Premier League Match 18 - Chelsea 1 Southampton 0

After the complete fiasco against Leicester, we really need is to be playing away at Stamford Bridge next but here we are facing a Chelsea side have not set the world alight this season but are still in very good form and a very difficult team to play against.

For once, the build up to the game has had some interesting content with Pellegrino basically saying that he only wanted players who were 100% committed to the club. He also went on about connection and there not being enough of it. Most reaction from fans that I read focused on how they can be any connection between the players when he keeps changing the fucking team every week. What I think Pellegrino means about connection is the connection between the fans and the team. He spoke about this connection during his initial interview when he got the job as manager. What I think he is getting at is about players cheating the fans by not putting in 100 percent effort because they basically don’t want to be playing for Saints any more. He is right of course but would he prove it with his team selection today.

Now, unless you have been living under a rock for the last six months, you know exactly who he was talking about but it was still a surprise to see Virgil van Dijk on the bench. I have to give plaudits to Pellegrino for doing this and he obviously read my blog last week which is why he’s decided to do it. Oh yes. Looking at the players selected, it’s obvious that we’re going for the back five approach which we had against Manchester City with Stephens, Yoshida and Hoedt as the centre backs, Cedric and Bertrand as full backs and a midfield four of JWP, Romeu, Hojbjerg and Redmond with Gabbiadini having the whole Chelsea half of the pitch to himself. It shows our mindset though because our two best attacking players, Boufal and Austin are on the bench.

We start ooff well and create a chance of sorts in the first minute as a big launch forward from Stephens is cocked up by Chelsea and Gabbi puts Redmond away and he plays in Bertrand.  The ex-Chelsea man’s cross is good and Cahill pulls off an unintentional spin turn and just about gets it clear.  Fucking donkey could have put that anywhere and got very very lucky.

Chelsea are not quite the force of last year when Willian hardly played but what a player he is, playing a 1-2 with Marcos Alonso and cutting in from the left but having done all the hard work he puts it wide.  Alonso is an interesting player – he’s not thought of as being particularly fantastic defensively but he plays so far forward because he’s given the freedom to play that way.   

Saints are doing ok in the main and then something comes along to cock that up and it’s Gary Donkey Cahill again.  Cedric takes him on and gets the cross in and Cahill slides in late and puts him into the boards.  Whether it was the late tackle or the collision with the boards that caused the problem I don’t know but Cedric limps around for a bit and then has to go off.  Mario Lemina is on and JWP gets moved to right wing back.

Cahill who is the new target for my irrational hatred, tries to make it even worse in that regard by lumbering forward and trying a pot shot from 30 yards which Fraser makes an unnecessary meal off by punching it straight back out into the middle of the penalty area.  The big man does better with the next effort as Kante takes time off from fouling people and has a shot which is deflected and this time, Fraser pushes it wide.  Another Chelsea chance comes as Stephens presents the ball to Hazard on the half way line and it’s eventually worked across to Willian on the right but Bertrand appears and puts him off but Willian is involved again minutes later, combining with Alonso down our left and the full back smashes a shot at the near post and Fraser blocks well.  Another chance, again created down our right as Lemina appears to allow a Chelsea player to walk through his tackle and Pedro fires against the base of the post.

We are surviving just about but bearing in mind you are always going to come under some pressure here, it’s not too bad and then on 45+2 (the +2 being for the Cedric injury) an old issue re-emerges as the ball gets played up to Hazard and Yoshida is right up his arse and by that I mean far too close.  Hazard spins and is away and Maya hauls him down.  Amateur hour defending and a yellow card.  The free kick is about 35 years out and left footed Alonso and right footed Willian are over it.  It looks like Willian is going to hit it but Alonso does and it zips round the wall and in at the near post as someone shouts ‘timberrrrrrrrrr’ and Fraser dives.  1-0 fuck.  We kick off, half time.

So, I’m sure that Pellegrino will be hatching a Plan B as we speak as keeping a clean sheet is off the menu.

Well Plan B produced fuck all for the first 15 minutes of the second half and then we get a straight away with Gabbiadini removed again after another fruitless 60 minutes of waiting for a pass and on comes Austin.  Austin’s first touch is to latch onto a lovely ball from Hojbjerg and his shot is decent but Courtois gets down to make a good save.  The ball goes loose and then Courtois clearly pulls the ball back into the penalty area so it should be a free kick to us but we’re away at a big club so not today.

Chelsea are still here though and Hazard has the ball in the net after a 1-2 with Willian but the Brazilian is offside.  He’s continuing to be a pain in the arse though, teeing up Alonso for a superb right footed effort which causes Fraser to take off and save well.

Boufal is on for Hojbjerg with 20 to go which is daft because Hojbjerg has been excellent.  Boufal is needed of course and again, like with Austin, he creates a chance straight away, playing it through to Austin and his poked effort is again well saved by Courtois.  We aren’t going to get many more chances.

Chelsea have sent Fabregas on and he’s now running the show.  Lemina hauls down Willian and whilst we all stand and argue with the referee. A quick tap sees Fabregas cutting in from the goal line and rolling the ball past Fraser and right across the goal about 6 inches out and wide of the far post.

We have one more half chance as Pellegrino finally appears to change the formation a bit with Boufal running at them on the left and the ball being worked to Stephens on the right and he put over a decent ball and Austin gets in front of his marker but is unable to turn it goalwards.

Joy of joys, then Bertrand pulls a hamstring and is limping about, appearing to be appealing to the Chelsea players not to run at him.  They ignore than and Morata chips a ball to Fabregas who smashes in a left footed volley which Fraser again blocks well.  Bertrand hobbles off and the game is done.  Not an unexpected defeat and the manner of it wasn’t unexpected either.  That’s part of the problem.

It looks like this is going to be the blueprint for any game that we play against the big guns of the division especially away from home. We are basically going to set up with nine defenders, a goalkeeper and a striker and hope for 0-0. Occasionally we will get a goal like we did against Manchester City but ultimately, we will get a load of narrow defeats because our defence as a team does not have the concentration levels to keep these teams out for 90 minutes. It's another game that doesn't look particularly great for Pellegrino because we put so little pressure on Chelsea in the 45 minutes we had to find an equaliser. The only times we looked remotely dangerous was when the ball was anywhere near Gary Cahill, who was absolutely shocking even in the side as dominant as Chelsea were.  John Terry thinks Virgil would get in any side in the Prem aside from Chelsea’s… fuck off John.  If you don’t think he’d better than Cahill then you’re not a very good judge.

Talking of Cahill, his piss poor clumsy challenge on Cedric which put him out of the game and probably the next few weeks, should have got him a yellow card. Losing Cedric disrupted us a bit but bringing Mario Lemina on and moving JWP to right back looks like a sound move until you realise that Lemina is still suffering massively from the ankle injury he had a few weeks back. The reason we know this now is because he posted about it on social media after the game, apologising to the fans for his performances. How cool is that by the way? Possibly by design or possibly accidentally, he has questioned whether Pellegrino should have had him on the bench at all, let alone put him on halfway through the first half.  I assume he was sub because the club know he is carrying an injury so why then put him on after less than 20 minutes?  There was one incident where Chelsea hit the post after one of their players had basically walked through Lemina who looked like he had completely bottled the tackle.  Bearing in mind the injury and the need for an early substitution, the sub that should have been made was Steve Davis coming on. He was the closest like for like swap for JWP who was the player we were effectively replacing in midfield because he had been moved to Cedric's position at right wing back.

We worked hard as we could but with zero inspiration, aside from about 5 minutes when Austin and Boufal came on. For the record, if those two are not playing then we are really going to struggle to score in any game. Gabbiadini makes run after run after run after run but he never gets the ball, either because he's too isolated but mostly because the midfielders don't look up and look to play forward early enough. Redmond is deployed as a defensive player. He's not the attacking genius that Guardiola goes on about but he's being restricted horribly by Pellegrino – Redmond needs to be told to do his work further up the pitch like wingers usually do.  Even Chelsea’s full backs play further forward than our wingers.

So, in midfield we had three defensive players in Romeu, Hojbjerg and Lemina and Redmond being told to play like one and none of the other three have been given any license to go forward. It was only on 75 minutes that he changed it and even then it was hardly any different. I've seen some say we went 4-4-2 but I didn't really see that until the last few minutes. I saw Boufal go wide left, Austin up top and that was it really. Too little, too late. So fucking what if we lose 2-0, go for it man. He should have gone 4 at the back at half time or at least let the shackles off the wing backs and the midfielders.

No one ever got sacked for losing 1-0 to Chelsea but Nigel Adkins got sacked after a 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge so there’s hope I guess. This is shaping up to be so much like last season but without the results. The manner of performances like this is so disappointing. No one expects Saints to go away from home to the Champions League clubs and attempt to play them off the park but you do have to have some sort of ambition to score a goal and you do have to have some sort of plan B if plan A is to defend and then you let a goal in.

Fraser Forster today showed up the perils of being a goalkeeper. He had a decent game overall but the game will be remembered for the goal we let in which he will know he should’ve done better with. However, you also have to look at the reason the free kick was conceded in the first place which was Yoshida doing his usual thing and getting too close to the striker, getting spun and then pulling him back.

Jack Stephens looked a little bit rusty on the face of it and made some mistakes around the halfway line that could’ve been very costly but Wesley Hoedt looked decent throughout. Today defeat of course has come at a cost with both of our full-backs going off injured. On the face of it, the Cedric injury doesn’t look too bad but Ryan Bertrand going off clutching his hamstring in the last few minutes does not look good. Hopefully it’s a couple of weeks as opposed to a couple of months.

Having moaned about Pellegrino, I also have to balance this out by saying that he was absolutely spot-on to leave Van Dyke out of the starting line-up. He deserves praise for that but little else.  It wasn’t because of a lack of effort or application that we lost today.

When we played Everton a few weeks ago I did wonder if Pellegrino could survive if we lost that game. Thinking like that was probably a little bit premature but next week we have Huddersfield at home. If we don’t win that then we are certainly going to be very close to the bottom three after we played Manchester United just before the New Year.  I’m at the point with Pellegrino where I would not care in the slightest if he was sacked but then we have a number of players who I would not miss in the slightest if they weren’t here any more.  We have some who are not good enough, some who are not effective enough and we have one in particular who doesn’t give a shit.  January is going to be huge for us.  If we carry on with the same squad, we should stay up but with the way Pellegrino is going, you wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t.  Something Better Change.