Ramires thanks God that Referee's Can't See Him.
I guess there could be a change of manager but if anywhere
it will be at Tottenham who are freash from getting humped 6-0 at Manchester City Chelsea once up on a time
when he reminded me of a small boy who had been given a very large and
expensive trainset to play with. When
the trainset began to malfunction he threw his toys out and was sent on his
way. Whenever someone or something is
about to leave Tottenham, they are of course going to take whatever the
equivalent is from Southampton so I’ve been reading headlines of Pochettino to
replace AVB and Shaw to follow to fill Bale Gap. I’ve been reading these headlines about a
second before I click the “Ignore this publication” button on my Saints Newsnow
filter. In other news, Dani Osvaldo is
off to every Italian club, J-Rod and Lallana are off to Liverpool, Jose Fonte
is off to Turkey
still and King Artur is off to Strictly Come Dancing.
Jose Mourinho has this record that he’s never lost at home
as Chelsea manager which is a decent achievement as it stretches over about 3
seasons. He’s never played at home to us
though has he... ha ha? Chelsea are above us in the league as you’d expect but
in truth, they’ve been a bit hot and cold.
In their last home game they needed a shockingly awarded last minute
penalty to scrape a point against West Brom before thumping West Ham 3-0 at
Upton Park before losing dismally 1-0 to Basle in Europe . Which Chelsea
will turn up today? Hopefully the poor
one.
The team news shows that Samuel Eto’o is out for Chelsea but
his replacement is Fernando Torres who so far this season has looked like a
footballer, unlike the last 2 years.
Ashley Cole is out of favour for being a horrible little shtt and so
Azpilicueta starts at left back despite being a right back who is dodgy anyway. Frank Lampard is rested which is what happens
occasionally when you’re 43.
Saints are “as you were” with Dejan Lovren back in place of
Big Jos. Oh, hang on, Sir Rickie is on
the bench and Dani Osvaldo is starting.
I know that the big man has not been in the best of form but what on
earth has Osvaldo done in his appearances off the bench to warrant a starting
place? The bench rather pointlessly
includes two centre backs in Yoshida and Hooiveld and a right back in
Chambers. You could argue that Yoshida
covers every back 4 position so why not have Gaston or Sam Gallagher on there
as an extra attacking option?
Saints kick off and work the ball back to Nathaniel Clyne
whose aerial pass finds new Saints signing Essien, who volleys an inch perfect
through ball to J-Rod who shoots past Cech with his first touch to put us 1-0
up after 13 seconds. It’s quite mad and
no one can really believe it, least of all Michael Essien who of course, is not
a Saints player but a very embarrassed looking Chelsea one. It has echoes of Man United away last season
when once again it was Jay who profited from some abysmal defending in the
first few seconds. What with Begovic and
his 100 yard hoof, King Artur and his amazing dancing feet and now this – we’ve
certainly been involved in some bizarre goals the last few weeks.
Predictably Chelsea steam into us and win a corner which
Cahill wins far too easily but his header is well off target. He got himself free, partly due to our
aversion to marking players at corners and partly because they took it quickly
when we weren’t concentrating. Also not
concentrating is the referee Michael Oliver.
I know players shouldn’t rage at the ref but it’s easy to see why they
do when they make two decisions in quick succession that are completely
inconsistent. Firstly Shaw gets a run on
Ivanovic and he’s past him on the outside.
It’s quick player against slower player and the quicker player is in
front until Ivanovic barges him over – play on – fuck off! After regaining possession Ivanovic sends
Ramires away down the right and Big Vic bundles him over – free kick – fuck off
again! No problem with Big Vic being
penalised in isolation as it was a foul but to not give the one against Shaw
just makes it looks like he’s being deliberately bent.
It’s fairly even on the chances front as King Artur saves an
Oscar shot after it is worked back to him after a Chelsea corner and the Saints
break and Lovren is fouled by Ramires.
JWP lines up the free kick but it’s a bit too far out and he narrowly
misses the near top corner. Chelsea are
very dangerous when they reach the edge of our box though through the dancing
feet of Mata and Hazard and one move ends with Mata being caught narrowly
offside but his shot was blocked anyway by the Starjumping King of Poland.
On the half hour Michael Essien (who is a complete shadow of
what he was a few years ago) knocks the ball past Morgan and goes over. The ref gives us a free kick and books him
but it’s not until later that you see why as replays show there was about six
foot of distance between Morgan and Essien’s pathetic dive. The biggest laugh would have been if we’d
scored from it but JWP’s delivery was poor and so Essien was saved from further
ridicule.
We are playing well on the break though and a slick move
sees Pirate Pete send JWP away on the right and his intelligent pull-back finds
Lallana 20 yards out but the old Achilles heel resurfaces as he works it well
onto his right foot and then shanks it wide in really crap fashion.
Torres is causing us problems with his running of the
channels and he gets away from Jose to float a cross onto Oscar’s head but it’s
straight at the King who grasps it easily enough. Oscar is in the news a minute or so later as
he manages to kick his own leg and injure himself which is a neat trick and he
hobbles off to be replaced by Lampard.
We’re hanging on a bit for half time now and Chelsea come closest as
Hazard and Mata combine before the latter crosses onto Torres’ head but King
Artur gets across to superbly save the header before Shaw clears.
Overall it’s been a fairly even half but I’m not overly
confident about us being able to defend for another 50 minutes and come away
with a win. There’s not enough going on
up front with our Rock ‘n’ Roll Pirate producing the square root of fuck all
and J-Rod and Adam not getting close enough to him to offer much assistance.
As the second half was about to start, Jose Mourinho took
off our best player when he replaced Essien with Demba Ba, a midfielder for a
striker and a new set of problems for Saints.
Jose had also obviously told his players to start leaving the foot in,
probably safe in the knowledge that the referee would do bugger all about it.
And then, on 54 minutes, the roof falls in. Clyne fouls Torres which gives Lampard a free
kick from 35 yards out to the left of centre.
His free kick is perfectly placed for the far top corner but King Artur
sees it all the way and turns it over.
From the resulting corner, Lampard finds Ivanovic who has lost Big Vic
and heads down and Ba gets a foot to it and diverts it onto the post as Boruc
dives across. Unfortunately for us, the
ball pings off the post back into the middle where Cahill gets his head on it
and nods it gently into the net.
Bollocks. In fact, it’s double
bollocks as Artur is signalling to the bench with his one good remaining arm
and he’s going to have to come off with Gazza coming on to replace him. The smell is that of the travelling Saints
fans shitting themselves.
A few minutes later and Chelsea win another corner and you
know what’s coming. Mata’s kick is half
cleared and Lampard sprays it back out to Mata who curls in a cross allowing
John Terry to lose J-Rod and flick a superb header into the far top corner of
the net giving Gazza no chance at all and so his first touch is to pick the
ball out of the net. On both corners,
our marking has been shambolic and so we go from 1-0 up to 2-1 down in five
minutes because we can’t stay with runners and defend corners properly.
Mauricio makes another sub as JWP is replaced with Steven
Davis before Morgan is booked for nothing much and manages to injure himself
with Sir Rickie taking his place. As
Morgan leaves the pitch, J-Rod manages to get booked for dissent, presumably
for comparing Ramires’ many fouls to Morgan’s and questioning where the
consistency was.
Though we had a few effort on goal in the next 15 minutes,
Chelsea look the much more likely to score.
Demba Ba gets put clean through by Mata and hits it across goal and though
it beats Gazza, it beats the far post.
Our near things (I say near things but we didn’t trouble Cech at all)
include Sir Rickie curling over a lovely cross from the left which just evaded
our Rock ‘n’ Roll Pirate and Lallana and then Sir Rickie again playing a great
ball to Clyne whose cross was hooked just wide by the Pirate. In fact, it was Pirate time as he managed to
do more between 85 and 90 than he’d done between 0 and 85 as he got booked for
a really shit tackle and then dropped deep before smashing our last shot over
the bar.
Our failure to create much is brought into sharp focus as
the game ticked down and Ramires got down our left and fired in a low
cross. Demba Ba lost Dejan who seemed to
almost give up on it and deflected the ball in at the near post whilst Gazza
kind of did nothing before falling down like a tree after Ba had started his
celebration. I don’t think this goal is
his fault either but he certainly didn’t do very much to prevent it. 3-1 and bollocks though in all honesty, I
wasn’t even that disappointed at the 3rd goal going in as the game
had gone and we weren’t going to score.
The only surprise is that the referee blew the final whistle before he
allowed Ramires to hoof another player up in the air.
Though it may seem like it, I’m not trying to blame the
referee for us losing – in fact he got some key decisions right including the
Essien dive. Mourinho obviously
implemented two changes at half time, one was to introduce Demba Ba and the
other was to instruct his players in midfield to leave a foot in. There is nothing wrong with this whatsoever
but what you need as the away side is for the referee to not let them get away
with it which he totally failed to do.
Forgetting the ref for a second, their extra attacker restricted us from
getting forward from the back but we had the extra man in midfield (at least
until Morgan went off) and we should have capitalised on that by retaining the
ball better. I feel that Mauricio got a
couple of things wrong today – Sir Rickie should have started instead of
Osvaldo who predictably didn’t do a great deal and Corky should have come on
for JWP when we were beginning to lose our grip in midfield as he would have
done more for our ball retention than Steve Davis though of course, the manager
wasn’t to know that Morgan was going to pick up a knock a few minutes
later. Even when Morgan did get injured,
you could have argued for Corky coming on but we were 2-1 at that point and
there would be some questioning your sanity if you brought Corky on when you
needed a goal.
Chelsea’s strength off the bench did for us today and
therein lies the difference between clubs like them and clubs like us. If you compare like for like from the benches
today, you get the picture...
Ashley Cole (100 odd England Caps and a phone up his arse)
vs Chambers (England U19),
Lampard (100+ England caps) vs SteveDavis,
Mikel (rested today but a regular starter) vs Cork,
Schwarzer (100+ Australia Caps) vs Gazza (Only proven in
League 2)
Ba v Sir Rickie (OK, this one is pretty level)
Willian/Schurrle v Big Jos/Maya (about £50million of
attacking options vs 2 average centre backs)
So, they had a lot more options than us and when you have a
good manager like Mourinho, he will know how to use these options at any given
time. Mourinho predictably revelled it
the turnaround whilst Mauricio seemed relaxed with the fact that Chelsea are a
very good side and quite a lot went against us today that we had no control
over.
It of course is no disgrace to lose to Chelsea at Stamford
Bridge because usually everyone does and it shows us where we need to get to as
we dropped to 7th place in the league. More importantly, it turns out we've picked
up our first serious injury of the season in a position that we have no
adequate cover in with King Artur being ruled out with a fractured hand for 6
weeks. Also, it’s the first time we've had another league game within 4 days so there’s little time for smaller
niggles to clear up so it’s unlikely that Morgan will recover or even that Kelvin
Davis to get fit enough to give us another option in goal. So, against Villa on Wednesday, I expect to
see Gazza in goal and Steve Davis taking Morgan’s place – if it was down to me
I’d slot Corky in there but I can’t see it.
I’d also like to see Sir Rickie back in the team and Gaston at least on
the bench to give us the creativity that we lack at times. Villa really are nothing special and it’s the
sort of game we've been winning this season and this is a very important one,
especially as we have Manchester City the game after.
So, the dream scenario of beating Chelsea and Arsenal in
their own back yards and being top of the league didn't quite happen so it’s
now down to the grind of taking each game as it comes, not that it was ever
anything different to be honest. So we
lost these two very difficult games – well, all the positive media coverage
we’ve been getting over the set up of the club has shown us that the processes
are in place and the club will continue to move forwards and that should be a
comfort to anyone who can remember a time in the not too distant past when we
just hurtled backwards.
More importantly, I now have to take a days-worth of
mindless knowledge-free abuse from my Co-worker, Chelseawanker!
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