Saints take a massive shit on the Magic of the Cup
FA Cup time again and a 5th Round tie at the
Stadium of Light against Sunderland who we haven’t beaten since 1865. I’m sure that this time will be different
though as this is a game that comes at the wrong time for them. Not only do they have a League Cup Final to
look forward to but they have a horrendous run of fixtures to negotiate if
they’re going to stay up. They also
weren’t helped by having their midweek game called off so that’ll have to be
slotted in somewhere. Saints on the
other hand have no relegation worries and have a clear week ahead so this game
is huge for us and we can play our full side whilst Sunderland are unlikely to
as the FA Cup will most definitely be their 3rd priority this
season.
There’s nothing I can say about Gus Poyet that I haven’t
already said. A deeply unpleasant
individual he may be but you can’t knock the job he’s done either at Brighton
or especially here where he’s taken a group of players who were doing
absolutely nothing and turned them round.
It’s annoying because aside from Harry Redknapp there is no other
manager who I would rather see fail horribly.
Oh hang on, I forgot Sam Allardyce for a second
There is always a nagging doubt about cup games and the team
that Mauricio is going to put out though and here is comes…. In goal, Kelvin Davis – fuck off… Clyne,
Shaw, Yoshida, Hooiveld…. Ok I can deal with that one as Jose had that injury
to his leg and Dejan’s not fit yet… Wanyama… yep, fair enough, Davis,
Ward-Prowse…. Bit odd to have both of them in there…. Lallana, Guly….
Whaaaaaat!... Lambert. Subs…. Gazzaniga,
Fonte… oh so not injured then…. Schneiderlin, Chambers, Rodriguez, Cork… all of
whom would be playing if this was a league game …. McQueen.
The key phrase in the last paragraph is ‘all of whom would
be playing if this was a league game’.
Of course you have to add Artur Boruc to the list as well. I’m sorry but if you are dead set on winning
the game then Boruc, Rodriguez, Schneiderlin and Fonte definitely play. Shit!
The fact that Sunderland have 9 changes from their regular side is no
consolation as I don’t care about them.
As far as I’m concerned, we have not given ourselves the best
opportunity to win the game regardless of what the opposition put out.
In front of a stadium that’s 40% full at best, away we go
and the game is immediately crap and half paced. The first time it goes back to Superkelv who
is of course returning to the stadium where he let in over 100 goals in his one
season, he goes to chip it out to Shaw and it sails about 10 yards over his
head and into the empty seats. Brilliant
start.
It takes a while but football breaks out as Guly, Davis and
Big Vic combine to release Lallana in the inside left position. His cross is perfectly onto the head of Sir
Rickie who heads down to JWP who times his run perfectly but bobbles his shot
into the keeper who makes a comfortable save.
Sunderland make a decent break down our right and work the
ball over to Borini on our left. He’s up
against Shaw and runs at him and over he goes.
To be fair, Luke has given him the opportunity to go down by leaning in
and the severely off balance little fucker has gone for it. It would have been a harsh call but I’ve seen
them given and we got a bit lucky there.
It’s worth it of course to see Poyet going nuts about the next decision,
repeating ‘that one was easy’ again and again.
You’d think BT Sport would learn after last time when that Sunderland
fan yelled ‘shit’ at he top of his voice.
I really wanted Gus to drop a C-bomb or threaten to shit on the referees
dressing room floor but sadly he didn’t.
The rest of the first half is shit. Superkelv dives over a ball as he goes down
like a falling tree but luckily it’s already given as offside and Sunderland
get a few free kicks. As Larsson goes to
take every single one the commentator goes on about him being a free kick
expert and he does sod all with all of them.
The Magic of the Cup – my arse.
At half time, Jake Humphrey on BT Sport is moaning about the
crowd being crap. You ignorant little
fucker. They’re not awash with money in
the North East and they’re probably saving for a trip to Wembley. We’ve got 1000 there and the reason there isn’t
more is because of the stupid bloody kick off time, as decided by BT Sport you
wanker.
The second half kicks off with no discernable improvement by
either team and four minutes in we manage to concede a goal. It’s a fantastic strike by Gardner but that’s
only half the story. It starts with us
in possession and Maya attempting to pass into the forawards and just gifting
it to a Sunderland player. The ball gets
worked out to our left and passed back infield towards Gardner. No problem as Big Vis is ther and he’ll sort
it. Vic seems to have two choice of
welly it clear or bin him in the tackle but does neither and misses the ball,
Gardner picks it up and from 20 yards, bang, top corner, unstoppable. Shit.
So, what have we got?
Well, we’ve got a run from Steve Davis and no one closes him down and he
puts a bit too much side on the white and it screws away for a goal kick.
It’s not happening so the Premier League Cavalry are on with
Morgan and J-Rod replacing Guly and JWP who haven’t really done a great
deal. Sunderland have sent Cono Wickham
on and he’s nearly on the end of a dangerous cross and Superkelv gets lucky as
the ball kind of hits him. He’s playing
like he’s got a fucking slipped disc or something.
One player who is putting a shift n for Saints is Nathaniel
Clyne who gets played in by Davis after a decent bit of movement, fires in a
low cross and Lallana gets his feet all wrong and shins it past the near post
when he really should have at least made Ustari work. It gets even worse a few minutes later as
again, Davis and Clyne work an opening and Clyne cuts out the keeper and
defenders with a perfect cross which Sir Rickie meets from three yards with an
open goal and somehow manages to balloon it over the bar. Fuck me, this is bad and it gets worse as
Adam Lallana is taken off and replaced with Sam McQueen who comes on for his
debut. I am really stuggling to see the
sense in that one.
Wickham nearly put the game out of sight with a run from the
half way line past two piss weak challenges from Big Vic and Maya. If he’s passed the ball then Borini would
have walked it into the net but he got greedy and eventually scuffed his left
footed shot wide. From their next break,
Colback does pass the ball to Borini who drives low and Superkelv makes a
decent low save.
As we try and break upfield, horrible little shit Seb
Larsson bins Steve Davis about 5 minutes late and the ref waves play on. Fast forward 30 seconds and Shaw is taking on
Larsson who grabs his shorts and just hauls him back. Two yellow card offences in one passage of
play – what will the referee do? One
booking – ah well, doesn’t matter really.
We at no point look like scoring and pathetically limp out of the FA Cup
in the same way that we have done all the Cup competitions in the last few
years.
You have to start with the manager on this one. The fact that he hands media duties over the
Jesus Perez suggests that he doesn’t see this competition as anything other
than an inconvenience and the selection seemed to filter through to the players
and even the regulars were poor. There
was no pressing from midfield which is no surprise as Big Vic doesn’t look fit
yet and Steve Davis was playing out of position. We’ve dominated possession in league games
due to Corky and Morgan and the hard work of Davis, Lallana and J-Rod in front
of them. JWP and Guly just seemed to let
the game pass them by in the first half and there was hardly any intensity at
all. Also, there was no pace up front
with J-Rod missing.
I accept that the players on the bench may have had slight
niggles but the trouble is that you leave yourself wide open if you pick what
is one the face of it a weaker team and we then play like that and get knocked
out. The Mauricio interview a week or so
ago about not being interested in the Europa League comes back to haunt you as
well. Win this game and we’d have been
two games from qualifying for it – it makes you think doesn’t it? What happens if we go on a run in the league
and we have to win the last game of the league season to qualify for the Europa
League….Here’s the Saints line-up versus Manchester United… In goal… Kelvin
Davis, right back Katharina Liebherr, left back Jonathan Forte, Centre back 8
year old 1st Year Academy starlet……
However, it isn’t the managers’ fault that basic mistakes
cost us at least a replay. Mauricio
didn’t make Yoshida pass the ball straight to a Sunderland player and he didn’t
make Big Vic fanny out of the tackle on Gardner. He also isn’t responsible for Sir Rickie
managing to miss an open goal from two feet.
Maya and Sir Rickie would certainly have been playing if this was a
league game and Big Vic wouldn’t have been far away himself.
One thing that can’t have been missed was that Kelvin Davis
played like he was 150 years old instead of the 57 years old that he actually
is. He was a disaster from start to
finish and making one decent save when the game was already lost does not make
up for it. If you practice all week, I
assume one of the things the keepers do is chipping a ball out to the full back
so it was quite something to watch him chip a ball 30 feet over Luke Shaw’s
head and then follow it up with passes either too far behind or too far in
front of people which all ended up as Sunderland throw-ins in our half. I know all keepers do it occasionally but
this was bad. There was the horrible
‘going down in instalments’ fumble which was given as offside, as well as the
‘nailed to the goal line’ incident where Maya had to hoof it out for a throw at
the last minute, as after 20 minutes of waiting for Kelvin to come off of his
line for a routine pick-up, he finally decided that it wasn’t going to
happen. Kelvin sure as hell isn’t
getting any better and playing in games like today does nothing for him. I’m not a Gazza fan but he’d get much more out
of it.
I thought Luke Shaw played well in the first half and Clyne
did well in the second with Steve Davis his usual consistent self but shackled
by having to play deeper. Other than
that, no one stood out and there just didn’t seem to be a collective
will-to-win. Sunderland rested 9 and
just seemed to want it more than us.
Of course, we could have picked the same side as versus Hull
and still played crap and lost. This
would have been much less likely though with our current league XI. Maybe it was an off-day but we made it much
more likely to be that way by picking the team that we did. Travelling fans – that thing that BT Sport
and no one else see as important – deserve to see their full strength side on
the pitch in the 5th Round of the FA Cup. There are two silver linings for me – one is
that I don’t have to find a small fortune for a Wembley trip or two and the
other is that it makes you wonder that if we did manage to reach the Europa
League, what sort of teams would we put out in it anyway?
Finally, does anyone remember where we finished in the
league the season when we reached the Cup Final in 2003. Yep, we finished 8th. How many rank that above getting to the Final
at Cardiff? The report on this game is a
bit crap as I found that I couldn’t really be arsed with it, mirroring the mob
on the pitch. I’m glad none of you have
paid money or undertaken a 650 mile round trip to read it.
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