....for Tadic to Shoot!!!
Stoke away is one of the less appetising fixtures of the
season and no matter how much better they are than under Pulis, they’re still
Stoke. I was one who scoffed at the
appointment of Mark Hughes but fair play, he’s done well and they’ve signed
some very good player, only let down by still having Charlie Adam who is still
a complete scrote. They’ve had a similar
season to ourselves – a few games of great form, followed by a few games where
they look useless. Typically though,
they’re on a good run now and their key defender Ryan Shawcross is back for
today. He really should go to the Euros
and be part of the starting XI but he won’t as shite like Jones, Smalling and
Cahill are all Roy’s boys. How good
might a Shawcross and Stones partnership be? We'll never know.
Elsewhere, Stoke have Shaqiri, Arnautovic, Affelay, Bojan
and Joselu so they’re a handful. There’s
been a lot of talk at Saints this week about ambition and the chase for
Europe. You hope it’s true but after 3
dodgy results in a row, the cynical among us would wonder if it’s a bit of PR
to make every player interviewed talk about pushing for the Europa League. On that score, Stoke have gone above us in
the past few weeks so this game is key to any hopes of finishing in the top 6
or 7. How much do we want it? Some good news is that it looks like J-Rod is
ready to play for the Under-21s which should see him back in contention for the
first team for the Liverpool game next week.
After that there is an international break and Charlie Austin should be
back after that. For today though
there’s a choice of Pellè, Long, Mané and Tadic for the forward roles… oh and
Juanmi.
I picked up a bit of flak last week for my slating of Juanmi
but I stand by it. I don’t give a shite
how good he looked on You Tube whilst playing for Malaga – as a player he has
to find a way to be effective in the English Premier League and he’s completely
failed to do that so far.
Today we have to replace Jose Fonte and his job as captain
goes to Steven Davis and his job as centre back goes to Ryan Bertrand which as
far as I know is the first time he’s been asked to play centre back in four man
defence. Usually against Stoke you have
an aerial threat to deal with but they don’t really play that way any more which
means that Yoshida is on the bench. I
guess his less than stellar contribution to the Sunderland goal last week
didn’t help him either. Elsewhere, Shane
Long is back to replace Sadio Mané who lost the toss of a coin with Dusan Tadic as to who starts.
We start well and have the first effort on goal as Long
curls in a good cross from the left which Graziano headed goalwards, only for
Butland to comfortably tip it over the bar for a corner. Davis takes the corner from the left and
whilst Shawcross was wrestling Virgil, Graziano has lost Wollscheid and flicks
a header over Butland and in for his first goal since an Under 12s game in
Italy. No matter how much they change
their style from the Pulis days, it will always be amusing to see Stoke concede
a goal from a set piece. Great start and important in that it quietens the noisy Stoke crowd.
Stoke themselves seem a bit subdued and we’re looking very good and Martina pulls out a superb pass
up the line to send Long away up the right.
Tadic is getting into the middle but Long only has eyes for one thing
and hammers it and Butland blocks it.
It’s all going really well and then fucking hell it’s
2-0. A cross is hoisted in from the
right which Graziano has to retrieve from the opposite touchline and he plays
it to Tadic who finds a bit of space before poking it through to the galloping
Italian who curls a shot into the far corner which appeared to go over
Butland’s arm. Who cares, 2-fucking-0.
One of the Stoke threats clearly doesn’t fancy it much and
Shaqiri goes off to be replaced by Bojan.
Romeu is bossing the midfield for us and he strides forward to lash an
effort just over. One day soon, one of these
is going to fly into the top corner and he will celebrate by doing a Ketsbaia and kicking the shite out of an advertising hoarding.
Right on half time Stoke are attacking and we break it up
with Davis playing a great ball up the line to send Long away again. This time he plays a perfect ball to Tadic,
right onto his favoured left foot but he chops back onto his right, taking out
Shawcross and the keeper but instead of just rolling it into the empty net with
his right, he tried to take another touch and a defender gets into rob him and
the chance has gone. It should be 3-0
and it should be all over. Just fucking hit it man…
So, the Tadic miss will be the pivotal point of the game if
Stoke come back in the second half which of course they will because they can;t be much worse than they have been so far.
Their main player is Arnautovic and he’s acting like an arsehole and
blaming everyone when he loses the ball.
Good player but a bit of an arsehole and he has a hairstyle just screams
‘dickhead’ at you. Anyway, it’s half
time probably as dominant a half as we’ve produced all season.
Sure enough, it takes all of 7 minutes for Stoke to find a
goal as Martina gets caught out defensively as Afellay gets down the left and
crosses and Virgil doesn’t cover himself in glory as Arnautovic gets in front
of him and flicks it into the net giving Fraser no chance. Bollocks, 2-1, let’s all swear at Tadic.
Here we go – all Stoke now and after passing it about on the
edge of our box, Arnautovic shoots again and Fraser parries strongly. Five minutes later and it looks like Diouf
must score but Virgil threw himself at it and managed to deflect it for a corner. Clasie is having a bit of an ineffective time
in the centre of midfield so he’s off to be replaced with JWP who immediately
gets on the ball and starts us passing it again.
Saints have weathered the storm a bit and are looking
dangerous again. Pellè picks it up about
30 yards out and chips a lovely ball over the defence and Tadic is onto it,
Butland comes flying out and takes him out, penalty…. Goal kick. Fuck off Lee Mason, he’s absolutely murdered
him. Linesman useless, referee useless. Booked for diving then? No, nothing. Butland wouldn;t have been sent off because it's not a goalscoring opportunity as Tadic would have pissed about with it for 10 minutes having gone round the keeper.
Anyhow, Tadic is off to be replaced with Mané as we approach the 80
minute mark and Stoke have sent for the giraffe with Crouch coming on. Up front for us, Long has obviously been
bugging the shit out of Wollscheid all game as when the ball gets played up to
Shane, the Stoke defender can’t even be bothered to make it look like a fair
challenge and just wraps an arm round him and throws him on the floor.
Up steps JWP and hits a pearler which beats Butland all ends up and
crashes back off the bar.
It’s almost like Lee Mason has been reading the Mark
Twattenburg guide to refereeing as ensures that everyone is talking about him
afterwards with another piece of shite refereeing as Mané competes with Pieters
for a header and there’s a clash of heads.
Red card as the Stoke player hits the deck. Are you completely taking the piss? Couldn’t wait to get the card out. Wanker. Oh
look, the red card has magical healing properties as Pieters is alright as soon
as the card is brandished.
A few minutes later and a few long balls into the box repelled by Virgil and Maya, who came on for Targett when they threw the giraffe on and Mason gets something right and blows the final whistle. It's a good job that his complete clown show didn't mean we dropped any points.
Usually
when I’m here at the end of the game moaning about the referee it’s on the back
of a defeat and probably sounds like sour grapes so it’s from a position of
strength in that we’ve won the game that I can have a pop at Lee Mason. It’s the big decisions that define a referee
like penalties and red cards and that means that Lee Mason is fucking
woeful. The only people int he ground who didn't think
that was a penalty was two – Mason and the lino. Butland certainly knew, as did the two other
closest Stoke players. When I saw it
first time I didn’t even shout as it was that obvious. It’s a bit like giving it a prolonged
‘owzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttt!’ when all three stumps are flat on the
ground when you’re playing cricket. It’s
out, it’s obvious, no need to appeal.
Goal kick – twat. So Butland
hasn’t fouled him but Tadic hasn’t dived either cos he hasn;t been booked so how has he ended up on the
floor then? I guess he just fell
over. The red card for Mané is just as
ridiculous. He’s not had his elbow up at
any point and at worst they’ve just clashed heads so what has he seen that
makes that a red card, brandished with a flourish and very quickly. Nothing was kicking off and no Stoke players
were furious so he didn’t have to act quickly to calm it all down. Fucking useless refereeing which has been
universally condemned on both incidents.
With any luck, the Sadio dismissal will be overturned but we will never
get back what felt like about an hour we had to endure, waiting for Stoke to equalize.
Off
course, it should never have come to that as it should have been 3-0 and game
over at half time but Tadic had a complete mare with that chance. Just fucking hit it man! It’s on your left foot so why swap it to your
weaker foot. If he shoots first time and hits the
keeper then everyone goes ‘oooh’ and we move on. As it is, everyone goes ‘c*nt’ and is talking
about it for weeks and you’re getting the piss ripped out of you on Match of
the Day.
On
a more positive note, early season Graziano was back and what a player he is
when he plays like this. There is a
massive difference between his level of performance when on form and when not
and I think we all know by now that he just has to ride the wave whilst it’s
going well. James Beattie was very
similar in that regard, a world beater for a few games and then non-footballer
for a few. The fact is that when he
plays well he’s unplayable and even the much vaunted Shawcross couldn’t get
near him today.
Ronald
got this game spot on as well from the selection of Bertrand at centre back to
the leaving out of Mané. Yoshida was
brought on to combat the Giraffe coming on and we managed to hold out
relatively comfortably and bringing on JWP for Clasie gave got us going again
and helped get us some impetus again going forwards. It would have been nice if JWP’s free kick
had gone in instead of hitting the bar as it would have been a goal of the season
contender but there you go, you can’t have everything. Virgil was immense again in defence and I was
also impressed by Romeu again (Big Vic back next week), Bertrand, Davis, Long
and whisper it softly, Cuco Martina who was pretty good throughout.
Pre-match
I had this down as a routine 2-0 defeat but the players showed that they are
taking the quest for Europe seriously and if we get a result against Liverpool
at St Mary’s next week then we may be fishing out the passports for a trip to
somewhere shite in a qualifying round.
Unfortunately, Steven Caulker won’t be playing for Liverpool next week
but the good news is that he won’t be playing for us either so we may do a
little better than the 6-1 defeat we managed last time in the Capital One cup.
Dusan.... just-a-fucking-shoot
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