Do Look Back in Anger - Season Summary Part 1 - August - December

Do Look Back in Anger

A few paragraphs from the blogs on every game we played this season - I've missed out the Wolves Carabao Cup game but there are plenty of dreadful games anyway.....

Strap yourselves in.....  Part 1

PS - Some of this hasn't aged well....

AUGUST 2017

Southampton 0 Swansea 0

Any optimism for the first game of new season should be tempered with the reality that we have exactly the same players as we had when we went our last five home games without scoring a goal. I'm sure that Mauricio Pellegrino will in time get more out of this group of players and Claude would've done but it isn't going to happen overnight.

I just hope that if we get down the wings that there is more than one player in the box when the cross gets fired over. We need to play with more intent and have more desire to score a goal than we had last year.

The problem today was not the style of play but the fact that we only really made Fabianski make one save because we couldn't hit a fucking barn door. In fact, we couldn't even hit the fucking barn or any of the outbuildings next to the barn.

Southampton 3 West Ham 2

A statement arrived from Katherina Liebherr detailing that she had sold an 80% stake of the club to the Gao family for £210m.  Mr Jinsheng Gao and his daughter Nelly are the family members in question and the deal is not with Lander Sports but with the individuals.  The comforting thing is that it is business as usual with the existing board.  I take this news with cautious optimism and it sure as hell isn’t going to make us financially weaker.  I also on the other hand don’t see a sudden influx of money being punted around.

Swilling his beer and taking a last drag on his fag – it’s Charlie Austin and mercifully not Tadic.  After West Ham’s players have stopped being dicks around the referee and the penalty spot, he calmly sidefoots it past Hart to make it 3-2.  Charlie’s penalties always shit me up because if the keeper goes the right way then he saves it but in it rolls and we got out of jail there.

Well we certainly made heavy weather of that. You could argue that we were lucky as fuck or you could argue that the correct team won in the end. The fact is that with an hour to play against 10 men and a 2-0 lead, we should of won this game absolutely comfortably without all of the teeth gnashing and the gift of a last-minute penalty.

           

After the game, Pellegrino said exactly what I've been wanting a Saints manager to say for the last six months in that he highlighted that West Ham won too many headers in our penalty area. I've been banging on for six months about how Yoshida and Stephens are not strong enough in the air.

SEPTEMBER 2017

Huddersfield 0 Southampton 0

Of course, we are coming off the back of a diabolical performance in the League Cup. Even three days later it is quite hard to digest just how shit that was. It appears that Mauricio Pellegrino has decided to ignore it and pretend it didn't happen as he's reverted back to exactly the same team that started the West Ham home game. I can't say that I'm not a little disappointed with this.

The second half starts with a bit more intent from Saints with Lemina suddenly making runs ahead of the ball.  This gives Romeu an extra option to pass the ball to and the new boy lays off his pass to Gabbiadini who gets a shot on target but comfortable for the keeper.  We should try this ‘making forward runs’ thing more often. 

To the disappointment of many, Gabbiadini is next off for Long and to the disappointment of no-one, Tadic is off for McQueen which leaves both Boufal and Austin sat on the bench.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not his biggest fan but Austin is more likely to get a goal than those who have come on and Boufal is probably more likely to create one.

5 points out of 9 isn’t bad but it should have been 9.  Huddersfield blew themselves out after 70 minutes.  I can’t help but feel that with a bit more conviction and belief in the opening 70 minutes we could have won that game. 

One of the main problems with Saints is the three players behind the striker.  In my opinion, Gabbiadini is a superb striker and with the right supply, he’d be scoring 20 a season.  However, he’s neither getting the ball often enough, nor getting enough support from players.  

Southampton 0 Watford 2

Back to today and it’s a question of perception in that a win will mean 8 points out of 12 which from those for fixtures will be pretty good. A defeat and 5 out of 12 will not seem quite so decent. 

In the ground and there are loads of those fucking plastic clappers everywhere.

Half time – fucking dreadful shower of shit.  Wankers.  Embarrassing wankers.  Has Gabbi touched the ball?  Probably not because he’s relying on JWP to give it to him.  You may as well put Fraser at 10 instead of JWP as he won’t do any fucking worse or be less suitable for the position.  I of course feel sorry for Gabbi but also for Redmond and Boufal who only ever get the ball on the half way line because our midfield two are getting fucked over without a fight.  Let’s see what we do to change it – the only positive is that it’s only 1-0.

Oh that’ll make a huge fucking difference – Tadic on for JWP.  How fucking tired is Lemina?  If he can’t play 45 minutes then what’s the point of him even being on the bench.  What’s gonna change with Davo and Romeu up against those two?  Away we go and guess what, we’re still getting fucked and they’re going in dry. 

I feel that the Claude Puel mindset is still ingrained in the players. They are risk averse and everything that they do. However, you can only go for so long blaming the previous manager. Mauricio Pellegrino has to sort it out and he has to sort it out quickly. That lot out there today didn’t look up for the fight which is never ever acceptable.

Crystal Palace 0 Southampton 1

With just seconds remaining on the clock, Palace attempt to break and the game ends in the same style as it’s had for the past 90 minutes with Lemina hunting down the ball and taking it off a Palace player like he was taking back his own personal property.  That’s my ball, this is my field, these are my rules, now fuck off.  Game over and Roy looks like he needs a blanket and warm milk back in the rest home.

So, a great result for Pellegrino in terms of the fact that he obviously thought about what went wrong the previous week and changed it and today was much better. Mind you, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put Mario Lemina in the team. He was absolutely fucking outstanding today and it was the easiest decision for the man of the match that there can ever have been.

It was a good day for Mauricio - the charge upfront with Shane work very well as did the central defensive partnership. We just have to work out how to play home games now.

Straight after the game, due to it being an early kick-off, we had shot right at the table to fifth-place which is rather cool. I was looking around at Ronald Koeman and Everton but they were fucking nowhere.

Southampton 0 Manchester United 1

Chairman Gao is introduced to the fans before the game –  careful Jinsheng, you’ll get a reputation for only turning up for the big games.  Away we go and it annoys me that we’re not smashing into them at every opportunity.  We seem content to just hold them at arms length and defend in numbers.

And bollocks. We played well though and have not got what we deserved. The fact that Mourinho was throwing on defenders and defensive midfielders in place and attacking players as the second-half wore on, tells you all you need to know about who was on top and looking the better side. Our fans appreciated it too and even though we scored zero goals at home yet again there is an appreciative ovation for the players at the end of the game.

I thought that Pellegrino did all that he could today and his substitutions were spot-on. We had JWP on for the last 10 minutes playing at right back but on the pitch to deliver the set pieces and we chucked on the extra striker with Austin coming out

OCTOBER 2017

Stoke City 2 Southampton 1

So Hoedt has been dropped for a player who clearly doesn’t want to be here.

The penalty incident was very interesting because it looked to me like Virgil just couldn't be fucking bothered to defend the run properly so he just held him back.  In that instant it made me wonder whether he was rusty or whether he actually gives a fuck.

Now we get to Senor Pellegrino and the rest of his selections.  There is that oft quoted definition of madness - trying the same things and expecting a different result. If you pick as your four most advanced players, players who score approximately one goal every 10 or 15 games then what makes you think that they're going to score with any regularity

We lost in the end because the normally reliable Cedric fucked up big style.  What the fuck was he doing? – just fucking clear it.  You are not going to set up an attack when you’re facing your own goal line with a player up your arse so just clear it.

Virgil – bearing in mind he had not uttered one word about Saints since the summer – used his (Holland) interview to talk about hopefully being able to go in January, having no regrets about the way he acted and wanting to take a step up.  Now I’m sure a little has been added or lost in translation but his answer clearly wasn’t “I’m a Southampton player and that’s all I have to say for now”.  Words fucking fail me, aside from ‘drop him now and sell him in January to anyone except Liverpool’.

Southampton 2 Newcastle 2

I have a new ritual every time I go to St.Mary’s now in that I find my seat, pick up the plastic clapper thing and launch it about 5 rows down into some empty seats.  I’m old school and I don’t want that shit. 

Away we go and Gabbi and Shane are right up top and it looks like we’re 4-4-2.  Virgil pings a 70 yarder over the full back to Tadic which brings applause and then Tadic turns down the right footed cross, swaps it onto his left, then turn out and passes back to Cedric who turns and passes it back to Virgil.  For fuck sake.  What are we fucking scared of – at risk of going full Mike Bassett – get it in the fucking box.

60 seconds later and we’re 2-1 down. Fuck off.  Still, a good team goal from us with Shane, Berty, Virgil, Oriol and Fraser all at fault in some capacity.  It’s nice to share these things around.

We only trying to do something progressive when we are behind and we almost have nothing to lose

Also not covering himself in glory today was Fraser Forster.  He’s been better of late and I think that a lot of the criticism he gets is ridiculous but what the fuck was that today?  So laboured and clumsy on his feet for the first goal and rule one in the goalkeeper book is not to parry it back into dangerous areas so I’ve no idea what the hell was going on for the 2nd goal.

Southampton 1 West Brom 0

Boufal picks it up about 10 yards outside our penalty area and turns straight into Nyom before spinning the other way and setting off.  Chased by Nyom, Boufal goes past Livermore on half way who can’t be arsed to put a tackle in and then he swerves past Dawson who for good measure, is taken out by Nyom who just clatters into him.  Boufal is thirty yards out now and a drop of the shoulder and a step-over does for McAulay and he sidefoots it into the corner past Hegazi and Foster.  Pandemonium. It’s one of the great goals

30 seconds of brilliance in amongst 94 minutes of shite but who cares.

The reason we won however was of course, down to a bit of individual brilliance and hopefully the manager will now see that he needs the element of unpredictability that Boufal brings to the party.  Boufal’s best is better than Tadic’ best or Redmond’s best so it surely is the managers’ job to get the best out of Boufal.

Brighton 1 Southampton 1

Now is the time to keep playing the same way and put the foot on the throat with a second goal.  Get that and there is no way on earth they’ll score two against us. No, let’s sit back and allow Brighton to play their way into the game.  They don’t create anything much but we’re now playing 4-5-40 yards-Gabbi and the ghost of Puel is very much in the room.

Risk-averse, dull, slow, boring bollocks.

Duffy throws himself in the way to deflect Gabbi’s effort over the bar.  This bit of action is like finding a very very small diamond in a massive bucket of shit, only the diamond isn’t a diamond at all, it just gave you hope for a second before you go back to the rest of the bucket of shit.

It was like one of those rigged games at a World Cup where both teams were happy with a draw, especially the last 20 minutes. 

Pellegrino said during the week that we don't have an identity yet. He's wrong. Yes we do. For virtually the whole of 2017 we have been fucking risk-averse and fucking boring. That is our identity – fucking boring.  After 10 league games, the new manager is showing absolutely no signs of getting the team to play with any purpose.

We’re allegedly playing high pressing, high intensity football – my arse.

So, ten games in and what do we think of Pellegrino? I think that if you’d offered him 38 1-1 draws at the start of the season which meant we stayed up then he’d have taken it. I can’t imagine that was what was wanted at Board level at the start of the season. Does Mr Gao want to be entertained? At least a bit? Or maybe he doesn’t care as long as we’re in the Premier League.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

NOVEMBER 2017

Southampton 0 Burnley 1

Away we go and as is typical with Saints home games against sides who come to sit deep – nothing happened.  I mean nothing.  Short of a tumbleweed blowing across the pitch, there couldn’t have been less going on.  Desolate

He crosses it in with his left foot to near the penalty spot and Vokes manshames the static Yoshida and flicks a header down which speeds up off the turf and finds the bottom corner.  Fuck sake.

One thing I do know though is that the manager got it completely wrong again. The non-selection of Wesley Hoedt against a team with three big physical strikers in their match day 18 is beyond a joke. 

Our allegedly tactically innovative manager decided to match up Dyche and go with a 4-4-2 formation for the last 20 minutes but only after Dyche had done it first and changed the whole game. 

Even the last minute desperation substitute was fucking retarded. I understand the want to get JWP on the pitch for a free-kick but why take Boufal off. Why not take Cedric off who had an absolutely diabolical game.  Is Pellegrino still worried about defending and keeping it tight when we are 1-0 down with a minute to go for fucks sake?

Take it from a bloke who remembers Saints in the 1990s - we could well be in for a relegation battle this season so get ready for a few things. Get ready for looking down the fixture list and wondering where our next win is coming from and looking at the league table and trying desperately to find three teams who are worse than us.

Liverpool 3 Southampton 0

Just before the game started, my 13-year-old son asked me what I thought would happen and I said that either Pellegrino would come to the fore and we’ll put on a defensive masterclass or infinitely more likely, we go out to defend the shit out of it, let in a goal and then do absolutely nothing to try and get back into the game and fuck me, that's exactly what happened.

Anyone can get beaten 3-0 at Liverpool and that's not the problem and itself, the problem was in the manner of the performance which was absolutely fucking useless.

Playing with Shane Long in his current form as a lone striker is like trying to open a tin of beans with a fucking spoon.

Whatever way you look at it, Pellegrino’s contribution to today was fucking shambolic. He gave a shocking interview during the week when he said we have been playing well and we need to carry on doing the same things and everything would be fine. That is obviously complete shit or the ramblings of a complete madman.

The bottom line is that in a run of incredibly favourable fixtures, Pellegrino has not shown any sign of even being competent, let alone of being a decent manager for this football club. He does seem to be completely out of his depth, is paralysed by fear and totally uninspiring

Southampton 4 Everton 1

David Unsworth doesn’t look like the ex-Everton player of the same name but he looks like he’s eaten him.

I haven't had many opportunities for a while to write about an enjoyable game but that was really an enjoyable game, even though I only saw 65 minutes of it. I saw more enterprising attacking football in those 65 minutes then I've seen in every game I've watched for the last year.

Now Charlie Austin isn’t everyone's cup of tea and I still have a few reservations about the guy but he is the most suitable forward for the way that we play. Its fucking obvious but if you are going to put crosses into the box that you need someone who at least has a decent chance of heading the ball and hitting the target.

The slight caveat to all of this praise is that Everton were fucking atrocious

So it was a good day for Mauricio Pellegrino. Though I was a little unsure when I saw the team, you have to say that he got it right.

DECEMBER 2017

Manchester City 2 Southampton 1

Can we hang on… fuck it.  Sterling and de Bruyne torment us with the ball on our right as the clock ticks 95 and Sterling jinks across the top of the box, finds a bit of space and curls it into the far top corner in just about the only place where Fraser couldn’t reach it.  Sterling goes mental, City go mental, Guardiola is on the pitch, fuck off.  We kick off, one pass, whistle goes, fuck off.  For Fuck Sake. 96 minutes into a 90-minute match and we concede the winning goal. 

The first thing to say is that Pellegrino got it absolutely spot on today managing to find a balance between resting players for the game against Bournemouth and picking a side that least had a chance of upsetting Manchester City and we almost did it.

Guardiola has absolutely no right to talk to anyone else’s players and also for that matter has no right to complain about teams playing defensively at Manchester City. What the hell does he expect? He has 20 players at his disposal that all in the £50 - £100 million bracket and he’s playing against a team that has Shane Long upfront who scores goals with about the same frequency as Halley‘s comet turning up.

Bournemouth 1 Southampton 1

Final whistle and I can’t help but be a little bit disappointed that we didn’t win it but over the 90 minutes you have to say it was probably a fair result. Personally, I really don’t think Bournemouth are very good and if we played the whole game on the front foot like we played the second half then this game was there for the taking. 

We had the Adam Smith penalty incident in the first half which got everybody talking and mostly talking bollocks.  I’m sorry, whatever you pundits say, that was a big horrible fucking dive and he totally deserved to get booked.

So, back to why we didn’t win. I thought the team selection was very suspect today. Leaving out a fully fit Mario Lemina is questionable at best and leaving out Pierre Hojbjerg after the couple of games he has had is a bit strange also.

Southampton 1 Arsenal 1

With Yoshida and Stephens in the team, we were always going to be susceptible once they sent Giroud and Welbeck and it was a great header by the suave good looking French bastard as he ghosted in between Maya and Virgil and perfectly flicked a header into the corner. The only thing at this current Arsenal side has in common with the good Arsenal sides of Wenger’s first eight years is the fact that they are called Arsenal. 

I have to begrudgingly admit that Pellegrino’s selection in the main worked. The three at the back worked well against Arsenal diminutive strike force but maybe it would’ve been good to have kept a substitute in hand and shoved Wesley on when Giroud came on.   Pierre Hojbjerg was man of the match without a doubt and you would think it would be really hard to Pellegrino to leave him out of the next game but don’t be surprised if he does.

The one thing that Pellegrino definitely got wrong was the selection of Nathan Redmond over Sofiane Boufal. Sure Redmond works hard defensively but whenever he got the ball he had absolutely no fucking idea what to do with it. If he had a choice of 20 options and only one of them was wrong, Redmond would pick that one.  He played well on the right against Bournemouth so just maybe playing the right footed winger on the right is the answer.  As I’ve said before, I know that this theory is a bit wild and out there.

Southampton 1 Leicester 4

I reckon there are about 10% of the Saints fans left in the ground when the final whistle goes.  What a load of shit. 

Apart from a couple of exceptions, that was as stinking a shithouse of a performance that you could ever hope to imagine from top to bottom from the manager down.

Needless to say, our manager Mauricio Pellegrino hasn’t got a fucking clue what sort of team we are, hasn’t got a clue about how to set the team up, is tactically inept and has no fucking idea what is best team is. Other than that, he is fantastic.

No ability on display, no guts and no effort.

Having conceded that goal, Pellegrino makes absolutely no tweaks tactically and five minutes later the game is dead.

I think we have a set of players crying out for a leadership and they know they are going to get absolutely none from Pellegrino and the bench and we have no one on the pitch to do that either

The fourth goal sums us up and sadly, it sums up certain individual players. Firstly, Cedric plays a horrific ball across the park which gets intercepted. Steve Davis is marking Okazaki but he just lets him run like he always does. The ball goes wide to Vardy and Virgil is the nearest defender but he just can’t be fucking bothered to get close to him or to put in a tackle so Vardy rolls it into the middle we’re Okazaki is now being picked up by Yoshida, only he isn’t because Yoshida is stationary and Okazaki darts in front of him and smashes it in the net.  Crap from all four.

I’ll start with Virgil van Dijk because he is the easiest one to deal with. He is playing at roughly 70% and he’s good enough to still stand out at 70% when compared to the rest of our team. However, his attitude is fucking disgusting and poisonous and if Pellegrino was to show any sign of being a leader he needs to drop the fucker from this point onwards.

How ironic that Claude’s team scored four goals at St Mary’s which would’ve taken him about 10 games to do when he was Saints manager

Chelsea 1 Southampton 0

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.

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.

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.

Southampton 1 Huddersfield 1

It doesn’t take much Huddersfield pressure to get a goal as substitute Smith takes a pass from Ince and puts over a cross and Depoitre has sensibly decided to attack the gaping fucking space between Yoshida and Stephens, knowing that neither will challenge him and he can’t miss and he doesn’t.  Pathetic beyond words.

So, having watched us take a shit in midfield for the past 20 minutes, Pellegrino decides to wait another 10 before changing anything and he hooks Davis and Tadic who have both been garbage and puts on Hojbjerg and Boufal.  The effect is instant.  Hojbjerg wrestles back the midfield and Boufal commits defenders.

This is the end of the line to me as far as Pellegrino is concerned. The team looked fucking dreadful on paper and it was predictably fucking dreadful out on the pitch as well. The substitutions that he made, which was far too fucking late made us instantly better once he got Davis and Tadic off the pitch and got Hojbjerg and Boufal on.   The improvement was absolutely instantaneous.  Up to that point, Hudderfield had bossed the midfield in the second half and Pellegrino just stood in the technical area and watched it happen whilst Romeu and Hojbjerg sat on the bench.  Fucking madness.

He is fucking useless as a manager and he has to go. I would rather put Radhi Jaidi in charge for the two games we’ve got coming up and have a new manager in as soon as possible. I just hope that the board have been proactive themselves and have someone lined up. Bye – don’t let the door hit your ass.

Tottenham 5 Southampton 2

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?

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

Utter, utter shit.  This is the guy (Long) that Pellegrino has picked to lead the line in place of Italy’s first choice centre forward at the moment.

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.

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.

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.

What got me this game what’s the lack of fight in the first half.

Do I want Pellegrino to manage any new players we get in?  Not in the slightest.

Saints look like strangers out on the pitch.  It would help if the same midfield played two games in a row and then they might actually work out some understanding.

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.

Manchester United 0 Southampton 0

Shithousery has won the day though because let us not forget that this all started with Liverpool’s illegal approach and illegal meetings in the summer. I’d hazard a guess that they’ve been in touch just telling Virgil to be a twat all this season and he’s been happy to go along with that. 

The fact that we are rushing through a sale, before the transfer window even opens tells us that they can’t wait to get rid

Boufal brings down the little shit Ashley Young and it’s a United free kick on the right.  In it comes and it all gets a bit untidy and Matic pokes it goalwards, McCarthy can’t get a touch and Pogba knocks it in from about a yard out.  Fuck it… haaaaaaaaaaa… offside! 

He went shitting on about the penalty they maybe should’ve had in the first half which is classic Mourinho to deflect away from the fact that they didn’t have a fucking shot in the second half with their team that cost just shy of £400 million against a team that’s been playing absolute bollocks since the start the season.