Premier League Match 25 - Southampton 1 West Ham 0

Recycling Old Pictures... I wonder why!

Well at least Andy Carroll’s injured.  That’s what I thought when I saw that this fixture was coming up.  I remember it being a reported about three weeks ago that Carroll was out for six weeks and with his injury record I expected that to be sixteen weeks but oh joy, he’s made it back early.  Not many teams would worry unduly about facing Andy Carrroll but he always seems to score against us and we always seem to find ourselves in the situation where Yoshida is playing against him and he hasn’t got a clue when confronted with a physical centre forward.  Hopefully, Maya will be on the bench today and stay there for 95 minutes.  Carroll’s rare periods of being fit are similar to Daniel Sturridge.  They’ll be fit for the game against Saints, score and then get injured again.

It has to be said that West Ham have done very well this season and currently sit in 6^th, one place and five points ahead of our good selves.  That gap extending to eight points would not be good whereas a gap of two can be overhauled next week so it’s a six-pointer really.  Ex-Saints loanee Michail Antonio has hit a bit of form recently and scored a few goals and Bilic has taken players from the Championship like him and blended them with good foreign players like Payet, Valencia and Kouyate.  They have a very strong squad and if they have a weak link then for me has to be the defence against pace so hopefully some joy will be had for Shane Long and we could really do with a return to form from Sadio Mané.  We should have beaten them at Upton Park but that was back when we were still trying to only play for 60 minutes and win matches.

Considering he’s never played for them, it’s a bit odd that both Dildo Brothers and Bilic all have spent time commenting on Charlie Austin.  Get over it chaps – he’s playing against you today.  Other than that, the Saints news in the media has been restricted to the Fraser show from Tuesday and the resurrecting of the Vic to Spurs or Arsenal story.  Hardly a story.

At last it’s not Allardyce any more.  Previous games against West Ham has always meant the ball in the air all game and that would be fun today in a gusting wind, the force of which is multiplied by 10 when you’re walking across the Itchen Bridge to the game, trying to ensure everyone with you doesn’t get blown into the road.

The pre-match press conference had revealed that Matty Targett was injured and so, having got another clean sheet at Arsenal I expected a back 4 again but no… the prophecy is coming true and Maya is in the team with Ryan Bertrand moving to wing back.  The two in midfield are Big Vic and Clasie and Graziano is back in place of Dusan Tadic who is on the bench with Charlie Austin.  Despite us having an extra striker fit for this game, Juanmi has still made the bench after his ‘fuck all expect falling on his arse’ masterclass against Arsenal.  Mark Twattenburg is refereeing today – oh joy.

5.30 and kick off time, well it probably is.  Someone had better check that the powers that be haven’t moved the fucking kick off time since we all got here.  I have a mate who’s a travelling West Ham fan and he ended up giving up his ticket for the game as he had waited until their Cup game with Liverpool was over to book train travel, by which time the cost had shot up, by which time there was a potential tube strike, by which time he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back to Ipswich where he lives and therefore decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Anyway, away we go and Saints start well , closing West Ham down and Song dawdles on the ball in his stupid fucking glasses which make him look like Edgar Davids but not play anything like him.  Shane nicks it off him and after an exchange of passes with Sadio, hands up a cross which Cresswell stands and watches as Cédric bursts past him and thumps a good header goalwards, only for Adrian to spring right and keep it out.

We look by far the better side and win a corner which Clasie takes and it’s cleared away to the other side of the pitch where Fonte retrieves it, plays it to Mané who plays a superb first time pass into the area to Big Vic.  He manages to poke it across goal as the tackle comes in and Maya Yoshida is still up from the original corner and reacts first to sweep it into the net with Cresswell gaain not covering himself in glory as he stood and watched.  9 minutes and 1-0.  Game over as we don’t let in any goals these days….

It’s great that Maya has poped up with a goal but it’s his defenind that’s been the problem this season and he’s in proximity as Valencia pulls out what look like a ridiculous dive as the ball runs out for a goal kick.  Later replays show that Maya has clumsily trodden on his foot and it should have been a penalty.  I guess sometimes you got to be grateful that Twattenburg is a shit referee.  I don’t get it – if he thought there was contact then it’s a penalty, if he thought there was no contact then it’s a dive and he should have booked him, wrong though that would have been.

Saints are creating problems up front and Reid and Collins are struggling to cope with the pace and persistence of Mané and Long and Reid hauls down Sadio as he turned him to concede a free kick.  Ryan Bertrand chips it intot he mixer and Graziano chests down and then plays an air shot in similar style to Sadio at Man United.  In that instance there seemed to be a collective awakening of the West Ham players and Saints seemed to take a step back.

Ex-Saints Michail Antonio fired over a low cross which was well cleared by Maya before over on the other side, Payet suckered in Big Vic and threw himself to the floor under minimal contact to win a free kick.  He whipped it in himself onto reid’s head and his point blank header was parried away by Fraser.  You’ll never beat The Wall.  The West Ham pressure gives us the chance to break and Mané is on the charge on a 3 on 3 break but unfortunately, one of our three is José Fonte who butchers the pass to Graziano and the chance has gone.

Half time and so far so good on the scoreboard but the way we have allowed West Ham to run the game for the last 20 minutes is a bit reminiscent of some of our half and half performances from earlier in the season.  The opening ten minutes of the second half is more of the same with nothing much going on in either penalty area and then the complexion of the game completely changes as Big Vic misses a ball in midfield which bounces for Payet.  Vic hunts him down and goes in hard, missing the ball and down goes Payet like he’s been fucking murdered.  West Ham players surround Twattenburg who suddenly realises he has a stage and everyone is looking at him.  He goes for the yellow card and then changes his mind and out comes the red.  Fuck.  Winston Reid, who was the chief protagonist in calling for Vic to be sent off, then tries to act as a peacemaker to the Saints players like an absolute wanker.

Whilst we’re all waiting for Payet to stop acting like a fucking pussy and get up, both managers make substitutions with Romeu coming on for the sacrificed Mané and West Ham threw on Byram and bloody Andy Carroll for Tomkins and Moses.  The fact that Bilic made two subs before Payet has got to his feet hardly suggests that Payet is remotely injured.

West Ham have a bit of possession as you’d expect and we settle in for half an hour of playing on the break.  It’s Route 1 at its finest as Fraser booms one forwards, Red fucks up the header and it hits the retreating Collins and drops to Shane Long, one touch, left foot, past the keeper, clips the bar and over.  Shit.  Back to defending then.

To be honest, West Ham don’t look like scoring and there’s no quality in the final third.  You’re happy is limited players like the twat with the glasses tries to curl one into the top corner from 25 yards which he’s never going to do.  Byram is putting =g in crosses from the right but they’re all floaty and harmless and Virgil and José are handling Carroll well.  Charlie Austin comes on for Pellè and new signing Emenike is on for them for Antonio meaning Payet has fully recovered from his horrific injury.

Emenike gets his head on a Valencia cross which did have a bit of pace on it but heads well wide and we have a bit of fortune as Valencia hits one which is heading goalwards but it hits Carroll and plops down for Fraser to pick up.  With two minutes of normal time left, Romeu picks up a ball in midfield and drives forwards, eventually putting Austin through on the right but he snatches at the shot and it’s wide of the near post.  It is too much to expect him to score with every shot though it would have been a nice thing for the Dildo Brothers to talk about afterwards.

Twattenburg has a golden opportunity to even up the red card count as the clock reaches 90 and Byram hits Bertrand with a stamp tackle on top of his ankle.  Ryan just hops away without going down and no one surrounds the referee so it’s a yellow card.  So, a more dangerous, more contact, more intent tackle is a yellow card.  Shit referee.  I guess in some ways it’s not going to attract as much attention if both teams are down to 10.

There is one major alarm as a cross from the West Ham right is floating over everyone and Cédric has bran ache and manages to volley it towards the back post which has Fraser scrambling across the goal before hacking it clear.  JWP is on for the clearly knackered Clasie and eventually Twattenburg decides that he’s gathered enough attention for today and blows the whistle.  Get in.

Another win and another clean sheet and happy days and definitely the sort of game we would not have got something out of earlier in the season.  Because he would want it this way – let’s start with Mark Twattenburg.  Remember the Norwich away game when Vic last got sent off and we conceded within about a minute of the brandishing of Twattenburg’s red card.  On that occasion he was right but this time it’s debateable.  Like I said, he was clearly going to give a yellow card but the rolling around and the West Ham players surrounding him, gave Twattenburg the opportunity to play to the gallery and make it all about him.  Like an actor who can’t resist one last curtain call, he responded.  It was a dumb tackle and it looked like Big Vic was reacting against losing the ball.  It’s clumsy and not malicious and he’s hardly touched him and Payet has made a massive meal out of it.  Surely as a referee you’re supposed to be able to sort this out in your head, if you’re not an attention seeking whore.  Compare and contrast with the Sam Byram stamp tackle on Ryan Bertrand.  He saw it clear as day and deemed it only worthy of a yellow.  Different referees having different interpretations is one thing but the same referee within half an hour.  In my opinion, Vic should have got a yellow and Byram a red but the Twatt thinks it the other way round.  Twattenburg has a crime sheet against us as long as your arm and today is another example of what a shite referee he is.

Ronald preferred to focus on the positives which were of course, the three points, the performance of Yoshida and the performance of the whole team defensively. He said he’ll be having a word with Big Vic.  I guess he might feel that he’s been here before.  I don’t feel that we should be fearful of the 5 game ban that Vic will now get as we have Oriol Romeu to step in and do the same job and he’s been excellent of late.  He’s probably not quite as strong defensively but he offers a lot more going forward and appears to be able to control himself and not give the referee the opportunity to send him off which is always a bonus.

When it was 11 v 11, I was getting the feeling it was one of those games where we played well for half an hour and then eased off.  From the half hour mark to the sending off, we were very ordinary and didn’t get anything going at all.  Post red card we just concentrated on keeping the shape and making sure they were going to have to do something special to score which in truth they never looked likely of doing.  Even bloody Carroll didn’t look like scoring.  It almost seemed like a tactic of ours to let Byram cross the ball because every time he did it was a terrible loopy cross which is easy to defend against.  Most of the time we managed to have José or Virgil marking Carroll so he couldn’t win the clean ball he’d have had more chance of getting against Yoshida.

I cringed when I saw Maya in the starting XI but he played well at the back and came up with a goal.  It was interesting in his post match interview that he acknowledged he’d made mistakes this season due to lack of concentration and said it was up to him to change perceptions of him.  Personally, I think that’s a great attitude.

So, we consolidate 7^th place and are now just two points below West Ham in 6^th and four behind Man United in 5^th.  In the past 5 games we’ve got 13 points out of 15 and not let in a goal.  I will break with my usual mantra of only looking one game ahead at a time and have a look at the 5 games that Big Vic will be suspended for.  They are Swansea away, Chelsea home, Bournemouth away, Sunderland home, Stoke away.  Chelsea at home looks the hardest out of that lot but if we can get 10-15 points out of that lot then it could look very interesting.  We’re probably just a likely to get between 0-2.

So, not a bad few weeks, 13 points out of 15, 7 scored, 0 conceded and a Manager of the Month award.  Hands up if you were on the ‘Koeman out’ bandwagon before this little run.