The Complimentary Gift Bags were Popular
Last year when we played Everton at home, it was on the back
of a few defeats in a row and the win we got kickstarted a run which ultimately
went a long way to propel us into Europe.
It’s too early to be a pivotal game this year but it’s certainly one where
we should be looking to get our first win of the season as they had a dodgy 2-2
draw with Watford last week. Everton
massively underachieved last season when it seemed that their big players like
Lukaku and Mirallas didn’t really want to be there. Roberto Martinez is one of those managers who
I’ve never thought deserves the good reputation that he’s got – he’s not
anywhere near Brendan Rodgers in that regard but even so.
The main news for Saints this week has been another players
signed with Oriol Romeu joining from Chelsea for about £5 million in what
appears to be another good piece of business.
He was decent for Chelsea three seasons ago when he was about 20 but as
is always the way, they signed players and he ended up getting farmed out on
loan for two seasons. Last year he
played virtually a whole season for Stuttgart in the Bundesliga so he should in
theory be up to speed fairly quickly. As
far as the squad is concerned it means that we can now cope with an injury or
suspension to Big Vic without having the midget show of Clasie and Reed in
midfield. You remember Clasie yes? Got injured in his first competitive game for
us and then in a comeback game for the Under 21’s, got injured again.
On the walk to the ground over the Itchen Bridge, there’s a
bloke in front of me wearing the new away kit which as you know, is a shade of
snot. I really don’t like it. There are also of course, many thousands of
the new home shirt which looks really good and it makes you realise from a
commercial point of view, why the kits get changed every year. Still thinking commercially for a moment, I
wonder how many more of the away shirts would have been sold if they were
yellow with a blue sash, instead of snot. Why pick a colour that’s going to
have a lot of people going ‘yuk’?
Anyway, I refuse to get too hung up on kits though Everton are wearing
some sort of olive abomination with the sponsors name in orange on the
front. To my mind, as Everton have a
blue shirt which in no way clashes with our red and white, they should be
wearing that.
Ronald is back in the dugout, complete with protective boot
and he’s proved that last weeks team selection wasn’t an Erwin production by
just changing the one player as Shane Long comes in for J-Rod. We basically have a 4-2-4 formation as
there’s no way Long and Tadic have the instincts to play as conventional
wingers and track back and all that.
Steve Davis is a defensive midfielder along with Big Vic and Romeu and
Reed are on the bench. I have a little
rant to any kids in the family stand who might be listening about how we’re
going to be wide open and that we beat these last year by controlling the
midfield. A few of the 8 year olds
around me nod in agreement. The bench
doesn’t include Caulker who has sinus problems which is badly timed as I feel
that he would have taken Yoshida’s place this week. When you see Everton’s line up, you realise
how much they underachieved last year.
So many good players with Coleman, Stones and Jagielka in defence,
McCarthy and Barkley in midfield and Lukaku up front. The others like Kone and Howard aren’t bad
either and then there’s Gareth Barry who is is reaching that ‘I can’t believe
he still gets a game’ stage. They say
about players not blessed with pace that they won’t lose that pace as they get
older but Barry has and he now runs around backwards. Every time I see him play he just commits
foul after foul after foul.
Before the game there was a bit of a Markus Liebherr tribute on the big screen and the flag which has been out of sight for 5 years made an appearance again. Then it was time for Super Soccer Motivational Hockey Guy Ralph to take the mic and lead the tributes and thankfully he didn't go on too long as there was a football match to start.
Away we go and the ball goes near Barry who gives away a
free kick. The next time it goes near
him he gives away another one. Senile
Old Goat Hodgson in the stand must be impressed. The first real chance fell to Saints as some
neat interplay put Mané away on the left of goal but he rather ran out of pitch
to work with and scuffed an effort wide.
Most of us are excited by Cédric Soares but the questions remain over how good a defender he is.
His first job today is to try and get back at Lukaku who is just as
quick and twice the weight and he gets brushed off and left for dead. Targett comes across and slides in, taking a
bit of the ball but not enough to not give away a free kick and get a yellow
card as well. Barkley smashes the free
kick off the wall and away for a corner.
Mané was though again in an almost identical position as
before on 20 minutes but this time he got a decent shot away and Tourettes Tim
saved it with his feet and the shit bollocks fuck shit ball deflected away for
a corner. Davis swung in the corner from
the right, Pellè flicked it on behind everyone and the ball ended up with
Coleman at right back. Everton broke
away like lightning with Coleman feeding Kone who accelerated into the gap
where our full backs should have been and clipped over a cross to Lukaku who
rose above no one as there was no one near him and buried the header in the top
corner, back across Stekelenburg who had no chance at all. I am not happy… we’ve let in a goal from our
own corner for the second week in a row and it just adds to the feeling that we
are not set up to deal with the opposition attacking us.
Saints fell to bits and Everton should have gone 2-0 up. I’ve never seen defending like it as Barkley
got the ball on the edge of our box and there was no one near him at all as all
our defenders were in the full back positions.
His shot was well saved by Stekelenburg and the rebound fell to
Cleverley who whether he plays for Everton, Villa, United, Wigan or England, is
complete shit and he bobbled a shot wide of the gaping goal.
Saints were living off scraps by now and Big Vic heading over in average fashion was as good as it got as a corner plopped off his
head. At this stage I was thinking that
we would do well to only go in 1-0 down and then Maya thinks he’s Bobby Moore
and tried to play a clever pass on the half way line and Lukaku nicks in and he’s
gone. He feeds Barkley who delays and rolls a great ball into the path of the
rampaging striker who buries it before anyone gets near him. Fucking hell and
bollocks, it’s half time.
The only question is how many subs are going to come on at
half time. Targett looks like he wants
to come off but that would really be wasting a sub when you’re 2-0 down. In the event, Tadic is taken off which is
fair enough as he’s been as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike and Romeu comes
on and even before the restart we look better with the imposing Spaniard
standing next to the Mighty Kenyan.
Romeu immediately started demanding the ball and looking
like a very good player, playing some nice passes and binning Gareth Barry to
let everyone know that he wasn’t going to let anyone have a free ride. It looked briefly that if we could get one
goal we could get back into it but the ref had other ideas and when Romeu went
into a tackle on McCarthy, which wasn’t as bad as any of Barry’s early fouls,
he got booked. Graziano had a couple of
chances when he connected well with a left footed volley which was straight at
Tourette Tim but he should have done much better with a free header which he
ballooned over the bar.
J-Rod was back at SMS in the 65th minute as Long,
who had rivalled Tadic for uselessness, was replaced and then Davis came off for
JWP. We had one more shot as Mané tried
a long range snapshot which Howard parried away in true ‘one for the cameras’
fashion.
In truth, we never looked like getting a goal back and it
was time for a mass exodus of fans who only like a winning team on 84 minutes
as Barkley again found himself in lots of space in the inside left channel and
he opened himself out and curled a shot past Stekelenburg and into the far
corner to make the scoreline a more accurate reflection of the game. Naismith had come on for a dive around and he
should have made it 4-0 at the end but Yoshida managed his one good bit of
defending for the afternoong to take the ball off him as he was about to shoot.
Well that was shite
wasn’t it boys and girls? Regular
readers will know that I’m not one for saying that I told you so (unlike some)
but his time, I fucking called it before the game that we’d be too open and so
it proved – even before they scored the first.
He’s been pretty much immune to criticism since he arrived but Ronald’s
had a shocker for the first two weeks in the league. I wonder what drugs they give you for anaesthetic
and pain killers in Dutch hospitals…. He’s on one if he thinks we can play 4
strikers in the Premier League and get away with it. Compare it to our best form last year when we
had the solidity of Morgan and Big Vic and Davis closing down in front of
them. In addition to that we had the
best two full backs in the country and the best centre back pairing in front of
a rock solid keeper. We still have the same
standard of keeper but the full backs are much weaker defensively and the
centre back pair are not as good as a pair and we’ve lost the shield in front
of them. In fact we’re playing with one
less player in midfield so what a surprise.
If we look at last years Everton home game, Harrison Reed was all over
Barkley from the start to the end and Barkley was awful. Today he ran the show, scored one, set up one
and could have scored another quite easily.
Anyone who blames Maarten Stekelenburg is clueless. He made a couple of decent saves to keep the
score down and had no chance at all with any of the goals which were all scored
by a player who had no one marking him or closing him down. A free header and two free shots under no
pressure. In the first half when we lost
the game, the defenders had no shield in front of them as discussed – Big Vic
can’t do it all on his own and he spent most of the first half yelling at Tadic
and Long to get back and help which they didn’t. Davis was supposed to pass the ball and get
us moving like Morgan did but he just gave it away and defending is not his
strong suit. Individually the defenders
were shocking but it’s about more than that.
They all looked better in the second half when Romeu was on. Cédric is going to have to learn how to
defend and quickly. The battering he was
getting down the wing impeded his attacking game as well as he seemed afraid to
take on the kid that Everton had at left back when he had the chance. Targett was ok in the second half but in the
first half he was totally exposed and seemed to wilt under the pressure. I know he’s young but he looked about 14 at
one point and seemed desperate to get off the pitch. It will ultimately do him good that he stayed
on and had a semi-decent second half. You
do have to protect youngsters and have a midfield in front of them.
It’s not all the fault of the formation though – I cannot
find a positive thing to say about Maya’s performance. The shocking pass he played for the killer
second goal allowed Lukaku play the eventual 1-2 with Barkley before running
through and scoring, was typical of his lackadaisical approach all game. He always struggles against big bruising
centre forwards and just panics. Even at
the end he was still lunging in like an idiot and trying to get in front of
Lukaku and missing the ball altogether.
As mentioned, Long and Tadic helped no one defensively and no one should
be surprised at that being as they are, a striker and a Number 10.
The defensive shield from the defensive midfielders is
absolutely vital in the Premier League.
Nigel Adkins learnt that the hard way when we were getting humped
regularly when we first came up. With
Morgan and Vic we’ve been spoilt, as have the defenders playing behind it. Look at Lovren once he didn’t have it and
even Alderweireld is struggling at Spurs for the same reason and today, he even
pointed it out that there was no pressure on the ball from the Spurs midfielders. I dunno what Ronald has against Harrison Reed
but we wouldn’t have lost 3-0 if he’d played from the start instead of either
Tadic or Long. The one positive from the
game is that Oriol Romeu looked decent in that defensive midfield role, despite
Mr Card Happy Oliver clipping his wings with an early yellow card.
It’s not all bad – after today I see a midfield three of Big
Vic, Romeu and Clasie with Davis and JWP on the fringes should we need to
tinker. We of course need a new centre
half and things conspired against us today with Caulker being unavailable. He’d have handled the physical aspect of
Lukaku better than Yoshida (mind you, so would my 10 year old) but Lukaku is a
terrifying beast when he’s in the mood like he was today and like he was when
on loan at West Brom and they stuffed us 3-0 at St Mary’s when Pochettino was
in charge. When you have pace and power
and you’re built like a fucking tank and you fancy it and you get given the
ball in the right areas – it’s hard to stop.
Aside from Lukaku, Everton had other stand out performers like Barkley
who was brilliant. Senile old goat
Hodgson was there to see it so expect him to pick Tom Cleverley for the next
international. The defence of Jagielka
and Stones dealt well with Pellè and Mané who were decent for us and I
particularly like McCarthy in midfield who just did the holding job that none
of our midfielders did in the first half.
The advantage of being in the Europa League of course is
that we have a game straight away to get over it against Midtjylland at St.Mary’s
on Thursday. Hopefully we’ll get a fully
focussed display and a thumping win like against Vitesse to make the return leg
a formality and enable us to go into the next league game, away at Watford, in
good heart – that’s both fans and players.
The complete gubbing we got today is a massive wake up call to anyone
from the manager, through to the players, through to the staff, through to the
fans who though we just needed to turn up to win games. That’ll never be the case for Southampton FC. It hasn’t been that way for any of the 40
years I’ve been watching so why should it be that way now?
No comments:
Post a Comment