Remember when the Shit 'managers pet' kid was picked in your position at school... that!
Summer is here and it’s a time when we don’t think about
football. Oh yes.
Uncle Roy had a friendly in order to experiment with new
players as England went to Dublin to play Ireland for the first time since the
1995 riot. I remember watching that game
as Matt le Tissier was playing. The
England manager that day was a complete arse and picked le God on the left of a
midfield 3. This was the allegedly
tactically astute Terry Venables. This
time around the fixture is a warm up for the qualifier we have against Slovenia
in the Easiest Qualifying Group of all time.
The squad he picked was interesting in that he has a striker in there in
Jamie Vardy who has scored 4 goals this season.
He also had Charlie Austin in there who is rumoured to be a Saints
target for the summer as well as Nathaniel Clyne and Ryan Bertrand from our
current squad. Anyhow, come the day and
Roy made a colossal balls of it.
Sterling and Lallana got picked despite being shocking for Liverpool
recently and we had to suffer players who have been tried and have failed on
regular occasions like Phil Jones at right back – all that sort of shit. I don’t have to write anything about the game
– it was 0-0 and totally tedious. Shane
Long played the second half for Ireland as he came on as a sub for David
McGoaldrought. Ryan Bertrand played and
he did ok and Clyney was made to look better in his absence as Phil Jones
proved once again that you can’t be classed as versatile because you can play
shite in several positions. We had a
glimpse of Liverpool’s future as Henderson and Milner were awful in midfield
and Lallana and Sterling predictably did nothing. Vardy got 15 minutes and Austin stayed on the
bench. Maybe Roy’s got something
inspiring up his sleeve for the qualifier next week. Maybe Fabien Delph will play.
In the event, for the competitive World Cup qualifier in
Slovenia, Roy pulled out an absolute cracker in his team selection which had
had me and I guess, several thousand other England fans, further questioning
his sanity, let alone his suitability to manage the England football team. In goal…. Joe Hart, at right back… Phil
Jones, left back… Kieran Gibbs…. I kind
of missed the rest of the team. Let that
sink in for a second… Phil Jones and Kieran Gibbs. A out of position shit centre back who has
not played well all season and a left back who though quite decent at times,
has hardly played for Arsenal since Christmas.
Clyney, the only right back in the squad and Bertrand, the team of the
season left back are on the bench. The
game itself was meandering and boring for the first half an hour with Sterling
(another desperately out of form player) missing a sitter. Then we got a throw in on the right wing and
for reasons that I suspect even he doesn’t understand, Phil Jones threw it
straight to a Slovenia player, they broke, beat Cahill’s abortion of an attempt
to play offside and scored to lead 1-0 at half time. Jones had been shocking all game and got
pulled at half time with Lallana going on and get this – Jordan Henderson, who
had been completely shit in midfield, moving to right back.
The second half was entertaining with Jack Wilshere smashing
us level after a ball broke to him on the edge of the box and then the same
player put us ahead with a quite brilliant goal, created by Henderson steaming
up the wing and finding Lallana whose deft flick found Wilshere who again hit
the top corner from 25 yards. Brilliant
goal. We then immediately conceded a
goal again which was directly as a result of having shite full backs. With Clyney ready to come on as Henderson was
having a mare defensively, over came a cross from Slovenia’s left and Gibbs stood
still as Pecnik got the jump on him and it flew into the net off the side of
his head. We were rescued by Squirrel
Head as he burst through the middle and finished well, which was in direct
contrast to the other 4 good chances he’s had which he missed in really shit
fashion. We won 3-2 and all the Roy
apologists went on about us winning 6 out of 6 and being undefeated in a
year. Yes these are facts but it’s also
a fact that this is the easiest qualifying group in history. Slovenia’s 2nd goal was scored by
a layer who was shit for Sheffield Wednesday when we played them in League 1
back in the day. They’re our nearest
challengers in this group so that gives you an idea of the standard. Our defence is chronically bad, our ball
retention is awful and the managers criteria for picking players is as best
questionable and at worse appallingly stupid.
Will we be any better when we play against slightly better opposition –
of course not.
On the Clyne situation – Hodgson actually said that there
would be questions (from the media I assume) if Phil Jones wasn’t picked. No there wouldn’t you senile old goat and
even so, why are you so scared of the media.
Even United fans know he’s shit and has been shit all season and the
whole world knows that he’s not a right back.
Didn’t someone say once that Jones was the new Duncan Edwards or
somesuch bullshit when he signed for United whose players always get biged up
to be some sort of sensation based on 2 minutes (Macheda, Januzaj). The media
of course made an issue of Clyney not looking terribly happy at the end. Why would he – a shit centre back has been
preferred to him at right back and then a midfielder has been put there. The Old Goat said that Clyne shouldn’t expect
to play just because he’s had a good season.
He’s a fucking idiot is Roy and no wonder the defence look shite. The full backs were dreadful and he persists
on picking Smalling to partner Cahill when neither is a leader so there is
potential disaster all over the place. I
have a theory that Roy thinks Smalling as in fact a 22 year old Rio
Ferdinand. Here’s a decent back 4 –
Clyne, Cahill, Terry, Bertrand. Assuming
Terry is a non-starter then you have to go with Jagielka as whilst he’s not
great, he is the closest we’ve got to a defensive leader.
Gibbs being selected over Bertrand, when he’s not playing
and not sharp is almost equally ridiculous and Sterling and Henderson owe their
presence as England regulars to how good Luis Suarez was when Liverpool won all
those games at the tail end of 2013/14.
They’ve both had poor seasons and are not in any sort of form but
they’re now undroppable.
To be fair, on the positive side, Lallana coming on made a
difference and Wilshere playing slightly further forward had a massive
effect. He’ll be straight back in front
of the back 4 once Sturridge or Welbeck gets fit though as you can’t trust Roy
to make a tough decision.
Meanwhile, away from Planet Roy, the wheels of the well
oiled machine at Southampton FC have been turning and things have been smoothly
progressing, unlike last year when we had a couple of wheels missing and were
lurching all over the road. We have
signed a couple of players which have addressed specific needs that we had in
the squad. The first was Spanish
international Juanmi who joined from Malaga for about £5 million which in
today’s market, is nothing. He’s a winger / striker in much the same way that
Sadio Mané is and has a decent reputation.
The only negative anyone seems to be able to come up with for him is
that he’s small and slight... in the same mould as David Silva... who has not
done too badly over here has he. A
couple of days later, Cedric Soares (pronounced ‘So-are-ez’) signed from
Sporting Lisbon for about £3.5 million which, for a Portugese international
right back is pretty good. He has a
reputation for being decent going forward and being very quick so it all sounds
pretty positive from where I’m standing.
Two player son the fringes of powerful European International teams for
a combined transfer fee outlay of less than £9 million... when Man United gave
us triple that for Luke Shaw.
The Soares deal throws up a couple of interesting
points. The media of course saw it as
proof positive that Clyney is off to Liverpool as we’ve signed his
replacement. That may well be the case
but no one seems to be considering that Soares may just well be Calum Chambers
replacement and he’ll provide competition for last years first choice. There has been a lot of noise about Liverpool
signing Clyne but no one this end has confirmed anything. It’s standard Smug Twat Rodgers tactics to do
everything through the Liverpool media so the Liverpool media have reported
that they bid £10 million and we knocked it back, they were going to increase
that to £11m or £12m and now Clyne is “desperate” to join them. All they need to do is bring out the lines
like last year when we were “holding Lallana prisoner and stopping him
progressing” and all that and we’ll have the full set. Oh yes, I forgot the “sign by this deadline
or we’ll go elsewhere”. Saints seem to
be using the time honoured “pay the asking price or fuck off” approach.
It’s great, Super-Happy-Super-Motivational-Hockey-Guy Ralph
Krueger said recently that we’re not a gossip club so the facts are these: -
Clyne has a year left on his deal and no one has met the asking price as
yet. I would rather we held him to the
last year of his contract and lose him for nothing next summer, rather than
sell him to Liverpool. The other point
is that the Soares deal means we are covered whatever the outcome of the Clyne
situation and I wonder where Nathaniel’s head is right now. On the one hand, he’s just had first hand
experience of getting shafted when he mixed with the big boys in the England
set up and that’s the sort of thing that happens at the bigger clubs. Maybe that’ll make him want to say or maybe
that’ll make him more determined to get away.
It appears that the Champions League big clubs are not interested in him
and now, if he stays at Southampton, he’s not an automatic first choice any
more. I also wonder how long the new
contract offer from Saints will remain on the table.
News has been very sparse on the loanees we had in last
season. One assumes that Elia and
Djuricic have gone back to Werder Bremen and Benfica respectively but they’ve in
effect been replaced in the squad by Juanmi and the returning J-Rod. The loanee we’re all interested in is Toby
Alderweireld. There has been no offical
news whatsoever on that one. We all know
we had a clause to buy him and that Atletico Madrid could buy that out. It’s not been confirmed that they’ve done
this and I can’t find a date by which they had to do it. There has been a rumoured swap deal involving
Chelsea and Atletico and Filipe Luis but that seems to have come from a glib
comment Mourinho made in a press conference.
There’s been noises from Fucking Spurs (fuck off) and West Ham (ha ha
ha) being interested as well. He’ll
either end up at a Champions League Club or with us. In our favour is that he obviously enjoyed it
here and he’ll be a regular. At Chelsea
he’ll be a sub most of the time but be on a load more wedge and in the
Champions League. He’s had a season of
being a bench player in the Champions League at Atletico which is how we managed
to get him in the first place so I can’t imagine he’ll want that again either
at Atletico or at Chelsea. Still
hopeful.
When does the Europa League start?
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