Jos: Pick that one out!
Gazza: I Can't Believe I'm this far off my line.
Spurs at home. I hate
Spurs. Delusions of grandeur and media
darlings and until last week, Andre Villas-Boas. The much maligned Daniel Levy has done
English football a favour by getting rid of him and hopefully no one else on
these shores will touch him. The caretaker
they have in charge is Tim Sherwood who I always thought was a decent player
especially in the mid to late 90s when in his pomp at Blackburn
and Spurs.
The Saints news of the week is that The Pirate has been
charged with being a naughty boy in the scuffle at St James’ Park last week. Violent conduct is the charge which usually
carries a mandatory 3 match ban. It
could have been worse as stealing treasure usually gets you ten matches and
thirty lashes. Of all the players and
staff who were on the bench when it all kicked off, if you had to pick one to
get involved it would have been The Pirate. I’m pre-judging it a bit here as he may be
entirely innocent. I very much doubt it
tough.
He’s not even on the bench today which is a shame because he
was very good in the last home game and Spurs feature Erik Lamela who the Pirate
is widely reported to have chinned when they were team mates at Roma. Sherwood has gone for a very attacking side as
befits a man with a ‘shit or bust’ attitude as he’s unlikely to get the job. He’s picked two strikers including Adebayor
who can be anything between brilliant and an absolute waste of space. Rumour has it that AVB refused to pick him and
his stubbornness on this issue (along with 5-0 and 6-0 defeats no doubt) contributed to
his downfall. Worryingly, Spurs have
loads of good attacking players today and our defence is one again decidedly
makeshift with the Timebomb Gazzaniga in goal, Big Jos once again in the centre
but this time it’s really scary as Luke Shaw is missing meaning with have the
Jos-Fox left sided defence combination which is always shockingly bad. Elsewhere, JWP drops to the bench with Morgan
returning and Sir Rickie is back in up front in place of the absent Pirate.
Spurs started confidently and were knocking the ball around
in midfield quite well as you’d expect. The first we get it we boom it forwards to Sir
Rickie and Dawson climbs all over him to give us a free kick. It’s from about 35 yards and Lloris has the
sun in his eyes but Sir Rickie’s effort is too close to him and he saves it
easily enough.
Danny Fox has started the game pretty well and finds himself
with an opportunity to burst forward which he does well, making 40 yards before
feeding inside to Adam Lallana who spin turns away from a clumsy looking
Chiriches before hitting a right foot shot past Lloris and in off the post. The man is on fire at the moment and a great
start for us.
We’ve settled well now and the pressing game is working and
Spurs aren’t troubling us at all going forward. We’re bothering them though as Sir Rickie
nicks the ball off of Rose on the left, feeds inside to Lallana who chooses
exactly the right option and weight of pass to find J-Rod on the edge of the
box with a free shot which he curls over the bar with just the keeper to beat. Bad, bad, miss. A minute later, Adebayor starts a move by
galloping forward with the ball out of his half. He seems to overhit the ball out to the wing
but Soldado keeps it in and crosses. Adebayor
runs in between Foxy and Big Jos, neither of whom go with him and volleys into
the net from about 4 yards out with Gazza flailing about on the line. It’s four yards out for fucks sake and the
cross has travelled all the way from the touchline. I don’t actually blame the defenders too much
as they’d have been quite within their rights to expect the keeper to catch it,
punch it, even flap it away but to stand on the line and do fuck all is
criminal.
So one Spurs attack and one goal. To be honest, there wasn’t a lot else to
report in the first half aside from Sir Rickie clattering Dembele and
Sigurdsson hacking Steve Davis over as he started a Saints break which received
a deserved booking. Going forward we had
some decent play up the right wing involving Chambers but the ball ran out
before he could fire it across.
Half time and I’m annoyed. I’m annoyed that we gifted them an easy goal
when it should have been 2-0 and I’m annoyed with someone in the crowd in the
Family Centre. The usual Dad and Son are
not next to us today – instead it’s a different kid and his mum. Mum has no interest in football whatsoever so
it obviously press-ganged into it and has no idea what behaviour from her 9/10
year old is acceptable at football and what is fucking annoying. Continually bouncing up and down on your chair
is annoying, continually looking behind you is annoying, continually talking
shite about anything but the game you are watching is also annoying. Unlike with the Chuckle Brothers in days gone
by, I don’t feel I can tell this kid to shut the fuck up and the mum is on her phone
so I can’t say anything to her either. I
know you have to expect a bit of this when you’re sat in the kids section but I
like to think that I guide my own kid as to what’s acceptable and what isn’t.
Anyway, we’re off for the second half with the first
incident being Dembele off and a player I’ve never heard of called Bentaleb on.
We seem to have gone into ‘kick it
aimlessly’ mode and Spurs look more threatening than they did all first half
when once again, Soldado finds space on the left and passes it back to Rose on
the edge of the penalty area. A quick
1-2 with Eriksen and Rose gets to the line and fires it across though. Like at Newcastle
though, there’s no danger as Big Jos is there. Having played the airshot with his left foot
last week to gift Newcastle
their goal, this week he saves the opposition the bother, right foot, own goal,
fuck off! Every will of course say it’s
unlucky and one of those things when in fact it’s lead-footed, clumsy shit. Where was Gazza? Same place he always is when a cross comes
over, on his goal line doing nothing.
On the hour mark and quite unexpectedly, we equalize as a
decent move gets better with a lovely defence splitter from Corky which sends Lallana in behind the defence but running to the right corner. Lloris has come half way out for reasons only
known to himself to Adam switches it infield to Sir Rickie who rolls it calmly
into the empty net from the edge of the box.
Lloris proves that we don’t have a monopoly on dodgy keepers and as the
ball hits the net he produces to usual sign of the player who has just made a
cock of himself and appeals for offside.
Spurs take of a player who has been shite in Lamela and
replace him with Chadli and Saints take off Corky who along with Lallana has
been our best player and replace him with JWP.
Immediately, a ball is played from the Spurs right wing, in behind Big Jos
to Adebayor who is through on goal. Gazza
should be first to the ball but of course he doesn’t move until late and
Adebayor gets the shot away. In the end Gazza makes a decent save and deflects
it wide but it should never have come to that.
We then let in a goal that I can honestly say – if my Under
10 team let in goal like this I’d have gone mental at them. However, the fact is that they wouldn’t have
allowed a throw in to go into a forward who laid it off, got it back, bundled
past a powder puff challenge and smashed it in the net. Adebayor’s
goal and good for him. Guess Who King
Powder Puff was? Yep, he’s big and Dutch
and out of his depth. The description of this goal has been written
from watching a TV replay. All I saw of
it in real time was Adebayor sticking it in the net because the stupid little
shit next to me was shouting complete bollocks at someone about 10 rows back
and I got a distracted by the little fucktard. When my own son asked me about the goal I gave
it the “I don’t really know mate…. I WAS DISTRACTED”. Fucktard’s mum heard that and had a quick word
with him. I am a very bad man.
In the next five minutes Spurs should have put the game out
of sight. First Soldado puts one
wastefully wide after Jos got caught out of position and the covering Dejan
messed up a clearing header. Then
Soldado hit the side netting after more shit defending down our left and then
Chadli curled on just wide from the edge of the box after Adebayor had easily
got the better of Big Jos on the left and squared it.
It’s a miracle it’s still only 3-2 and Mauricio tries to get
this substitution right and brings on Gaston on for Steve Davis. After his usual trick of getting caught with the ball a couple of times, Gaston starts to
contribute and a lovely run and pass puts Lallana through but Lloris is quickly
off his line to smother the shot. With
10 to go it’s last throw of the dice time as Foxy is shot and replaced with Sam
Gallagher meaning Chambers at left back and JWP on the right.
Big Sam looks a bit of a handful at 6 foot 4 and he latches
onto a Lallana pass in the inside right channel before drilling a shot which
Lloris saves well. The 90 minutes are up
and we get the opportunity to boo Defoe for a bit as he comes on for Soldado. It’s getting bloody frustrating as the
timewasting tactics get stupid and then Gaston’s free kick into the box is
flapped by Lloris but no one can get a decisive touch on it when it lands.
We have one final chance as a JWP corner is again
flap-punched away by Lloris but it comes too fast to Sir Rickie on the edge of
the box who can only smash it into the ground and over the bar. Bollocks, another home defeat.
It’s all very well rolling out the clichés of “all stick
together” and “keep doing what we’re
doing” and “keep working hard” and “believe in our selves” and all that. I agree, all that has to happen and it will
happen and the chances are that it will turn around but the bottom line is that
it won’t until we get our important players fit again. It really is that simple especially in the
defence. The facts are that Big Jos is
worse than Jose, Fox isn’t on the same planet as Shaw and as for Gazza, as I’ve
said before, an empty jersey tied to the fucking cross bar would do as much as
he does. He’s scared of the fucking ball
– end of. You may be able to cater with
one stand-in but two makes it difficult and three makes it downright
impossible. The stand-in who doesn’t
weaken the team is of course Calum Chambers who was excellent again at right
back. He’s not as good as Nathaniel
Clyne yet but it’s not a catastrophic weakening of the team like it is with the
other three.
Mauricio deserved some criticism for today as well it has to
be said. If you give him the fact that
Fonte is carrying a knock then you have to wonder why the fuck Jack Cork was
taken off at 2-2. On the face of it,
it’s a stupid substitution and it cost us the game. Within seconds we were 3-2 down and for the
next 10 minutes we were nowhere as Spurs carved out about five chances and it
was only due to their shit finishing that we weren’t looking at being 4-2 or
5-2 behind. If they’d got any on target
they would have scored because of who we had in goal. Dejan Lovren was like a one man defence at
times but sooner or later he’s going to get overrun as he can’t cover for Foxy
and Big Jos and do his own job. To be
fair, it does Jos no favours when Foxy is left back as he’s never in the right
position so Jos gets dragged elsewhere as well. Corky was a vital part of that cover for the defence and
removing him just threw the game away. If
you remove the screen in front of the defence then it stands to reason that the
defence will have to deal with more and as our defence is now officially a
fucking nightmare, removing Corky was suicide.
If Mauricio felt for some reason that he had to bring JWP on then today,
J-Rod should have been removed as he was fucking useless from the first whistle
to the last. I have no problem with him
bringing Gaston on for Davis
as we needed to be a bit more creative and bringing on Gallagher for Fox was a
last throw of the dice. It also showed
though that he thought that playing Chambo on the wrong side and JWP at right
back was a better option than leaving Foxy on.
I’m interested in Cody Cropper who has been in the USA
international squad. I’m interested
because even though I’ve never seen him play, he has to be better than
Gazzaniga. If he’s not then he should be
sold immediately. Bad goalkeepers are
like a disease eating away at the foundations of a house in that they undermine
everything. You don’t like to be too
harsh on a young player but for fucks sake!
In order of seniority, our keepers should be Boruc, Davis, Cropper, A
Wireframe Man used for free kick practice, An empty jersey tied to the
crossbar, A Cone, Gazzaniga. You wouldn’t
think it from reading this but I don’t usually pan individual players but there
are some games when you just can't help it.
Others were poor today as well – Sir Rickie got a goal which
will hopefully do wonders for his confidence but other than that he was very
poor and as mentioned, J-Rod did nothing.
Adam Lallana was outstanding and I thought Calum Chambers, Dejan Lovren
and Jack Cork put in decent shifts.
Everyone else seemed flat though it must be hard to run your bollocks
off and then see shite goals being conceded due to complete ineptitude by
players who are never going to learn and improve (Foxy and Big Jos) or need to
develop in a less rarified environment than the Premier League (Gazza).
We lost today to a Spurs side who we really should have
beaten. They really weren’t that great
but they didn’t have to be. The key
moment of the game was at 1-0 when J-Rod shat his effort over the bar when it
was easier to score. 2-0 and in view of
Spurs recent thumpings, their heads might have gone down and we would have
strolled it. Two minutes later it was 1-1 from Spurs first attack. Another key moment was getting back to 2-2
and Mauricio hitting the Cork
suicide button. Mauricio made a
Christmas joke in his interview saying we gifted them goals but if the
interviewer had had any bollocks he’s have pointed out that taking Cork off was
the biggest gift of the lot.
Our next three games see us take on Cardiff
and Everton away and then Chelsea
at home. In my opinion we have to
prioritise the Cardiff
game, a) because it’s the next one and b) because it’s the most winnable on
paper. If Jose Fonte is at all fit, I want to see him starting the Cardiff game and I assume
Luke Shaw will be over his latest illness. I don’t get the Fonte thing – I could
understand having a half fit striker on the bench as you may need to turn a
game around but why a half fit centre half. I would imagine if we need to bring on a
centre back in the first half then it would be Yoshida so Jose is on the bench
in case we need a centre half in the last 20 minutes. It doesn’t make sense. The chances of us getting to the last 20
minutes with a lead and wanting to shore things up when we have our current
defence is virtually nil.
So, Cardiff
away – they’ll be in red, Malky MacKay will still be their manager and their
owner will be a twat. It’s a game we
really have to get something from.
‘No sustituir Jack Cork' - as they say in Spanish.
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