Premier League Match 5 - West Brom 0 Southampton 0

 

Spurs are Twats aren't they Saido?

Yes they are Vic

Today we travel to West Brom to play against Sir Rickie Lambert in an away game that we really should think about winning to maintain the feelgood factor we’ve had since the Norwich game.  Like us, West Brom have been in the news since the last round of Premier League matches for telling Spurs and Daniel Levy where to stick their derisory bids for players and sending them away giving them the middle finger salute.  The Baggies were even bigger players than ourselves and in particular Jeremy Peace, their chairman.  By the last day of the window, Daniel Levy could have offered about £100 million for Saido Berahino and he would have been turned down.  Needless to say, Spurs and Levy didn’t offer £100m, they offered about £5m with staged payments for the rest dependent on clauses, most of which were probably dependent on things that were never going to happen.  Berahino very predictably threw his toys out on social media, saying that he’d never play for the Chairman again.  Hmmm, player not getting a move to Spurs after a comically low bid throws his toys out on Twitter.  Sounds familiar doesn’t it?  The only surprise is that the wording in the tweet was different to Morgan Schneiderlin’s effort from last year.  I’d have thought that Levy would give his targets a standard template for ‘toys out’ tweets in the event of his offers being rejected.  Maybe he should –

‘I (insert name) will NEVER play for (insert club) again.  Great memories DESTOYED. #COYS #££££’.

So, 3 players in a year who have chucked the bear out in response to media speculation and low bids and in all cases, Spurs were the club trying to buy.  Strange coincidence that.  Something should be done but will it?  Don’t hold your breath. #wankers.

The case with Big Vic was a little less dramatic than Berahino’s as following his no show against Norwich and having been told that he wasn’t leaving, his mental and physical ailments all cleared up enough for him to travel to Kenya to play for them in an African Nations Cup Qualifier.  With Vic in Africa and therefore highly unlikely to be able to do a medical in London, the media were resurrecting the deal with us being offered players who Spurs didn’t want, one of whom was Lamela.  We’re still paying Gaston Ramirez so why on earth would we went another underperforming South American winger… and then there was the small problem that we already had our quota of domestic loans with Stekelenburg and Caulker from Fulham and QPR respectively.  Matt le Tiss then threw oil on the fire by saying that Spurs bid for Vic was less than what we paid for him which, if true, proves what we knew all along, that Spurs really are a shitty club.  West Ham saw fit to have a dig at their transfer dealings as well and the backlash has started.  I guess that’s why Levy has to sign all his players from abroad now as he’s running out of English clubs who will deal with him and even then, deals such as the Alderweireld one have an element of underhand about them.  I really can’t see Saints dealing with them anytime soon.  Maybe it is an unexpected effect of there being so much money washing about in the game – the smaller clubs don’t feel they ‘have’ to sell. 

On the positive side, we finally completed the signing of Virgil van Dijk from Celtic, for a fee of upwards of £11m.  Of course there is the question of whether he’ll adapt to actually having a competitive game against decent opposition but we’ve done ok with Steve Davis, Fraser Forster and Big Vic recently, so I’m sure our latest foray into the Scottish league will work out just fine.  Virgil is a big unit at 6 feet 4 and is a footballing centre half who is very comfortable on the ball and You Tube is full of clips of him doing ridiculous things like dribbling the ball 80 yards up the pitch, scoring goals with headers, smashing in free kicks and generally taking the piss.  Let’s hope we see some of that as a bonus with standard rock solid defending.

To the internationals and England completed our routine qualification from the easiest qualification group in history with a 6-0 win in San Marino and a 2-0 win at home to Switzerland.  Wayne Rooney managed to break Sir Bobby’s goal record by scoring a penalty in each as the referees took pity on the rest of England having to listen to the continuous wankathon over the record.  The San Marino penalty was one of those where you watch the replay five times and still can’t work out where the foul was and the Swiss one was for a horrendous dive by Raheem Sterling.  Fair play to Rooney though and it’s a great achievement.  He’ll always be a bit difficult to like but 50 goals in 107 games is good at any level.

You can almost do an ex-Saints report on England games now.  Nathaniel Clyne got two starts which he wouldn’t have got had he still been a Saints player and did ok but not as well as Luke Shaw who was outstanding against the Swiss but this kind of got lost in the Rooney hype.  Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was pretty poor in both games but did set up Ross Barkley’s goal against San Marino whereas Hodgson saw fit to give Theo Walcott just the 20 minutes against San Marino in which he scored twice.  Adam Lallana meanwhile, was in a Nivea advert at half time and looked like a complete and utter bell end.  His PR machine is really working wonders for him.

It’s the usual with England – there were a lot of positives and the possibility of us having a decent side but then you have the shite that drags us down as well as Hodgson’s inbuilt Hodgson-ness.  For example – I hate to say it because he plays for Spurs but Harry Kane looks like he might be a superb player for England and he won us the Swiss game and changed the San Marino game when he came on but then you have Rooney’s lack of mobility and the fact that he’ll always be in Hodgson’s side ahead of him, even if he doesn’t score a league goal from open play all season.  You also have the promise of Ross Barkley and Jonjo Shelvey from these games but you know that Hodgson will continually pick shite like Milner, Carrick and Henderson.  Carrick and Henderson were injured for these games but you know they’re coming back and Milner was as he always is – shite.  It’s been said over the years that skilful players like Matt le Tissier, Glenn Hoddle et al, would have had 120 caps if they were Spanish or French as they would have been trusted and embraced.  If Milner was Spanish or French he’d have no caps at all because he lacks the basic skill of ball control, and actually passing to a team mate.  He could have played for the scuffling Scandanavian sides or any underdog side that just runs about and makes it difficult for the opposition but are England one of those or should we aspire to be better than that?  Against San Marino, his second half consisted of cross to the keeper, cross to the keeper, foul, foul, ball given away, foul, substituted.  His booking in the Swiss match was a classic – an awful first touch and then chasing it, attempting to recover and hoofing over an opponent.   Anyway – England are in the finals and it’s the hope that kills you.

A final bit on internationals…. The FIFA world rankings have been in the news recently, mainly because Wales have marched up the list.  These rankings are used in part to decide seedings for tournaments and as such, you’d hope they were accurate as they have an effect – get them wrong and you could end up with a shite group with weak sides in it or alternatively, a group of death scenario.  A first glance at the list sees Belgium (2) being ranked above World Champions Germany (3).  Germany of course, beat Argentina (1) in the final which was less than a year ago.  I wonder how many points you get for a World Cup Final win as opposed to a meaningless friendly win.  Have Belgium beaten anyone decent by the way?  Wales are currently 8th which suggests that they’d be favourites to win if they played any of England (9), Spain (11), Netherlands (12), Italy (16) or France (24).  I guess that Jazz Richards and Chris Gunter belong in a better side than Iniesta, Pirlo, Robben etc etc.  What utter shite.  Wales have beaten the aforementioned Belgium (2) in their qualifying group I guess which gave them some serious points towards their World Ranking and apparently if they’d won that difficult home game they just had against the might of Israel (46), they’d have been ranked 4th, above Colombia (4), Brazil (5), Portugal (6) and Chile (8).  I’ve got nothing against Wales but in truth, they’re not much better than Northern Ireland (41) and they’re one injury to Bale from having no goals in their team at all.

Back to today and I’m mildly irritated by the team news that Romeu is dropped and Big Vic is back in.  Romeu of course, threw his toys out and demanded a transfer and not travelled to Kenya for an international during the week… oh no, that was Vic, silly me.  Oh and Romeu was brilliant in the last game against Norwich.  Ok then.  Steven Davis is in the side again having been awful in the Norwich game but Sadio Mané only got back from Senegal on Friday so he’s on the bench with J-Rod starting.  Also starting is Virgil Van Dijk who comes in, with Yoshida and Caulker on the bench.  West Brom have 10 other players and Rickie Lambert who starts, with their own ‘unsettled by Spurs’ player, Saido Berahino on the bench.

Dusan Tadic has started over on the right and before I’d finished moaning about that, there was some neat interplay between him and JWP and a curling left footed cross which just evaded a Big Beautiful Italian lunge.  That turned out to be the only excitement in the first 15 minutes as the pattern of the game became very apparent.  We were going to pass it around lots and they were going to try and hit us on the break or hope that the lumpy forward partnership of Lambert and Rondon produced something.  Lambert took a ball and did well to hold off Big Vic before turning and playing a superb ball inside Targett for MacManaman to run onto.  As he burst into the box, Targett slid in from miles away and clattered him.  It looks a penalty all day long but the ref gives a goal kick.  Hang on… so he didn’t touch the ball and it’s not a foul?  Really?  How lucky was Targett there?  What a stupid tackle that was, lunging in like a twat.

Having given that one for us, the ref (Stuart Attwell, refereeing his first Premier League game for 2 years since being demoted for being shite) then has another shocker as Brunt steams through the back of Tadic and hoofs him up in the air.  That’s mandatory booking but not today where it’s just a free kick.  It’s not he referee’s fault that we waste it however.

West Brom have a couple of half chances from a couple of corners as Dawson loses Fonte and heads it with the top of his head and over the bar and then Attwell has another beast as the next corner is headed straight up in the air and as Stekelenburg comes for it, Dawson just ignores the ball and charges into him, knocking him over which causes havoc and we eventually scramble it clear.

We are trying to play football but it’s very sideways most of the time.  We have JWP and Davis playing in virtually the same position again and they’re too similar.  JWP is involved in some nice play out on the left with ends with J-Rod outmuscling Dawson and making his way across the top of the penalty area before slipping as he shot straight at Myhill.  Right on half time and Tadic puts over a superb cross from the right and J-Rod does brilliantly to get in front of Dawson but having done that, he really has to do better than heading wide of the near post.  Half time and this is going to be 0-0, surely as death, taxes, Spurs being twats and Brendan Rodgers being a smug tosser.

West Brom allow us to totally dictate the pace of play at the start of the second half and we decide that ‘walking pace’ is what we’ll go for as we pass it about in front of the bank of 8 players.  We have a half arsed shout for a penalty as Big Vic’s header strikes Flethcher who is about 6 inches away.  There would have been some scenes if Twatwell had given that after the Targett tackle.

Virgil van Dijk has been having a quiet and efficient debut and generally making it look easy but he gets caught out slightly when J-Rod does what he did in Midtjylland and presents the ball to the opposition on the left and one ball sees Rondon put in on goal inbetween Virgil and Targett but luckily he’s shite and blazes high and wide.  It’s time for the Berahino circus to hit town as he comes on and it’s Sir Rickie who goes off.  It’s quite sad really – the year at Liverpool has totally ruined him and he looks a much worse player than the one who left us in June 2014.

There’s a heart-in-mouth moment soon after as a hopeful and shite cross is hoisted into our box and Stekelenburg is unchallenged and has all the time in the world .... to drop it behind him but luckily he’s more awake than MacAulay and he flops on it on the line.  Graziano’s face as Maarten dropped the ball was priceless.  Pellè’s up the correct end of the pitch in our next attack as we break up play on the left and Steve Davis leads the charge, feeding Pellè on the left.  He slides the ball across just in front of J-Rod and it comes to Tadic.  He should hit it first time but it’s on his right foot so he pulls it back to JWP who hits it at the fucking moon.  Aaargh.  Do you remember how efficient Everton were with their breakaway football at St.Mary’s?  Well this was the opposite.

Mané is on for J-Rod in an attacking move and Maya is on for Cédric in a defensive one.  The former change nearly works as Myhill shanks a goal kick which is played first time by Davis to Mané.  He has a run at the last defender but takes a heavy touch and tamely hoofs the shot wide as the angle closed down. Injury time and nothing is happening except one shot from the home side where Craig Gardner thought he was Carlos Alberto as the ball was rolled to him on the right but he shanked it horribly, in keeping with the rest of the game.

Well that was tedious in the extreme.  We played, to coin a phrase from Gordon Strachan, propaganda football where it looks good on the stats in terms of possession but we didn’t do anything with it. Two shots on target for us and one for them is the stat that tells you it was crap.  Tony Pulis did shed light on the non-penalty though as he criticised MacManaman for diving.  Fair play to him.  No matter how many times I see the tackle, I still can’t see that he definitely dived but there must be enough evidence of it for the manager of the player in question to call him out.  The interpretation seems to be that he dived before any contact was made whereas if he’d continued his run he’d have been clattered or got through on goal.

Ronald bemoaned our lack of cutting edge but was also pleased with the clean sheet and ‘if you can’t win, don’t lose’ philosophy is a decent one to have.  To be honest, starting the season with three away draws is not bad – the slightly worrying thing is that they have been against Newcastle, Watford and West Brom who will all be in the bottom 6 come the end of the season.  We seem to be getting the wrong balance in the side at the moment, particularly in away games.  Our away record has not been great for a while so maybe keeping it tight is the way to go.  Personally, against weaker sides who don’t have any pace up front like West Brom today, I feel we’d have been better going with Romeu and Big Vic, with Tadic in front of them.  As I’ve said before, JWP and Davis together does not work as there’s very little creativity.  Mané not being ready for 90 minutes was a blow as well and though J-Rod worked hard, you can see he’s not really back to his best as yet.  Shane Long must be a bit pissed off that he didn’t get on the pitch against his former club as well.  I always think he’s worth throwing on for the last 10 minutes just to bug the shit out of the tiring defenders and it’s surprising that with a substitution left in the bank, that neither JWP or Davis came off.  The main positive today was Virgil van Dijk who showed what he’s about with calm play out from the back which will give us more options including maybe playing with a back 3.  You could have Caulker (right foot giant), Fonte (organizer) and van Dijk (left foot, ball player) with Cédric and Bertrand on the flanks.  Bigger tests will come for Virgil defensively but today was a very good start and overall, that’s three clean sheets in a row in the league.

Oh look, a bigger test. Next up we have Manchester United at home who will be the best side we’ve played since Everton.  They’re certainly beatable and it would be very nice to beat them for the second time in a row and no doubt the Koeman v van Gaal issue will get some treatment in the build up..  Hopefully Sadio Mané starting will make us a little more creative and Ronald can find the right balance in midfield.  Clean sheets are a great launch pad and hopefully next Sunday we can actually get off the ground.