 10 yards out and mercifully, he lashes it miles over the bar.

There’s still time for some penalty shouts in the West Ham box as first Nolan clearly handles for no readily apparent reason and then JWP finds himself with the ball and a Rat with two arms around him.  It’s interesting that probably because he’s 18 he doesn’t go down but if he had, I wonder if Marriner would have given it.  I doubt it though it’s a clear foul whether he goes to ground or not.  Referees that aren’t shit would realise this.  Full time, 0-0.

As predictably as you like, Fat Sam deflected any criticism that may have come his way for the abysmal style of football he employs and picked out the one bad tackle by a Saints player and made a meal of it.  Yes, on another day it could have got a red card and I don’t think anyone would argue about that.  However, when you base your whole philosophy on kicking lumps out of the opposition and stopping them from playing; it’s incredibly rich to moan about one opposition tackle.  It’s interesting though that Match of the Day showed the Morgan tackle but not the O’Brien or Diame efforts on Lallana so the watching nation is left thinking that Morgan is a thug and that’s it.  Would anyone like to put together a Joey O’Brien highlight reel and play that?  There wouldn’t be any football in it, that’s for sure.  But enough of anti-football.

I came away from the game thinking that we really didn’t play very well but we created a lot of chances, especially in the 2nd half but like against Sunderland last time at home, we came up against an inspired goalkeeper.  The sluggish nature of the match can be put down to opposition who came for a point and managed to get away with one.  Both games have been like it was in League 1 at times where teams came to SMS to get a point and had not much ambition beyond that and we’ve failed to break them down.  We learnt then and we’ll learn now.

Individually there were decent performances in a largely untroubled back line but we still have issues going forward.  Big Vic has parts of the game when he looks up to speed and other parts where he just carelessly gives the ball away.  In his defence though, sometimes trying to thread a pass through massed ranks of defenders and deep midfielders is not easy.  Personally I think he’ll get there and his presence in the centre does allow us to get lots of players forward.  I’m no fan of Mark Lawrenson but he did highlight how many players we get into the box and the law of averages says that eventually our luck in front of goal will change.

Up front, they all need a goal.  Dani Osvaldo should have scored today but he played well especially in the 2nd half when he dropped a bit deeper and I certainly saw signs of how he and Sir Rickie can play well together though doubtless there will be many who go overboard and completely blame the fact that Mauricio is trying to play with two strikers in a change from last year – these will be the same people who complained that we didn’t score enough goals at the tail end of last season.  Personally I think the problem is more a lack of width than playing with two strikers.

My overall impression was that J-Rod was poor today but on reflection, he did set up a majority of our clear chances.  The great conundrum is of course Gaston Ramirez who remained benched despite us needing a goal.  For me, there is a potential goldmine with him and Osvaldo and it has to be tried soon if we continue to struggle to score goals.  My money would be on Adam Lallana being ‘rested’ for a game soon.  Maybe when we play Bristol City in the Cup we can try Dani and Gaston together.  In my opinion it would be a good idea to play all the big guns in that game and hopefully get them firing…. Won’t happen though.

Next up we have a step up in class against Liverpool at Anfield where last season we just stood around and watched in awe as they easily beat us.  Hopefully the players will be focussed on getting a result against one of the big boys and I imagine that only one of Dani and Sir Rickie will play and someone like Steven Davis or Jack Cork will come in.  At least unlike today, the opposition will try and beat us.