Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Pre-Season Part 2 - Twisted Firestarters and Selling our Best Striker to Reading!


Guly's Firewalk Straight After his Hat-trick

The much drawn out Victor Wanyama saga came to an end and we actually signed him which to me was a bit of a surprise as it appeared dead in the water with greedy agents having pissed off The Don.   There were rumours of the player sacking his agent and I think we can safely assume that a compromise was reached and the player signed on the dotted line.  I don’t think that The Don was going to be fucked about but I also think that the lack of a credible bid from elsewhere played a factor in the agent climbing down.  After the transfer, it has rumbled on with the Cardiff Chairman mouthing off that Celtic went back on a deal that he had agreed and that the player wanted to come to them.  Makes you wonder how they knew what Victor wanted when they wouldn’t have had permission to speak to him, having not agreed a fee with Celtic.  Maybe it got lost in a bit of Thai-Welsh-Scottish translation.  Various figures in Scottish football have had their say, saying that he’s shite and not worth the money whilst anyone with a Celtic affiliation, once they stopped engaging in some “my club is bigger than your club” willy waving contest, seems to think he’s a powerhouse midfielder who will only get better and better.  I’d be surprised if he doesn’t take a while to get up to speed as he’d only had 2 years in Scotland and in the 2nd of those, Rangers weren’t about so the standard of League football wasn’t great.  A quick look at some of his Champions League performances though, makes you see why we’ve taking a £12million punt on him.  The biggest surprise of all of this is of course, Neil Lennon being nice about us, calling us a good and progressive club.

Victor jetted out to Spain to joining the rest of the Saints squad on a pre-season training camp.  This is the first one under Mauricio Pochettino and his team and you can safely guess that it’ll be hard work.  All the players were there at the start aside from Maya Yoshida and Gaston Ramirez who had been to the Confederations Cup.  Maya had been knocked out in the first round and Gaston had been a sub aside from one start against World Football Heavyweight Tahiti which lasted his usual 60 minutes.  It struck me straight away that Gaston is the player who could most benefit from a tough pre-season as opposed to a rest, so why wasn’t he out there.  He had the last 3 games of last season off after all.

Still, we didn’t really need him for the matches we played out there against Llagostera who are Spanish Div 3 and Palamos who are a Division further down.  A 2-1 win with a J-Rod brace and an 8-0 with goals from just about everybody including a hat-trick from Guly do Prado in which the first and third goal were apparently 10 minutes apart.  Now, does this say that Guly is going to be awesome this season or does it say that the opposition were so bad that even the England women’s side could have beaten them?  As an aside – I watched most of their games in Euro 2013 – absolute rubbish!

The pre-season friendlies and lots of footage from the training ground and team building events have been brought to us all by the Saints Media team who have to be congratulated on a great job.  It’s always nice to see behind the scenes and see the players having a laugh as well as working bloody hard.  It all appears to be going rather well and gives you a bit of information about what’s going on.  For example, with Clyne being our only senior right-back with Butters and Frazer moving on, would we sign another?  The answer to that one appears to now be that Calum Chambers is the back-up which is also good from the point of view of seeing another youngster step up.  Other highlights have been the team bonding firewalk which was very amusing, especially the Little African Bloke walking across the burning coals holding an arrow like a spear - all very politically incorrect but very funny.  If it's going to make Guly score a hat-trick then they should et light to him more often.  Then there was King Artur in a training game, playing up front, looking about 4 stone lighter than when we signed him and smashing in two excellent goals whilst Maya Yoshida totally failed to mark him.

Meanwhile, back in Southampton, the training complex at Staplewood is taking shape and a couple of Skate Builders thought it would be hilarious to put a shirt in the dry lining of a wall and post a video of them doing it on You Tube, guaranteeing them both hero status down the shabby end of the M27 and a P45 and greatly reducing the area in which they can work in the future as I can’t imagine anyone in a SO post code employing them for a while.  Well done.   Fear not though Saints fans, just be sure to pass the story down to your grandchildren (even if they haven’t been born yet) cos they may grow up to be builders who somewhen in the next century, may get to install a new portacabin on Pompey’s new training ground.  Whilst we, and a majority of other teams are away on pre-season, the hacks at home have little to write about and so it’s silly season.  Sir Rickie Lambert is moving to Reading apparently and here’s how this one became gospel. 

Editor:  That was a bit of a shock, Grant Holt moving from Norwich to recently relegated Wigan

Hack: Yeah, he used to play at Rochdale with Rickie Lambert didn’t he?

Editor: Yeah, Fat Boy Lambert might go down a division as well.  He’ll never be any good in the Prem.

Tea Boy:  What?  He was the top scoring Englishman in the Premier League last year.  Why would they sell him?

Editor and Hack: Stick to making tea you little git

Hack: Didn’t score many after that geezer who don’t speak English came in.  Anyway...

Editor: Reading have just been relegated..... and QPR – my boy ‘Arry likes a deal

Hack:  yeah but Reading are managed by that Atkins bloke

Editor:  Yeah, Atkins....

Hack:  ... who used to manage

Editor:  SOUTHAMPTON!!! Brilliant.  Saints have been linked to that Osvaldo bloke who is never going to join them but that don’t matter, they’re after a striker for sure

Hack: Indeed they are Guv, if Osvaldo does join though, Saints will want to sell Lambert. 

Editor:  To Reading – print that and print it with made up “inside sources” quotes.   I want it on my desk by 8am.

Tea Boy:  Saints have just given him a new contract so it’s all not really logical is it?

Editor:  You’re fired..... get out you little git!

Hack:  Guv.... Does your tea taste of piss?


There have been other rumours which have a bit more credibility, such as Gaston Ramirez being wanted by Italian clubs.  Again, it’s an easy link to make but again, I just can’t see it at the moment.  If however, we sign rumoured target Ever Banega, then I could see Gaston being offloaded as we have a lot of attacking midfielders without any of them having been outstanding or being automatic picks for a starting XI.  Punch,  Adam, J-Rod, Gaston – not to mention Steve Davis and JWP and youngster Lloyd Isgrove.  I feel that there will be an attacking midfield arrival but it will be a winger, rather than a No 10 and probably a name we’ve not heard yet.  Trust The Don.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Pre-Season Part 1 - The Chuckle Brothers are Dead


Why-deeeeee-dooooo-daaaaht, Quaaaack

And so the season ended and we could all get on with our lives.  All was quiet aside from the sound of people hitting F5 on their keyboards in the hope that the Newsnow Southampton portal would throw up some news about a signing, rather than a guess about where Luke Shaw was off to.  We had the usual ‘release list’ of players who are out of contract.  The names fell broadly into one of three categories

1 Had their moments for Saints but not good enough for the Premier
Richardson, Butterfield, Seaborne, Dickson.

2 Some promise shown as a youngster but not enough to warrant keeping
Reeves, Hoskins

3 Why the fuck did we sign you in the first place, give up, get a proper job
Forecast

We are seen as one of the major players in the Premier League regarding player movement both in and out.  It seems that the media want to sell all our players and they also link us to just about anyone whose agent wants a transfer bonus.  In amongst all the hype and bulshit, we’ve signed one player so far in Dejan Lovren, a big centre half who is a Croatian international.  His arrival sparked the usual rash of ‘how did Southampton sign him?’ patronising outrage from fans of Liverpool and other medium sized clubs.  Hopefully we’ve got a good one and let’s face it, we needed more quality at centre half.   He comes with the reputation of being a decent ball playing centre half but looking at the disciplinary rap sheet – he appears to have a bit of the hard man about him with 3 red cards in 17 games last season.  Hopefully his signing will prove to other potential signings that we are a club going places and to look past the 14th place from last season.

Lovren’s name was in the press in relation to a move to us but only fleetingly which is a bit different to the case of Victor Wanyama.  Picking through the rubbish, it appears that we had a bid accepted by Celtic, then agreed terms with the player and then his agents asked for an extra million quid – at which point we left the room.  Anything that’s happened since is his agent desperately trying to drum up interest by using the Saints bid as a stick to hit Celtic with or to flush out other clubs.  The bit that made me laugh was the agent bemoaning that Victor was stopped from moving to QPR last summer which says it all really.  QPR were near the top of the agents fees table and we were bottom which tells you everything you need to know about the agents priorities regarding Wanyama’s career.   Bringing it up now when QPR got horribly relegated (which I dare say, would have happened with or without Victor Wanyama) just makes it look even worse.  If I were you Victor, I’d get another agent who at least gives a little bit of a shit about you and your playing career.

We have also seen the release of the fixtures and this is always hilarious as all the ITK-ers tell us the day before what the first game is and I’ve never known them to be right.  So, it’s not the predicted Arsenal away, it’s West Brom away.  Before anyone gets too excited that we have ‘winnable’ early games, let’s remember that in last years corresponding fixtures – Baggies away, Mackems home, Norwich away, Hammers home and Liverpool away – we got a grand total of 2 points so you certainly can’t take anything for granted.  However, it can’t be denied that we certainly need to have more points than we head from the first 10 games last year.

Some of our players have been away playing internationals in tournaments and I think it's safe to say that the results have been iffy.  Maya has successfully qualified for the World Cup with Japan but they went to the Confederations Cup and got humped in all three games, conceding shedloads of goals though to be fair, not all of these were Maya's fault.  Gaston was also at the Confeds with Uruguay and whilst the team did well, finishing 4th, Gaston did next to nothing.  Hauled off at half time in their opening game, he was then gifted a start against Tahiti who were a collection of waiters, postmen and electricians etc and did nothing.  It was 6-0 when he was taken off and his replacement Luis Suarez scored twice in 5 minutes.  As for the English, well Clyney and JWP were with the England U21s and U20s respectively and the U20's 2-2 draw with Iraq was as good as it got.  JWP fared the better of the two playing in all three games but aside from the experience gained, it wasn't great.

I’m writing on the day the new kit for 2013/14 got released and my opinion is that it’s better than last years’ effort but it’s still pretty crappy.  It’s a standard Adidas template kit which we’ll share with Bristol City amongst others.  The only differences will be the sponsor name and the badge.  I assume that the template was used rather than an original kit to cut costs so how can the club justify a hike from £42 to £50 (nearly 20%) for a home shirt and £30 to £40 (33%!!!) for a kids shirt.  Like I said last year, I’m not getting too het up about the predominantly red stripeless design as it’ll be gone in a year but the cost not good bearing in mind it’s a template.  My advice is as always – if you don’t like it, don’t buy it and hone your parental skills to the max and try and convince your kids that they don’t like it either.  I never for one second considered buying last years efforts as I thought they (especially the white one) were complete shit and whilst I prefer this years efforts, I can’t see me spending £50 on either of them.  If my soon to be 9 year old son wants it then let’s hope Grandma and Granddad are reading this.


Talking of the boy and his birthday (he doesn't know yet so don't tell him) – and this is huge news for you fans of the Chuckle Brothers... I have had to give up my perfectly positioned with perfect view from the half way line row Q of the Kingsland Stand as the boy is now (in my opinion) old enough to get a season ticket for so we (me, my dad, my son) are now in .... THE FAMILY CENTRE!  Part of me is thinking ‘shit’ I have to say but looking back, it’s where I started in the Chocolate Boxes in the Milton Road End of The Dell so I guess what’s happening to me here is what happened to my Dad in 1975.  I am sure there will be some interesting characters around me and my only regret now I’m moving is that I didn’t get a photo of the legendary Chuckle Brothers.  If you are the poor unfortunate who has shelled out a fortune to sit in the Kingsland Premium seats and you are in Black 30, Row Q, seats 777/8 then they are behind you.... have fun!  I wonder if the sound of a high pitch whiny 'why-deeeee-dooooo-dahhhhht' or someone making duck noises through a rolled up programme can be heard from the Family Centre.  I assume not though and so to me – The Chuckle Brothers are Dead!