A Dickhead, Saturday.
Today we welcome Fulham to St Mary’s as we attempt to
maintain our Champions League places bothering start to the season. For every plaudit you read about us, there
is also an article or comment which finds us irritating and how dare we
threaten the status quo of the past 10 years or so. Maybe the bubble will burst this afternoon
with the visit of a club who have lost the one thing that made them
interesting, the statue of Michael Jackson.
I don’t know if they’ve actually taken it down yet, nor if the rumours
that they’re considering a statue of Stuart Hall as a replacement.
Statues aside though, Fulham are pretty boring, or at least
I thought so until I saw the highlights of their win at Palace last Monday with
two brilliant goals by Kasami who I don’t know much about, and Sidwell, who I
know is a Championship player at best.
Of course they have Dimitar Berbatov who must wake up every day, look at
himself in the mirror and tell himself he is the best thing ever. Then he gets in his expensive car and drives
past Stamford Bridge
On paper and with my limited knowledge of them, the Fulham
attack looks threatening with Berbatov and Darren Bent up front, Kasami and
Ruiz on the wings and Scott Parker in central midfield. Those decent players are offset by Sidwell
and the defence which is shorn of Hangeland who is decent. I’ve never heard of Amorebieta but I’ve heard
about Senderos who has been shit for years.
Unless he’s improved then he’s a big clumsy donkey and another one of
those players who is so bad that it’s staggering that they get a game in the
Premier League. In goal they have
Stekelenberg who is the current Dutch first choice keeper. They’ve won their last two matches and that’s
enough for some to think they’ll beat us today.
If Mark Lawrenson says it then it must be true because he’s right up
there with Garth Crooks in the genius stakes.
The fact is that they had a turgid 1-0 home win against Stoke and a
decent win against one of the worst sides in Premier League history so there’s
nothing for us to fear here.
It’s been a quiet week for Saints after our lucky pinching
of a point (BBC version) at Old Trafford last week with just the usual Shaw to Chelsea , Shaw to United,
Osvaldo to Juventus crap to put up with.
Mauricio has made a couple of changes with Sir Rickie coming back in for
the injured Dani Osvaldo and there is a place for JWP who has come in for the
injured Steven Davis. Notably, the bench
includes Tadanari Lee who scored another couple of goals for the Under 21s in
the week. With 5 minutes to go until
kick off, I’m pondering the fact that I have my son who is 9 next to me on one
side and a kid of about 10 on the other side who is there with his dad. There are kids in front of me as well and as
a result, I can no longer swear out loud, even when Berbatov gets it. This isn’t going to be easy.
Away we go and bloody hell, we’re all over them and Fulham
are the proverbial rabbits in the headlights.
Fulham obviously want to ease their way into the game but that’s not
happening. Riether knocks it back to the
keeper who plays it to Senderos who takes a touch, tries to turn with the speed
of an oil tanker and it robbed by Lallana who cuts in and sees his cross
parried out by Stekelenberg to Morgan who really should score but his
sidefooted effort is past the keeper but blocked by Richardson in front of the
goal.
It’s not just the players who you know are shit who can’t
handle the pressure. Scott Parker then
gets caught in possession, once again by Lallana and the ball is eventually
worked to Clyne who gets a cross in and Sir Rickie, under pressure from
Senderos manages to chest it down and half hit a shot straight at Stekelenberg.
Our next chance comes from a crap ball from JWP which goes
staright to Sidwell who like the Championship player that he is, gets
immediately dispossessed by J-Rod and via Shaw, Morgan and Clyne the ball finds
itself with Big Vic who rumbles forward and drills a left footed effort just
wide of the post as the defenders all shat themselves and got out of the
way. Whilst all this is happening,
Fulham are producing exactly nothing of any note at all.
On 20 minutes we take possibly the most deserved lead ever
as JWP hoists over a corner, J-Rod flicks on and Sir Rickie powers it into the
top corner with his head at the back post, totally unmarked. The comedy aspect of the goal is not apparent
until the later replays how you that Scott Parker made Berbatov mark Sir Rickie
and virtually placed him in front of the man he was supposed to mark. He didn't actually move as Sir Rickie took
two steps backwards and headed in. A
case of ‘Keep Calm and Let Rickie Score’.
From the kick off, Berbatov gets a touch and immediately
loses it to Luke Shaw who threads it to J-Rod who is just in our half. Sidwell lunges in like the Championship
player that he is and J-Rod spins and is away.
Senderos comes to meet him and J-Rod just runs past him, cuts inside
Amorebieta and then dribbles a shot at the far post which Stekelenberg tips
wide. It’s J-Rod in a nutshell –
brilliant approach play and a shite finish – just leather the fucking thing son!!!
He’s at it again a minute later as he starts a move by
feeding Lallana and Shaw’s eventual cross is almost apologetically headed wide
by J-Rod like he had no confidence whatsoever that he’d score. More great football though. Something strange then happened at the other
end as King Artur, who had been leaning up against the post, smoking a fag and
swigging from a bottle of vodka, actually touched the ball as he claimed a
cross, one handed, without spilling a drop.
This is as close to a ‘spell’ as Fulham have had as the ball
gets fed to Berbatov who slips over and loses the ball to Shaw. He responds by having a little dive and
looking longingly at the ref. I have
been told by my son that I swore at this point.
So Berbatov, they kept calm and passed it to you Berba and what did you
do? You fell over, fucked it up and had
a dive, you utter cock.
Normal service was resumed after Fulham’s foray into our
half and Morgan gave it to Sir Rickie on the left who rumbled forward and
skimmed a shot past the keeper and saw it ping away off the far post. JWP returns it and Fulham have yet again
decided that it’s a good idea to let Sir Rickie have a free header at the back
post. This time it’s parried out by the
keeper and Shaw quest to score his first league goal goes on as his effort
flicks off of Riether and wide.
A second goal was needed and it duly arrived as Adam Lallana
hit a deep cross from the left to Sir Rickie at the back stick again and he
looped his header across to the lurking J-Rod who couldn’t help but head it
into the net, crashing into the post for his troubles. 2-0 and easy as taking the ball off a prima
donna Bulgarian.
The second half sees a change for Fulahm but it’s a straight
swap at right back and the new guy Aaron Hughes immediately gets roasted by
Shaw but Sir Rickie gets caught in two mind as the ball comes back to him and
shins it our for a goal kick. It’s very
odd, there are about 55 minutes gone but the game is done. Fulham appear to have no ambition aside from
keeping the score down and are playing like a team at 0-0. Saints seem to sense this and are not exactly
busting a gut to score a third and go into Olé mode, stringing 20 odd passes
together trying to get Fulham to come out a bit, which they don’t.
One player who is still trying to inject a bit of urgency
for Fulham is Berbatov….only kidding… Scott Parker who is the very
personification of optimistic as he runs straight into Big Vic with the ball
and ends up without the ball and in a heap on the ground. There soon followed a moment to get excited
about as JWP put in yet another excellent cross and J-Rod got airborne to
scissor volley a shot just past the post.
Now that was a brilliant effort struck with real conviction.
It all gets slightly sloppy for the remainder of the game
but there is an amusing incident where Lovren slid in to deny Amorebieta a run
on goal and he responded, dare I say it, by punching Dejan in the arse. Amorebieta is from Venezuela so maybe that
kind of thing is acceptable there. The
most bizarre incident at St.Mary’s since Punch went off for a shite. There are substitutions as Bent is put out of
his misery and Guly got a run out in place of J-Rod for the last 10 and we have
a chuckle at the stadium announcer as he announces that Kaciniklic is coming on
for Ruiz.
The final action of the game is Adam Lallana slaloming on
from the right before trying a ridiculous effort with the outside of his right
boot which deflected massively off of Hughes and spooned just over the
bar. There was barely time to take the
corner and that was that.
All over and up the league we go, bloody hell, we’re 3rd. The second half was boring to be honest but
the day I complain about the manner of an easy win is not here yet. It’s worth noting that any 2nd
half showing would have paled in comparision to the magnificent first half
showing. It appears we’re not
exclusively a 2nd half team after all.
Mauricio took the chance to big up Sir Rickie’s England
chances. He was great today but I have a
9 year old centre half sat next to me in the family centre who would have given
him a harder game than Senderos. He did
prove again though why he should be the starter if we’re only playing one up
top. It was also a bit of a reminder
that we have a bit of squad depth now and the two who dropped out injured (Dani
and Steve Davis) will have seen Sir Rickie and JWP come in and put in
performances that makes them near on undroppable for next week.
On the way home I listened to Stan Collymore’s show on
talkSHITE and he opened up with Clyne, Lallana and Rodriguez for England and
highlighted the elitism that goes on with for example, Man United’s Smalling
getting picked despite being nowhere near as good at Clyne. All great stuff. On the other side of the coin, you have the
BBC which of course, had Man United’s home win against Stoke as their main
story and then they had it as their main game on Match of the Day.
We truly had stand-out performances all over the park
today. The centre halves and goalkeeper
will never have an easier game but Clyne and Shaw were a menace on the flanks
and Big Vic and Morgan totally outshone Parker and Sidwell which enabled JWP,
Lallana and Rodriguez to get on the ball and do damage. I thought the two in the centre of midfield
were immense today but if you look at our England wannabe list, then Lallana
and Clyne really should be in the squad now.
J-Rod was also superb today. His
finishing absolutely does my head in at times but it’s all there other than
that. I’ve seen comments saying JWP is
the new Beckham – not quite sure about that yet but he’s going to be making
himself impossible to leave out of this Saints line-up with the way he’s
playing. His set piece delivery is a
massive plus from last season when we were complete shite in this area with
Gaston usually hitting corners to an imaginary, 20 feet tall centre forward.
As for Fulham, well they were truly woefully shite. If we’d needed to win 6-0 then we would have
done. It’s all very well Jol taking
solace in the fact that they drew the second half but we were in exhibition
mode for most of it. The players that I
suspected might be bad were indeed worse than that. Sidwell, a Championship player at best, was a
wafer thin presence in midfield who continually allowed players to run past him
and the back 4 may as well not have been there and Senderos frequently
wasn’t. A terrible, terrible footballer
and I saw better centre halves in League 1 a couple of years back. I was a bit worried about the front 4 but
Kasami, Ruiz and Bent barely touched the ball and Berbatov’s attitude was
beyond pathetic. Keep Calm I’m on well
over £50 grand a week. Value for money
on today’s performance? A final word on
Fulham for Maarten Stekelenberg who must feel like sacking his agent. At least Julio Cesar earned a fortune for his
one season at QPR.
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