Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Premier League Match 7 - Leicester 0 Southampton 0



Out of the Way, Steptoe

Leicester City – Premier League Champions 2015/16.

No matter what is said on Sky or in the media, Leicester winning the league last year was the biggest achievement in domestic football ever, bearing in mind the difference in resources between the haves and the have nots.  People go on about Blackburn in ’95 as being similar but they had loads of cash compared to everyone else because of Jack Walker and it was before the days of Abramovich or Sheikh Mansour.  Man United or Chelsea or City winning it three times in a row is not even close to Leicester’s win last year.  They won’t win it this year of course but a run in the Champions League and a top half finish would be great for them and the memories are forever and all supporters of non-mega clubs can smile at the amount of teeth gnashing that Leicester’s title win will have caused in the corridors of the powers that be.  Chat shit, get banged.

They’ve started well in the Champions League this year with two wins out of two so more power to them.  They only lost one player in the summer but it was a big one in Kante who followed the cash to Chelsea like a spoilt little Lallana.  Claudio Ranieri has strengthened the rest of the squad with the money and they should be on for another good season.  Not everything will break their way this season like it did last and Vardy and Mahrez will do well to replicate last season’s heroics.  They’ve already struggled this season with the new rules on pulling shirts which means that Huth, Morgan and Fuchs have to actually defend rather than assault every player who stands near them.  I just realised that I said ‘new rules’.  It’s not a new rule, it’s just applying the existing ones.

So – bullshit fixture lists.  They get to play at home in the Champions League on Tuesday whereas we get to go to fucking Israel (which is not even geographically in Europe) on Thursday so they’ve had two extra days to prepare and no travelling.  I know it’s all about TV but surely there has to be some consideration for integrity of the competitions.  Here’s one for free - Europa on Tuesday, Champs League on Wednesday – sorted.  Anyway, here we are and we’ve reverted to our ‘West Ham’ line-up which is our strongest team.  Austin and Tadic in for Long and Hesketh up front, Hojbjerg and Davis in for Clasie and JWP in midfield and the first choice back 4 all present and correct.  Despite the rotation of the squad, I think it’s too much of a stretch to expect a win and Leicester haven’t lost at home for about 18 games so it isn’t going to be easy.  We’ve got Eric Black on the bench, fuck the Daily Telegraph.

Away we go and it’s a good start with Cedric getting in a good left footed cross and Charlie finding space in between Huth and Morgan to get a header in but straight at Schmeichel and he also gets his head on a Tadic cross next but this time he can’t get it on target.  Leictester aren’t showing anything yet and whenever they threaten to do so, Romeu is in and winning the ball and via Redmond, the ball ends up with Davo breaking forward.  He tries to chip it over the defence for Austin but it looks to have gone too far but with the angle against him, Charlie just hits it and it catches everyone out, flies past Schmeichel and pings off the far post and away.  Great effort and really unlucky.  If you’re not confident then you don’t even try that effort.

Leicester’s attacks are all breaking down but then we have a collector’s item – a mistake from Virgil.   He finds himself at right back and plays a shit house of a pass which gets half way to Fraser and straight to the one player you don’t want to give it to, fucking Steptoe Jamie Vardy.  Fraser does his best and sends him across the top of the penalty area and this delays him just long enough for Romeu to steam in and half block the shot.  The rebound comes out to Slimani and Romeu blocks it and then back to Vardy and Romeu blocks it again.  Absolutely fucking outstanding from Oriol and he celebrates like he’s just scored a worldie.

Hero has an attempt at turning villain next though as Romeu tries to find Fonte with a pass and fucks it up, straight to Slimani bearing down on goal but Jose gets his body in the way and Slimani hits the deck.  It’s a great tackle in my book but it would probably have been given as a penalty at one of the big clubs and despite being the Champions, Leicester don’t have that advantage as yet.  Half time and as long as we don’t shoot ourselves in the arse, we’re the better side here.

We’re back on it at the start of the second half and some lovely play by the ever impressive Hojbjerg and Davis sees the former slide Redmond through but he new Thierry Henry scuffs his shot straight at the keeper.  Virgil has recovered from his aberration in the first half and confidently brings the ball out of defence before playing the ball into Austin.  Two Leicester defenders seem to get in each others way and Austin turns with just Schmeichel to beat and he tried to bastard chip it and the keeper didn’t sit down like he was obviously supposed to do and pawed it away.  Fuck it.  You can’t have a go at Charlie because of the credit he has in the bank for the run he’s been on but fuck me, we do miss some chances as a team.

Drinkwater hits the side netting after a run in which he is shadowed all the way by Romeu and you can tell that Leicester are not happy with the way they are attacking as Steptoe is taken off and replaced with Okazaki who this season, comes on as a sub every game whereas last year he got substituted every game.  The substitution seems to put some life into Leicester and from a corner, Drinkwater again has a go and catches it well from the edge of the box but it’s straight down Fraser’s throat.

Saints show sporadically with Hojbjerg finding space for a low shot which is well saved but it’s mainly Leicester and there’s all sorts of carnage in our box as everyone leaves a Fuchs long throw, Fraser paws it out and when the cross comes back in, Okazaki gets up well and flicks a header just wide.  Tadic and Austin are replaced with Long and JWP and so we reach the 90th minute and all three subs get involved.  Martina takes a quick throw whilst no one was concentrating, Long hooked it back from the corner and it runs to JWP, 15 yards out and he fucking leans back and creams it over the bar.  Golden opportunity to win it and utter shite.

We almost make it even worse in the last minute as Fraser produces a very tired looking shite skidding kick which is knocked forward.  It’s reminiscent of Kelvin Davis’ shite kick against Leicester at home last season but whereas last year the chance fell to Vardy and he buried it, this year it falls to Ulloa who is dogshit and he hits it first time, Row Z.

There’s isn’t time to restart once the ball is back from Ulloa’s attempt to hit a satellite and so we have another point on the road which is good… but there’s a nagging feeling that we should have had all three.  Charlie Austin will blame himself for trying to chip Schmeichel but we can’t criticise him too much as he still looks the only player we have who is going to score.  For me, a worse miss was JWP at the end as it’s unforgiveable to not even test the keeper from that range.

Also, the focus will be on the Austin miss but we have to remember that we got lucky on a couple of occasion when we sloppily gifted chances to Leicester with shite back passes though it was fantastic work from Romeu to bale Virgil out of the shit when he fucked up.  The defence is looking great again overall – 6 games without conceding a goal is impressive going no matter who you are playing against.  Claude was quick to highlight the defensive work of the whole team in creating that record and long may it continue.  The post match interviews were almost trying to play on Claude’s language skills and trying to get him to admit he was angry with Charlie for missing.  He was disappointed of course but respectful of the fact that we’ve come to the Champions home ground after playing on Thursday 2000 miles away and we’ve got something out of the game.

There were some major performers in red and white out there today with Romeu and Hojbjerg being the pick of the bunch in midfield.  The triple-block from Romeu deserves a place in the memory alongside the Triple-Niemi against the ridiculously good Arsenal side of the early 2000s.  Romeu is turning into a great player and will only get better with regular football which aside from one loan season when he was farmed out by Chelsea to Germany, he has never had in his career.  The same applies to Hojbjerg who looks a fantastic player with every game he plays.  Elsewhere, José Fonte looked back to his best which is vindication for the decision to leave him at home for the trip to Israel.

It’s time for an international break and we’ve got two weeks of Gareth Interesting Southgate but we can take our mind off it by knowing that we’re going to see Sofiane Boufal when it’s over and hopefully he can help us carry a bigger threat in the final third. When the England squad did get announced, there were deserved places for Ryan Bertrand and Fraser Forster and if there’s any merit in the thinking of the latest England manager then both should start… oh hang on, Alex Chamberlain is back in the squad after doing fuck all this season so merit is out the window.  Hang on, Glenn Johnson!!! There are hasbeens and then there are those who never were anything other than complete shite.

Back to Saints and I read that we have the same number of points and same goal difference as we had last season after the same number of games.  I must look up my list of Meltdown Fuckwits on Twitter to check if they’re ok or admitting that they might have been wrong.


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