Pre-Season Pre-amble

Off to America we went to ingratiate ourselves with Under Armour at their base and play a friendly against DC United’s Under 23.  I was expecting Captain America and Iron Man in the opposition but in the event it was a pretty poor side who we beat easily with two different sides in each half, not that the result was important but we won it 2-0 with a good left footed hit from JWP and a late penalty from J-Rod after Sam McQueen was fouled, only he wasn’t and it was a shit decision.  There were lots of interviews and features on the You Tube Channel where everyone praised Under Armour.  How nice and “Brand Focussed” of us… cringe.

Following that it was off to Holland for a training camp and to play friendlies in a location and against opposition that was obviously picked with Ronald Koeman in mind. First up was an easy 4-0 win against PEC Zwolle which came from three first half goals from Austin, Redmond and then Redmond again after a decent run and shot, before a boring second half and a last minute goal from the spot by Højbjerg after he was brought down at the end of a mazy dribble into the box.  Already the team shape is beginning to become obvious and the interesting thing is that Nathan Redmond is going to play as a striker.  This was followed by a 2-1 win over FC Twente.  Virgil put us ahead after loitering in the penalty area for a while and then Sam Gallagher scored a second when he basically picked up the keeper and threw him over before two defenders managed to kick the loose ball against eachother and into the net.  How it wasn't a free kick I’ll never know but 2-0 to us before they pulled one back after shite defending at a corner.  The last game of the week was a 1-0 win against Groningen which was a bit more competitive but it was ruined when one defender trashed badly through Redmond to get booked and then pick up a second yellow for a shirt pull on 35 minutes so we had the rest of the game against 10 men and Austin scored with a  flick header with 15 to go.

All three of these sides are in the Eredivisie but the bottom half of that appears to be Championship standard at best.  The highlight of the Saints media coverage of this tour was Jordy Clasie falling off a bike which was very amusing.  By the end of the week, all bar our Portuguese champions were back and training.

With the home friendlies coming up, we had time to bolster the squad with two players that had been rumoured for a while.  First up was Alex McCarthy joining from Palace to be an understudy to Fraser.  At 26 he’s a good age and fills the gap left by Superkelv’s retirement and Stekelenburg’s desire to be a sub for Koeman again.  Also, it allowed Gazza to go out on loan to Rayo Vallecano for a season so I assume we’re just going to go with two keepers and use one of the kids if needs be with Harry Lewis seeming to be the next in line.

Also coming was Jeremy Pied who is a right back who has played for Claude twice before, most recently at Nice last season.  I guess this is the death knell for Cuco Martina’s time at Saints but you never know.  As far as I’m concerned, this is going to be another upgrade in the squad so happy days but I don’t expect either of the new boys to be first choice.

I rocked up to the Espanyol game not knowing what to expect regarding players we'd have available or the strength of the opposition. We set up with a very obvious diamond midfield shape with Long and Redmond as the two strikers with Tadic just behind them, JWP and Clasie left and right with Romeu at the back of the diamond.  I could be all trendy and call it the pivot position but that’s American bollocks.  The back four only contained one player who you want near the first team and that was a Virgil, with the rest being made up of Sam McQueen, Yoshida and Martina. There was however the reassuring presence of Big Fraser in goal.

I was determined to watch this game, not giving a shit about the result but wanted to see a pattern of play and players looking comfortable in the formation. One of Claudio Ranieri’s major achievements last year was to not fix what wasn't broken with Leicester and they carried on with the same formation as they had under the previous manager, everyone knew their job and it worked pretty well to put it mildly.  We were amazing ourselves in the second half of the season so the question for me is, why change?

Straight away today you could see that McQueen was like a fish up a tree but others looked uncomfortable as well, notably Clasie who looked a bit lost whenever he strayed from the centre of the pitch. Oriol Romeu was charging around which is not necessarily what you want from your sole defensive midfielder and the first time he got caught the wrong side of the ball he just launched the Espanyol player up in the air. This was pretty funny but it would've been a yellow card in a Premier League game.

We played some nice football and created a few chances for JWP and Redmond with Redmond bringing a good save from the keeper and JWP hitting one sideways and straight into Redmond.  As the first half went on, it became obvious that the two strikers have been detailed to cover the wings when we don't have the ball so at times we were playing a 4-6-0 formation. Espanyol nearly scored when a short corner routine saw one of their strikers totally make Martina look like an idiot and he smashed it shot against the near post but I'm sure Fraser had it covered. We somewhat surprisingly took the lead from the corner as JWP’s delivery from the left was easily headed in by Romeu. Espanyol, clearly annoyed, weren't shy of putting a tackle in and we got another free kick on the edge of the box which Tadic curled over the wall only for the keeper to pull off a really good save.

The start of the second half saw the appearance of McCarthy, Austin, Steve Davis, and Pierre Højbjerg in place of Fraser, Redmond, JWP and Clasie. You could tell immediately that Pierre certainly has something on the ball to add to good physical presence. Maybe Guardiola knew what he was talking about after all. Chasing back on the left hand side certainly doesn't suit Charlie Austin's game much but he tried his best but Espanyol equalised after Virgil was penalised for going in clumsily on the edge of the box and the ref decided it was a penalty, of the very soft contact-outside-the-box variety. Alex McCarthy's first action a Saints goalkeeper was to pick the ball out of the net as he dived in the wrong way.

To be fair, Saints tried to win it and Austin flashed to the header just wide and McQueen put in a couple of decent crosses from the left but the pace inevitably dropped and so it ended 1-1.

I'm clinging to the fact that the formation didn't work because of the full backs that we had playing today who are essentially our third choices in each position. Cedric or Pied would've made things better down the right in the same way that Bertrand or Targett would have improved the left hand side. No need to panic as yet.

I thought Romeu looked good when he calmed down a little bit and Tadic was promising at the front of the diamond but he did get very sloppy around the hour mark and started giving the ball away a lot. The main new boys Redmond and Højbjerg were very impressive. I can't help feeling that a defensive midfield pair of Romeu and Højbjerg would be very impressive but that, it appears is last years formation. I'll stop going on about this when the diamond is proved to be effective in the Premier League.

Friendlies are funny things when you are a regular attender of games. Lots of people there of course aren't regular attenders so they don't really know how to behave or to stop the kids kicking the shit out of the back of your chair or to be more specific my 11-year-old sons chair. I found it all very amusing and reminded him that he was a royal pain in the arse he was when I first started taking him along. Also, unallocated seats also causes problems as you end up with people arriving late and just standing in the alleyway is looking for seats and blocking everyone else's view without the slightest awareness that this is what they are doing.

Fair play to the club though for putting on what is basically a free game though I do fail to see why everything in the refreshment outlets appears to have gone up 10%. There really is no need for a small bottle of soft drink to cost £2.20 when the same  bottle is £1.20 in the garage in Brittania Road.

Onto the Athletic Bilbao match and of course, as it’s the last game before the season starts I was expecting to see the first team in action more or less. Maya Yoshida was in the team instead of Jose Fonte who was a substitute but other than that we more or less got it. Matt Targett was at left back instead of the injured Bertrand but the diamond midfield was made up out of Romeu at the base, Højbjerg and Davis night and left with Tadic at the front. My previous reservations about the diamond midfield were quickly dispelled somewhat by the fact that as suspected, having proper fallbacks in the team made a huge difference. Cedric was playing with the confidence you'd expect from a European champion and Matt Targett started superbly out on the left. With Virgil controlling the defence and pinging ridiculous 70 yard balls out to the wings, things were looking very good indeed. Romeu was anchoring the midfield strongly and Højbjerg and Davis were closing down anything that moved in the Athletic midfield.  

It's just upfront. Tadic wasn't really doing it and though Redmond and Long were being complete pests with their harrying and closing down, there wasn't a lot of guile upfront nor many shots on goal. Targett poked one wide and then Davis fired over after the keeper had to save well from Redmond. Redmond did it go close when he got to play through on the inside right channel and he shot was partially saved by the keeper and bounced up onto the post and away. It was all Saints but we eventually scored on the counter-attack as Davis hooked a ball in behind the defence which had pushed up and Shane Long dealt with the last defender who tried to pull him back before calmly slotting past the keeper and into the far corner. Nice goal and a nice finish.

The second half saw the appearance of Pied and right back and interestingly, Højbjerg went to the base of the diamond with Clasie and JWP right and left with Davis instead of Tadic in the advanced role. Athletic were offering nothing as an attacking threat and it was hard to tell if they just weren't very good or if Saints just weren't letting them play. Certainly, we seemed to be all over them whenever we lost the ball. There weren't many chances created in the second half for either Long or Redmond or for the substitutes Austin and Rodriguez. Austin was putting himself about strongly but his only chance in front of goal what a header from a Pied cross which went just wide. Pied looked quite decent down the right hand side showing a willingness to get forward and showing that he is a safety first defender who doesn't look like he's going to fuck it up every time the ball goes near him, unlike Martina. Virgil went on a big slalom run through the entire Athletic team before trying to find a striker with a pass instead of shooting which I'm sure he regrets now.

In the end we won 1-0 without Fraser having to make any sort of save. I personally was encouraged by the fact the squad looks strong. If we assume that aside from Fonte for Yoshida, the starting 11 against Watford will be the 11 that started today, the back ups in most positions don't make the team weaker. For example, JWP and Clasie are not a significant downgrade on Davis and Højbjerg in midfield. Højbjerg was superb as a defensive midfielder so I'm sure he'll get that job when Romeu is suspended which will probably be in the sixth game of the season after he's picked up yellow cards in the first five. The one exception to this is at centre half where any long-term absence of José or Virgil would massively weaken us.

I just have this nagging doubt about the amount of goals we are going to score this year. If the front three that played today played all season then we need Long to get 15 goals and Redmond and Tadic to get 10 each. Do you see that happening? I have to admit that I do not.

So roll on Watford on Saturday. Without knowing anything too much about Watford's preseason and players they've signed, I can only speculate that we will be absolutely fine if we go ahead in games but we as supporters may have to learn how to be incredibly patient this season whilst home games in particular remain 0-0. As for the whole season, I would not expect us to finish where we did last year, in fact I'd be happy with finishing in the top half. If we can achieve that and get into the knockout stages of the Europa league then I would consider that a good season.

We will certainly play good football under Claude and I cannot imagine us ever reverting to banging the ball up to the front man like we did at times under the Lying Dutchman. I was reminded by a post on Twitter of the Midtjylland away game which was definitely the worst performance in terms of style of play by a Saints team since Ian Branfoot was the manager. We will play decent stuff this year and keep the ball on the ground.

Last years big points total was achieved by us being very good at getting results out of the big teams. We did that in the main by having two defensive midfielders who impressively screened the back four so it does concern me a bit how we will adapt to playing against teams who dominate possession against us. I guess we will find out soon enough as our second game is away at Manchester United and one would hope that Claude is not the sort to stubbornly stick to one formation and one way of playing no matter who we are against.

We still need to address the cover at centre back issue but that maybe isn’t as pressing as getting a No.10 who can definitely score 10-15 goals per season.  I’ve wanted us to bid for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain all summer and that doesn’t change now.  Depends if he wants to play football or not I guess.  A player like him would be ideal at the point of the diamond which would give the option of playing Tadic up front on the left where he’s give natural balance and where all his good performances for Saints have come from.

We can but speculate until it all starts.  I’m a bit fearful but mainly optimistic and excited about what’s to come.  Bring it on.