Premier League Match 6 - Southampton 2 Crystal Palace 0

Chamakh Can't Even Fool Holloway

Crystal Palace are our visitors today and an opportunity for us to register our first home win of the season and to stay above Manchester United in the league for at least another week.  If we manage to finish above Manchester United this season then we’ll be at least 8^th.  Palace came up through the playoffs last season and on the face of it, do not have a squad remotely capable of staying up this year but stranger things have happened.  Ian Holloway was in this situation about 3 years ago with Blackpool who didn’t appear to have a prayer but only succumbed to relegation on the last day.  It has to be said that Holloway did well to get them that close.  So, he’s a fairly decent manager but he’s also a king size helmet who used to be very funny but now he isn’t and the FA don’t think he is either as he’s already picked up one touchline ban this season and this is his first game back in the dugout which is good as it will give the fans a focal point when singing.  One Palace player we don’t have to worry about today is Jason Puncheon who we loaned to them for the season.  It’s ridiculous that you can borrow players from clubs in the same division but the one good part of that rule is that you can’t play against your parent club because as we all know, he would score against us.

With things going well at Saints, there of course has to be some complete made up shite in the media to keep people irritated.  Sir Rickie is on his way in January apparently which is perfectly logical as he plays every week, is now in the England squad, we don’t need the money and it would leave us with just the one out and out forward which is all you need as we don’t play too many games and no one ever gets injured or suspended.  What also helps is Saints related websites picking up this random made-up piece of garbage and writing articles about it, giving it credence and suggesting it’s true.  When asked about it, a clearly irritated Mauricio spoke of how important the big man was and how they are trying to improve him as a player.  Of course, this got spun as us not being happy with him in some way.  No wonder the Don hates the media and no wonder Mauricio chooses to minimize the chances of being misinterpreted by speaking in his native language.  In other news, Billy Sharp has moved on loan to Southampton B until January, joining Nigel Adkins, Chris Baird and Wayne Bridge.  Rumour has it that they’re changing their colours to red and white.

Non-Saints related news is that the England women’s team played an international at Fratton Park and won 8-0.  I find it very odd that such a big deal is made of the fact that the women’s team train at the world class St Georges Park facility and then they make them play matches at a place where the facilities were built about 100 years ago and haven’t been modernised since.  If we were playing Iraq and wanted to make them feel at home then I can understand it.  Still, England Women are the best team to play there this season.

Saints have one change from the usual which is that Steven Davis is rewarded for a decent display at Liverpool and is included in place of J-Rod who drops to the bench.  Half of our defence is of course ex-Palace with Nathaniel Clyne and Jose Fonte being signed from there.  As Clyne said during the week, Palace like Saints have a decent record with bringing players thorough and giving them a chance which is a good thing and the other good thing about Palace is of course the fact that I work in Brighton so when The Eagles trashed The Seagulls in the championship playoff semi final last year, there were loads of angry Brighton fans at work which made my day all the more fun.

As I said last week, I don’t think Palace are good enough to park the bus and it looks like Holloway thinks along the same lines and has deployed two strikers even though one of them is Chamakh.  Arsene Wenger cannot look back on that day with any pride… the day I thought it was a good idea to sign Chamakh.   Elsewhere, Palace have ex-Skate Joel Ward who scored against us at Fratton Park a couple of years back and some more players who aren’t really good enough for the Premier League like Danny Gabbidon and Dikgacoi, the South African wardrobe who wasn’t good enough for the Championship when we played them.

We have a good chance early on as José Fonte pings a diagonal ball towards Sir Rickie and it drops to Morgan who heads it over the flapping Speroni who has kindly come out into nomansland to make it easy.  Unfortunately, Ward manages to get back on the line and heads it over the bar.

We’ve lined up with Steven Davis on the left and Adam Lallana on the right which means that Davis looks distinctly uncomfortable.  Defensively he looks fine in helping out Shaw but there’s not a lot going forward as there’s no option to go outside the full back.  We’re building better down the right as a Clyne inspired move sees Sir Rickie find Dani Osvaldo in the box who turns the full back inside out before feeding  Lallana, laid back to Sir Rickie, bang, just over, head in hands, groan.  Should have scored really but in my opinion he tried to be too clever and sidefoot it into the corner instead of smashing the cover off it.

Steve Davis does win us a free kick when his cross is handled by Jedinak.  It’s a long way out and not very central but Sir Rickie hits it anyway and even though it’s straight at him and at ankle height, Speroni decides that a two wristed volleyball set is the way to go.  Whatever happened to catching it?  Anyhow, the ball finds its way out to Shaw who takes on a defender who trashes him.  I hadn’t noticed Jimmy Kebe until that point.  He’s about 6 foot 2 and just has a head, arms and two legs which start just under his chin.   He’s crap – why the hell have they signed him?  Moving on and we make a balls of the free kick.

Out of nowhere, Palace break and Chamakh finds himself one on one with King Artur after heading on a Bannan flick.  Out comes Artur, Chamakh tries to go round him, over he goes, whistle goes… oh shit!!!... booked for diving, haaaaaaaa!.  Thank Christ for that.  Artur might have only got a yellow as there were two defenders behind him but from where I was sitting (at that end, the other side of the far post) it looked like a penalty.  You have to say though that the referee was spot on.  Later replays showed that Chamakh, knocked it past Artur, then started diving and then deliberately dragged his foot into the keeper.  What a wanker!  He must have practiced falling like that – shite footballer and a complete and utter wanker.  It was the last noteworthy incident of a poor-ish first half.  Penalty incident aside we had looked untroubled in defence with Lovren and Fonte outstanding and Big Vic seemed to be enjoying and winning the midfield battle.

I wonder if it ever occurs to the people who complain about Mauricio allegedly not being able to speak English that we always seem to play better after the half time team talk.  I guess that logic dictates that he speaks better English than Ian Holloway as we fly out of the blocks with a Nathaniel Clyne charge down the wing.  He loses it but keeps chasing and nicks it back off of Jedinak on the edge of the box and gives it to Steven Davis.  His pass to Lallana is flicked to Dani Osvaldo who turns past the wardrobe and fires it past Speroni from the edge of the box for 1-0.  Great stuff for us but crap from Palace for whom the three players mentioned should all have done better.

Having digested the shock of us scoring from open play, we win the ball back almost straight from the Palace kick off and the ball ends up with Dani Osvaldo charging down the left being pursued by five Palace players like five 70 year old groupies trying to get near Mick Jagger.  As he cuts in one of them chops him down and so we have a free kick to the right of centre about 30 yards out.  Up steps Sir Rickie and curls it over the wall, past Speroni and it pings off the near post and nestles in the net, 2-0, game over. Superb free kick.

At this point it looks like we could score as many as we wanted and when we play with a bit of purpose and go forwards quickly, we look like a really good side.  A move starts on the right with Clyne and Sir Rickie and gets worked right across to Shaw whose cross is headed up in the air to the waiting Sir Rickie who shanks his volley wide.  Later television replays prove that the Southampton and England striker clearly said ‘fuck off’ as it bobbled wide.

As you know, I now sit in the family centre area of the Chapel with a load of kids.  There is some drivel spoken in there but not as much as was spoken by the Chuckle Brothers on a regular basis in the Kingsland.  The game goes a bit quiet on the 70 minute mark and a picture of Chamakh comes up on the big screen and my lad (age 9) looks and says “what’s that haircut doing?”.   I’m not really one for diversifying and talking about non-football related matter but he has a point – Chamakh looks like some sort of exotic parrot thing.  It’s kind of a 3 hairstyles in one thing with balding bits at the front, spiky bits on top and long at the back.  Whatever it is it looks fucking ridiculous and just adds to the image of him as a joke player.

It’s sub time for us with JWP coming on for Steve Davis and then Sir Rickie takes a bow to be replaced with J-Rod.  At the other end we are now determined to keep a clean sheet and Morgan and Jose are throwing themselves in front of shots to prevent Palace even getting a sniff of a goal.  We have the ball in the net once more after Dani wins a corner which is worked short and eventually crossed by JWP.  It’s flicked goalwards by Lovren and bounces off the post and J-Rod turns it in to chalk up his second disallowed goal of the season.  Did the lino get it right… yes he did.  Kevin Phillips comes on for them and the charm offensive he’s been on in the local rag had the desired effect and he got a decent reception which of course gave way to chants about shagging his wife as the game went on.  Never understood the anger towards him to be honest.

Do you remember last year when Cameron Jerome came on as a sub for Stoke and scored a fantastic goal against us to nick a point for them?  Well he’s just come on for Palace and they put together a decent move down our right, Moxey crosses it and Jerome smashes it into orbit in really really shit fashion.  It’ll take a while to get out of default ‘Tony Pulis mode’ I guess.  Final whistle, easy as you like, 2-0 and when I eventually get far enough away from St Mary’s to get a signal on my phone, I see that we are 4^th in the league.  Champions League?…. Lets not even go there.

As you would expect in the post match interview, Mauricio was delighted with the clean sheet and both strikers scoring and Holloway was a knob-piece but not without some redeeming comments.  He said that 2-0 flattered us (it didn’t) but he did say that Chamakh dived (he did).  Chamakh himself opened his mouth and did the impossible and made himself look worse.  He said he was touched and the keeper who should have been sent off.  Utter wanker.  You dived you cheating fuck.  You took a decision to have a penalty and a red card instead of a goal and you got seen for what you are, you cheating fuck.  You dived and dragged your foot to kick the keeper.  To be fair, I don’t think anyone else agrees with him but my message to Holloway is that any other striker they have on the books (Gayle, Phillips, Jerome) would be better than this piece of shit.

Palace look nailed on to go down to be honest.  I don’t understand why promoted clubs take on players who are tried and failed at this level – you’re better off using someone who helped get you promoted than to bring in someone like bloody Chamakh who will be on loads of money and is shite.  He couldn’t score any goals playing up front for Arsenal when he probably had 5 clear chances per game so how many is he going to score playing for Palace? 

Is it a sign of how far off the radar Pompey are that their ex-players hardly get any stick these days?  It’s different when you get a prize twat like Matt Taylor but Joel Ward was largely ignored aside from one brief burst at the start of the second half and Jerome Thomas was completely ignored.  The former had a decent game to be fair and I don’t reckon it registered with many that Thomas had played for the League 2 relegation strugglers – it didn’t register with me until I read about him elsewhere afterwards.  I guess we’re not as obsessed as they seem to think.

Saints are improving but we’re not quite there yet and we now appear to have a problem position on the left hand side of midfield.  With Adam Lallana playing on the right, J-Rod, JWP and Steve Davis have all been given a go on the left with none of them really putting their hand up and cementing a spot in the team.  Will Mauricio give Gaston a run there or maybe even try Guly?  I thought Big Vic had a decent game today until the last 10 minutes when he conclusively proved that Hollywood balls out to the wingers are not his thing.  Dani Osvaldo showed what he can bring to the party and it’s good to see Sir Rickie back on the goal trail.  Of course, they can’t play together though…zzzzz.  We are too pedestrian going forward at times against teams who sit back.  We win the ball and break and then the impetus goes out of it while we pass the ball about and we’re then back to square one and the opposition have 10 behind the ball again.  Up the tempo and we look very good and it would be nice to do this from the start and not from half time.

Next up we have Swansea at home and the stupid bastard 1.30pm Sunday kick off.  Enjoy the game if you are going as unless it pisses down, I’ll be at Stoneham Park in Eastleigh doing my bit for Under 10’s grass roots football.  That’s the grass roots football that the FA and the Premier league care so much about but not as much as they care about a few extra quid from foreign TV markets.