Capital One Cup 4th Round - Sunderland 2 Southampton 1

"Don't give it the big one Gus, we let you win"

A midweek away game at Sunderland in the Capital One Cup.  It doesn’t get much more attractive than that.  For Saints it is a chance to get through to a major quarter final and a home tie against Chelsea which, given our current form is nothing to be unduly worried about.  As soon as the Sunderland away draw came out I was rather pessimistic about our chances and this was even before our mate Gus took over from Right wing Paolo.  Though they are a poor side, Sunderland are a Premier League side and on their own patch and we will no doubt rest some players.  The question of course, how many players will we rest.

6.45 and the team news is in – 10 changes, oh dear.  I’d kind of hoped for about 5 but we’ve gone for the full monty.  Superkelv in goal, Chambers, Fox, Jos and Maya in defence, Davis, Corky,  Harrison Reed and Gaston in midfield, J-Rod and Tadanari up front.  As I hear that I think our chances of winning are pretty slim.  A lot will of course depend on the Sunderland line up and the mood darkens as I see that they have a strong, experienced looking side out including O’Shea, Bardsley, Wes Brown and his Mysteriously Orange Head, Colback, Adam Johnson and the poor man’s Emile Heskey in Jozy Altidore.

Saints start well and have the first sniff of goal and Steve Davis fires in a low cross from the right and Lee slides in, gets a touch and it goes wide.  He then has a shot from miles out and smashes it miles over.  We look good for the first 10 minutes and despite having all the first team players, Sunderland look very poor.  They have Jozy Altidore up front who is less of a threat than the Stoke goalkeeper from last week.  He takes aim from the edge of the box and shanks it wide and then steams straight into Superkelv when trying to connect with a corner and looks surprised when it’s given as a foul.

The rest of the first half turns into a complete bore with Harrison Reed showing up well for Saints in a positive way and Tadanari Lee being Sunderland’s main ball winner.  Every time he goes near it, it just bounces off and goes to a Sunderland player.  Adam Johnson finds himself in acres on our left wing and gets in a cross under no pressure and then I notice Danny Fox in his usual position of defending the left hand edge of the penalty area and letting the winger have the rest of the pitch.

As the half draws to a close, a corner of ours is half cleared and ends up with Corky about 30 yards out.  He attacks the box and just as you think he’d going to run into someone he sorts his feet out and pokes a pass to Gaston who just has Mannone to beat as he comes in from the right.  Left foot, first time, over the bar, fucking shit.  There is nothing left in the first half and half time is here and if anyone can get more than 2 minutes of highlights out of it then I’d be amazed. Considering they have a nearly full strength team out, Sunderland are shocking and we should really be in front.

No changes at half time but Sunderland come out with more intent as a move down the left ends with a cross into Altidore who lays it off for Gardiner who should really have done better than shoot straight at Superkelv who blocked with his legs.

J-Rod tries a very speculative long range effort which barely reaches Mannone and then Gaston gets on the ball in midfield, drives forward and then chips a ball into thirty yards of vacant pitch with no Saints player anywhere near it.  What the fuck was that?  My son informs me that Gaston has very good passing stats on FIFA 14 which makes everything alright of course.  What are his stats for hitting aimless shite to no one son?  Looks like he pressed the X button instead of A doesn’t it.  (Xbox joke).  Pressing the right button is Mauricio or maybe Jesus as is reserves night and off comes the truly desperate Tadanari Lee to be replaced with a proper footballer in JWP which will at least get Gaston off of set piece detail.

As JWP settles into the game, Corky gets the wrong side of Colback as he bursts forward and pulls him back to earn an inevitable booking.  Everyone piles into our box and the free kick comes in and lands on the mysteriously orange head of Wes Brown who despite being about six yards out, has no player anywhere near him.  He heads back across and Altidore has a free header from four yards.  Needless to say he couldn’t score and heads it straight at Superkelv who probably should have held it but parries it back out to Bardsley who just about stabs it over the line despite Big Jos’ effort to keep it out.  Scruffy as you like but totally preventable as allowing someone a free header that close to your goal is not really good practice.

So, 1-0 down and what have we got.  To be quite honest we’ve got fuck all as we fail to make much impression going forward.  We do however have a penalty shout as we finally put together a decent move and Reed and Davis combine to free Chambers in the box.  He’s backing towards the goal as the ball gets to him and Colback has hold of his arm and pulls him over.  Such is our form with penalties this season that this is never going to be given and it isn’t, even though it’s a pretty good shout.  We have another half shout as Davis is felled by an untidy challenge from Orange head but this one has no chance at all.

Despite not playing well we are still getting chances due to general Sunderland ineptitude and Mannone smashed a clearance against J-Rod and must have shat himself as it looped back and over his head before dropping wide.

Big Jos manages to get himself booked when he gets penalised to fuck all and lets Lee Mason know he’s done fuck all by having a comedy strop and toe punting the ball up the pitch.  Unlike the last free kick, Craig Gardiner sizes it up for ages, sends Larsson away and then smashes it into Row Z for one which might end up in a Danny Baker ‘Wanky Football’ DVD compilation.  Our performance is being called ‘tame’ by the commentator on the stream on veryjerkystopstart.com which I’m watching.  It’s hard to argue.

We make a substitution which announces some intent as Steve Davis comes off to be replaced by Adam Lallana but it doesn’t really stop the pointless meandering performance we’re putting in.  Mauricio and Jesus then make the 3^rd substitution which I think is significant and Gaston is hooked and replaced by Academy striker Sam Gallagher who comes on for his debut.  We’re one goal down, 10 minutes to go and we remove our international playmaker and replace him with a kid.  To me, no disrespect to Gallagher but it shows that Gaston has been that bad.

Gaston isn’t the only one who’s had better days though.  I thought Adam Johnson was brilliant when he first arrived on the scene before he moved to the Promising Young English Player Career Graveyard at Manchester City.  Here he gets the ball on the left and sets off towards goal and then hoofs it into the crowd when attempting to cross it.  Maybe he saw Altidore in the middle and thought he’d cut out the middle man and just give Saints a goal kick himself.

The Johnson break was a warning that we didn’t heed though and another break down our right sees Foxy covering for our absent central defence and coming across from left back to make an excellent tackle.  Unfortunately it fell to Altidore who simple played it to Seb Larsson who was standing where Foxy had vacated and he drilled it across Superkelv into the far corner.  Game, set and bollocks and Altidore technically has two assists.  It’s not been a good day.

We win a free kick as Gallagher is flattened by Brown.  As we’re 2-0 down and on our way out, Mason decides to let us have this one.  Oh, maybe we’re not out just yet as JWP floats in a cross, Big Jos gets up at the back stick to head it across and Maya Yoshida thumps a header past Mannone to give us a squeak of getting out of jail.  In the event we only have the one further half chance and it falls to JWP whose volley is closer to the moon above the Stadium of Light than the goal.  Full time and to be honest, what a load of shit.

We were rubbish today on the whole and deserved to get beat.  They’ll dress it up in the post match interviews and on the Official website as if we were unlucky or something but we played with urgency for the first 10 minutes and also the last 10 minutes when we were 2-0 down and for the middle period we just let the game meander along giving the initiative to a desperately shite Sunderland side.   Sunderland really were shite and the team we had out there should have done a lot better than that.   I’d say that none of the out of favour, experienced players put their hands up to be selected for the Premier League side.  Maya Yoshida was better than Big Jos but none out of those two, Superkelv, Foxy, Corky or Steve Davis did anything to suggest they’ll be moving up the pecking order soon.  J-Rod looked like he was wondering what he’d done to warrant getting picked for this game.  The better performances came from Calum Chambers and Harrison Reed who both tried to do the right thing all the time which was encouraging.

I’ve left out Gaston Ramirez and Tadanari Lee so far to give them their own paragraph as they were both absolute bollocks.  Lee is just clearly not good enough, in exactly the same way that Mayuka isn’t good enough.  A decent strike to score the 4^th goal in a 4-0 win in the Championship does not make you good enough for playing in the Premier League and he clearly isn’t so why are we bothering with him.  Gaston clearly has the ability but he can’t be arsed to try and adapt to the English game and that’s the biggest crime of all.  It can’t be easy playing in games like this when you’re an international footballer but you’ve got to try.  After the first 20 minutes he disappeared, re-appearing only to miss our easiest chance which a player of his ability should bury and appearing again to be substituted to be replaced by an 18 year old on his debut when we were only 1-0 down.  The only question remaining about Gaston is how much of a loss we’re prepared to take to sell him.  He may turn things around and make a contribution as stranger things have happened – look at the example of Punch last season – but I reckon he’ll be gone, probably on loan to somewhere in Italy in January.

There are a few different ways of looking at the selection issue.  Maybe Mauricio feels that we don’t have the strength in depth and that he only has 14 players he trusts in the league.   Even if we did only use last weeks starting XI plus Dani, Corky and Steve Davis, it’s going to take a bigger miracle than England winning the World Cup in 2014 for us to even finish in the Top 4.  It’s the half arsed approach that annoys me – for example, if we’re going to give kids a game then why play older players who we all know aren’t good enough like Tadanari Lee.  Why not play Sam Gallagher from the start and why play Fox – we all know what he can and can’t do – why not give Matt Targett a game.  If on the other hand, you’re serious about winning the game then play first team players where we do have decent cover.  For example, we know that Corky is a decent Premier League player so why not play one of Morgan or Big Vic tonight.  If Osvaldo is fit, why not play one of him and Sir Rickie? 

My overriding feeling is one of an opportunity missed. I was a 10 year old at Wembley in 1979 when we got to the League Cup Final and played Cloughie’s Nottingham Forest.  We lost but it was a major final and it still is today despite the efforts of many Premier League clubs including ourselves.  Saints have had finals in 1976, 1979 and 2003... so three major finals since 1901.  We’re not exactly spoilt are we?  We all had a great time at the JPT final but the League Cup is better and you qualify for Europe through it which is one of our stated aims.  I’m sure everyone has their opinion about the selection issue today but to me, risking a couple of players would have got us past a pretty woeful Sunderland side and into the last 8 with a quarter final at home.  Unless we draw the Skates, I will not be getting too excited about the FA Cup either.

As it write it’s nice to have a positive to distract from the memory of last night in that it’s just been announced that J-Rod and Adam Lallana have joined Sir Rickie in the England squad.  Fair play to the lads and it’s great recognition for the club.  I have to say that I’m very surprised that J-Rod has been called up and equally surprised that Nathaniel Clyne hasn’t been when out of all the Saints English players, he’d be the one most likely to be in the starting Xi in my opinion, given the shite options available at right back.  It’s also interesting that Hodgson has kept all the players he usually has so none of the dross like Milner, Johnson, Smalling and Cleverley have been left out so it’s a big squad but over two friendlies against Chile and Germany, one would hope that all the Saints boys get game time.  Well done boys.

England is for another day though as on Saturday we have a ‘must win’ game against Hull who judging by their performance at Spurs a few weeks back, will try and park the bus.  They’ve got a decent number of points already this season and are comfortably in mid table but we of course, should win.  The big boys will be back and hopefully by 5pm Saturday, the Capital One Cup will be but a faded bad memory.