Premier League Match 20 - Tottenham 5 Southampton 2

Let's Hope We Pick a Better One This Time

Boxing Day and a trip to Wembley Stadium to play against Tottenham Hotspur. I’m looking forward to this about as much as I look forward to my mother-in-law being around all day on Christmas Day.

Contrary to what I thought was possible when Pochettino went to Spurs, he has taken them up a level and now they are a genuine big hitter club. They’ve won their Champions League group, finishing about Real Madrid and if it wasn’t for the ridiculous form of Manchester City, they would have a really good shout of winning the league this year. It’s amusing in some respects that Pochettino appears to have come under a bit of pressure this year because of perceived underachievement. Try being a fan of Southampton lads!  Spurs have some fabulous players, lead of course by Harry Kane who is one goal short of breaking the record for most goals in a calendar year since football began in 1992. Dele Alli is having a difficult season and he is combatting this by being a nasty cheating diving fucker.  He really shouldn’t be playing today after his horrific dive to win a penalty last week against Burnley but because he plays for Spurs and probably because he’s English, no one at the FA looked at whether he dived or not. They looked at Charlie Austin‘s case quick enough and he was banned quicker than it took him to down his first pint after the game against Huddersfield. Who else do Spurs have? Christian Eriksen, yeah he’s not bad and nor is Son Heung Min.  It may well be a long afternoon.

Our line up doesn’t look too bad on paper but there is one glaring issue and that is that Shane Long has been picked to play as a lone striker. What the actual fuck does Pellegrino think that it’s going to achieve? I wouldn’t mind so much if Shane had played a few games for the under 23’s and scored a few goals for them to get his confidence back but you know that he’s going to do absolutely fuck all. At the other end of the pitch, you also know that Jack Stephens is going to look like a fish up a tree at right back. It’s a slight surprise that we are not going with the five at the back formation but I guess that is because neither Cedric or Ryan Bertrand are available.

The first 20 minutes are actually fairly even as we camp strongly in our own half and challenge Spurs to break us down.  It’s all well and good so far but there’s no way we can play for 90 minutes like this and not let a goal in.  Just as you’re thinking that we had things under control, Rose takes on Hojbjerg down the left and gets in front with Pierre snapping at his heels.  No other player helps out and eventually Hojbjerg brings him down just to the side of the penalty area and earns himself a booking for I don’t really know what.  Eriksen is standing over the ball with everyone else in the middle and over it comes with pace, goal.  Harry Kane has headed in from two yards with keeper nowhere, defenders nowhere.  He’s not marked and that’s incredible.  Romeu is stood behind him looking at the number on his shirt and at no point is goal side.  Kane doesn’t even have to move.  He just bends stoops a bit and heads it two yards.  Why the fuck do we bother lads?

We respond well in that we have an attack and Long breaks down the left and feeds it in to Boufal who skips past one and hits a shot which Lloris makes a mess off and Rose tries to head it back to him but it’s over the scrabbling keeper and going goalwards but the luck is with Spurs and a combination of Lloris and the post keep it out.

The way we often play at home is to pass and pass and pass without going anywhere.  What’s supposed to happen is that you play controlled possession football and then you see an opening and speed up and go for it.  We never of course do the second bit but Spurs show us how it’s done as all four of their front four combine.  The ball goes from Eriksen into Alli, a flick through to Son who has made a great run on the left and he rolls it across for Kane to score from 5 yards out.  They’ve scored and we have all our defenders and goalkeeper on their arses.  Brilliant goal it has to be said.

Half time and you feel that there will be loads of people up and down the country looking at their in-play betting apps, lobbing money on 5, 6 and 7 for the number of goals Spurs and/or Harry Kane might score.  Gutless and pathetic in huge measure from ourselves but at least we go into the changing room knowing that there’s a thunderous Churchillian speech coming from our manager that will send the troops out for the second half in the right frame of mind.  Five minutes later we are 4-0 down but that’s not the whole story.

We start the second half on the front foot and Dier makes a mess of a pass to one of his centre backs and Long is clean through with just Lloris to beat.  Those of you who can remember Bradley Wright-Phillips playing for us will remember the lack of excitement every time he got clean through where you basically just slumped back in your seat and waited for him to miss.  So anyway, Shane is through but his touch is unsurprisingly bad and he knocks it too far and when he tries to wrap his right foot around it to shoot, he slips and just spoons it up to the goalkeeper.  Utter, utter shit.  This is the guy that Pellegrino has picked to lead the line in place of Italy’s first choice centre forward at the moment.

Unperturbed by their strikers shiteness, Saints go again and Lemina weaves his way across the top of the penalty area, finds space for a shot and cracks it past Lloris and off the bar.  Fuck.  Spurs next attack – 3-0 as they attack through Son and he picks out Alli on the left hand side of the area.  Romeu stands off him as he cuts infield and Yoshida turns his back as he passes it along the ground into the far corner of the net.  Embarrassing.

From the kick off we go forward and are popping the ball about and Redmond tries to knock it back to someone and it’s unclear who but it goes straight to a Spurs player and one shite pass has taken out 6 of our players and it’s 3 against 3 with Spurs changing places and this time Alli picks out Son on the right and he drives it past Forster and into the net for 4-0.  There’s something about this that I find quite funny in that Saints remind me of the Under 14’s I coach.  When we let in a goal we tent to fall to bits.  The difference is that my lads are kids whereas Saints are professional top level footballers.

To make a bad day even worse, our fans start booing Nathan Redmond when he touches the ball.  I would rather fans like this just stay away from matches as you’re a disgrace.  I don’t care what the frustration, booing individual players during a game is disgraceful.  Surely you want Redmond in this case, to smack a 30 yarder into the top corner the next time he gets the ball, rather than wonder why he fucking bothers as the cascade of boos ring down.  He made a genuine mistake – it’s not like he’s refused to play or thrown his dummy out or not played like he doesn’t give a toss now is it?

Anyway, Pellegrino decides to take him off along with the still clearly injured Lemina and puts on Gabbiadini and Tadic with Gabbi going up top, Shane going to the right and Dusan at 10.  Immediately we go on the attack and Long heads a ball across into Boufal’s path and he gets it down and hits a left footed shot near post which Lloris very obligingly dives over to make it 4-1.

Tottenham have been pissing about since it went to 4-0 and most of their attacks have fallen down with Alli trying to be too clever but as we’ve scored they decide to go and score again.  It starts with some bollocks out on our left with Targett losing the ball and Alli picks up the ball and lays it across to Kane with none of our defenders getting near anyone.  Yoshida looks totally lost as he appears to tackle a tuft of grass and Kane simply lifts it over Forster with his left foot as the keeper comes out and makes himself small.

We decide at this point to at least make it entertaining and flood forward.  Gabbiadini gets through on the left from Targett’s pass and pulls it across the goal and Shane must score.  He’s in front of Vertonghen and two yards out but somehow the Spurs player is more committed and gets there first, clearing the danger whilst Shane hits the net without the ball.  It’s an improvement I guess.

Most of the good stuff from Saints is through Boufal and he tees up Hojbjerg for a decent hit that Lloris makes a good save from.  From Boufal’s corner, Lloris flaps it out to Tadic who lobs it back over the keeper and though Kane was on the line and could easily clear, Lloris flaps at it and pushes it in the net for 5-2.

Pellegrino has had JWP warming up for 5 minutes so of course he sends on McQueen for Targett and the game ends with Spurs trying to tee up Lamela for a goal and he lashes a decent chance over the bar.  We have one more shot as Gabbiadini throws of the cloak of inivisibility which means that his team mates can’t see him and takes a pass from Tadic and crunches it just wide.  The End…. Of Pellegrino hopefully.

Well I guess for the neutral, sat on their arse full of food and hung over on Boxing day, that was a great entertaining game.  For me it was a complete sack of shit.  Firstly, there is no way that 5-2 was a fair reflection of the game. If you for one second think Spurs were only three goals better than us then you are living in cloud cuckoo land along with Mauricio Pellegrino.  At 4-0 on 50 minutes, they packed in and their goalkeeper very obligingly threw two goals in for us to make it look a lot closer than it was. Spurs were different class. So much better than us that it was embarrassing. 

When I saw the team today I didn’t actually think it was that bad bearing in mind what we had available.  Hoewever, the defence totally killed us.  Again, Wesley Hoedt did okay but all around him was fucking carnage. Jack Stephens is never a right back and he’s like a fish up a fucking tree out there.  We have Jeremy Pied, a ‘Pathway Blocker’ journey man right back who we keep in the squad but our manager prefers to play a centre back out of position.  Targett actually did okay when he ventured into the opposition half but defensively he was a nightmare and then there was Maya who was simply all over the place.   The midfield three of Romeu, Lemina and Hojbjerg looked good on paper but with Lemina being easily the most creative out of the three, he chose to play Hojbjerg at 10 where he is completely unsuited to playing.  Up front, I’d have gone with Redmond on the right and Boufal the left but for some reason they swapped wings in the first half and picking Shane Long was of course a complete fucking waste of time.  Apparently, Harry Kane has scored 50 goals since Shane Long last scored.  He’ll score 50 more before Shane gets his next one as well.

The tone was set with the first goal went to normally reliable Romeu just let Kane score. There is no other description that I can put other than that.  He let him stand 3 yards out and then he stood behind him and let him nod it into the net from 2 yards out.  However, we have a 6 foot seven goalkeeper so where the fuck was he? Could he have not at least got a touch on the cross?

The second goal was brilliant football by Spurs with Stephens is getting caught out because, y’know, he’s not a right back and the third goal was because we decided not to close down yet again on the edge of the box and Dele Alli, who was otherwise completely shit, just passed into the corner of the net.  Then we have goal number 4 which was a good assist by Redmond who took out about six of our players with one pass straight to a Spurs player and they eventually worked it for Son to score easily. The 5th goal featured some garbage over on our left where we lost the ball and two passes later the ball is at Harry Kane’s feet and Yoshida appears to tackle a tuft of grass and fall on his arse and Kane scores as simply as you like.

What got me this game what’s the lack of fight in the first half. We went out on the pitch knowing that we were going to get beat. We went out on the pitch with no plan other than containment and hope that Shane Long would break the habit of a fucking life time and actually do something that wasn’t shit. Surprise surprise, he didn’t, but he did have a glorious chance straight after half time when he was clean through and you thought that running into space would be the one thing he’s good at but no, he managed to lose his footing and totally fuck it up. We were a bit unfortunate straight after that Lemina, proving why he should be playing further forward instead of Hojbjerg, cracked a shot against the bar and 30 seconds later it was 3-0 when Alli scored. We did actually show a little bit more invention in attack in this game which was almost all down to strong running from midfield by Lemina and Hojbjerg and the unpredictability that Boufal brings to the table. Like I said though, this improvement has to be put into context. Spurs had already won the game and were coasting towards the finish line bearing in mind they have another game in a few days.

After the game, Pellegrino spoke the usual bollocks he always speaks.  The command of English gives him a bit of a shield to hide behind but he revealed that Austin is out for a long time.  No surprise there – he doesn’t do two week injuries.  It’s nothing or five months.  He said that he needs to get players in, in January – no shit Sherlock.  Would you want to join this fucking clown show at the moment?  Do I want Pellegrino to manage any new players we get in?  Not in the slightest.

Saints look like strangers out on the pitch.  There is no chemistry between the players and no one illustrates this more than Gabbiadini.  He makes intelligent runs and it’s like he’s fucking invisible.  It would help if the same midfield played two games in a row and then they might actually work out some understanding, same with  defence, same with the front three.  Pellegrino just tries to be too fucking clever and the rotation / tombola method he employs is never going to work.  What does any manager (like Sam Allardyce for example) say when they come into a new job half way through the season – Back to basics, settled team, build understanding.  It’s not rocket science.

The question of whether Pellegrino should be sacked or not it’s not even a question any more. The guy is actually fucking clueless and things are not going to get better with him in charge and we are going to get relegated if he stays.  It’s as simple as that. Les Reed and Ross Wilson and whoever else has any say on football matters have to also look at themselves and think about what the fuck they are doing.  Sacking Puel wasn’t the problem but replacing him with this guy was, so the decision on a new manager has to be a correct one.  We need a manager with a bit of bollocks and personality about them who is going to kick this lot into shape. We have some good players but we also have shit players who are not only block the pathway for any promising youngsters but they drag the team down as well. We have Pied who is not even deemed worthy to be a back up right back but we let Jason McCarthy leave and he’s now playing well in the Championship.  We have Shane Long when Olomola is scoring goals in League 1.  We have no target man when Sam Gallagher is out on loan.  I’m not saying any of those players I’ve mentioned would be the answer but they couldn’t really be worse right now.

We desperately need a target man striker, and a winger / Number 10 who is a goal threat and assuming van Shithouse goes, we need at least one centre back, probably two.  Do not try and tell me that Jan Bednarek is Virgil’s replacement as I’d rather Florin Gardos played.  We need another goalkeeper to at least challenge for a place and a new right back wouldn’t go amiss for the same reason.

If the Board at Southampton FC have got anything about them, they will be looking at themselves and the decisions that have been made since Ronald Koeman left and wonder why there is an absolute chasm between Spurs (and others) and Saints now, when the gap 18 months ago, the gap wasn’t really wasn’t that big.  Yes if we had a decent manager, we could probably be getting more out of the squad that we have but the bottom line is, the squad is just not good enough. We now have Maya Yoshida as a starting centre back when he was never good enough when we were decent under Pochettino and Koeman so logic dictates that he isn’t good enough now.  We have no backup for the goalkeeper, we have no backup for the right back and we have no backup for our one striker who can hit the net and he is injury prone.

We also have precious few big character players like those we used to have who raised the game of some of the others. When Pellé and Mané were here, Shane Long knew that if he didn’t perform he wouldn’t be anywhere near the side and when he was on the pitch he used to the pace and power of those two to buy some space and have decent games himself. He’s a back up player whether he’s on the pitch or not and not good enough to be the main man.  Similarly, Dusan Tadic was great when he had the departed two in the side but he’s not good enough to be the main man either, same as Yoshida who is no leader like José Fonte.  We’ve replaced Pellé, Mané, Wanyama and Fonte with Austin, Redmond, Romeu and Yoshida.  It’s downgrade central.

Next up – Manchester United and we’re going to lose.  Pellegrino will spin the tombola, probably coming up with another new combination with at least two players out of position and we’ll be fucking crap again and get beat by at least two goals.  He has to go, or we are getting relegated and the sooner it happens, the better the chance of staying up.  It’s as simple as that.