Premier League Match 18 - Huddersfield 1 Southampton 3

Right Son, Let's Get Down the Pub

One of the biggest failures of last season was failing to beat Huddersfield at home or away. The reason it was such a massive failing was because Huddersfield were fucking dreadful and we weren’t any better than them. With their one good player, Aaron Mooy missing and none of the new players having made much impression, we really should be beating them today and with Chelsea and Manchester City coming up in our next three games, we really need to.

David Wagner got tarred with the same brush that Ralph Hasenhüttl is being tarred with this season, in that Wagner apparently is a good friend of Klopp’s whereas Ralph just gets his teams to play in vaguely similar way. This meant that last season, the media had to mention Liverpool and Klopp every time they mentioned Wagner and Huddersfield last season which I guess was as irritating to their fans as it is to me.  No, scrap that, our recent history with Liverpool means it grates just that little bit more.

After winning hearts and minds last week, Ralph has been at it again this week with visits to hospitals visits to the very young Saints Academy and another very impressive pre-match press conference. One hour before kickoff, a time that I had grown to dread over the last 3 years, just brought more cheer with a totally unchanged side from the excellent performance against Arsenal. This tells the players but if they play well, they will stay in the team and anyone not in the 11 will have to work damn hard to get back in. The subs bench was interesting with three strikers on it with Obafemi joining Long and Austin. The defensive options were Jack Stephens and an Academy full-back called Kayne Ramsey which meant no place for Wesley Hoedt who has gone from Mark Hughes’ first choice to Hasenhüttl’s fifth in a couple of weeks. Mario Lemina was fit to return which meant no bench spot for JWP, Steve Davis or Mo Elyounoussi.

The first significant action of the game was a massive dive in midfield by Huddersfield’s Chris Lowe.  Since leaving the Pet Shop Boys he’s turned into a shit midfielder in much the same way that Jon Moss has turned into a shit referee since leaving Culture Club.  Stuart Attwell, today’s referee has spotted it a mile off and booked him. How desperate do you have to be to pull a horrible dive in midfield at the start of the game?

Cheats don’t prosper as Ings picks up the ball in midfield and as is the way now, we attack.  Ings knocks it past one and Hojbjerg picks it up.  Redmond is already on his bike in front of him and Hojbjerg slots him in as Kongolo comically falls on his arse trying to intercept and Redmond, without a goal all season, smashes it past Lossl and into the top corner.  Get in.  If ever a player deserved a goal it’s Redders.

We pretty much dominate the rest of the first half without giving Huddersfield a sniff and another attack from midfield sees Redmond feed Ings.  Ings tries to reurn it to him on the edge of the box and finds Jorgenson but his first touch is fucking dreadful and Zanka becomes a Wanka and carts Ings over for the clearest penalty ever. Only one player is going to take it and Ings commits Lossl with a stutter step and passes it into the corner.  If he was in the freezer he couldn’t be any more cool and 2-0.

We make an attempt to not get to half time at 2-0, allowing Mounie to fire over on the turn from the edge of the box but he’s crap so it’s well over the bar and I’m really not used to this.  Two goals to the good and cruising.

Huddersfield are nothing if not spirited and put us under pressure at the start of the second half, mainly through launching throw-ins into our box.  From one of these, Pierre heds it straight up in the air and then tries to make up for it but merely compounds his error by heading across goal.  We stand and watch as Jorgenson heads goalwards and Macca flicks out a hand to turn it wide.  I don’t think the replays will do justice to how good a save this is.  If de Gea or Alisson had done it then it would be full scale frantic masturbation time.

If Macca was pleased with that one however, he won’t have been pleased with the next effort on goal as Billing wasn;t closed down and tried a pot shot from 30 yards which swerved past Bednarek (who turned his back) and flew past McCarthy and into the net.  Balls.  You know, I really don’t see a way we’re not winning this even when McCarthy has to be alert to block another shot after another bout of long throw induced chaos.

Ings race is run and I assume Austin is coming on by no, it’s Michael Obafemi for his Hasenhüttl debut.  Within minutes, Vestergaard picks it up on half way and has little mazy past three players and slots a lovely ball past the defenders and Obafemi is in.  He gets there before Lossl and tries to dink it but it roll across the goal and wide. 

Lemina is on for the excellent Armstrong to give us more muscle in midfield and Huddersfield are committing more players forward now and they’re really not good enough to do that and we find more space on the right as Valery puts Redmond away.  Redders tries to take on Schindler and loses it but Schindler takes a shit touch and Redders nicks it off him, knocks it to Obafemi who has pulled into space and the Irishman passes it into the corner of the net for 3-1 and game over.  Get in.  On the bench, Ralph is giving it the full Monty but not as much as Charlie Austin who is off down the line giving it loads to the home fans.  If an opposition player did this to us then we’d think he was a dick but that’s quality shithousing.

No one is going to score the next goal apart from us and Obafemi is through again as Huddersfield gift us the ball on the half way line.  He outpaces the defence but this time he scuffs the left footed effort and Lossl makes a comfortable save.  Never mind, I’m sure he and Ralph will settle for one.

All aboard the Ralph Express. As away wins go, this was pretty comfortable with the result never really being in doubt once Redmond put us into the lead. The second goal before half-time virtually killed it as a contest but Huddersfield got their goal and there were a couple of hairy moments but in the end we should of won much more comfortably than we did.

This whole day had ‘feelgood factor’ written all over it. The team announcement started things off with an unchanged side from the Arsenal win and another youngster making the bench for the first time. There was also of course the free hats to the crowd. 2-0 up at half-time and then another academy lad coming off the bench and scoring the crucial goal. Then you have the attitude of Charlie Austin who was hell bent on winding up the Huddersfield fans and be completely delighted with Obafemi scoring, even though he could justifiably be quite annoyed that he didn’t get on as a substitute.  Then of course, you have King Ralph who again kicked and headed every ball and was being serenaded by the crowd at the end of the game.  Fucking brilliant. It really didn’t take that long to get out of the rut that we have been in, more or less since Ronald Koeman left.

Again, there were no players on the pitch you could point a finger at and say that they underperformed. They know that they have to you now or else they are not going to last long. There is nothing like a little bit of good pressure to make you perform to your capabilities. You know that if your attitude is not 100% and your effort is not 100% than you will be getting it thrown off the train and it’s going to hurt.

Alex McCarthy will be disappointed by the goal but I think it’s the first goal he has let in since he got into the side where he will think that he maybe could’ve done better. It’s a strange one in that I think he saw it late after the shot had gone past the defender and then it seemed to swerve a bit and died on him which ultimately meant that it went in.  Basically though, getting beat on the nearside and nowhere near the post is not a good goal for a keeper to concede. Other than that, he was his usual excellent self.  The defence again was very very solid with Valery and Targett again having very good games at full-backs and the three centre backs stuck to the task against and admittedly week Huddersfield attack. Neither Vestergaard or Bednarek were in the squad for Mark Hughes but they’re great again today and I’ll forgive Jan for turning his back on Billing’s shot. Vestergaard will always struggle against the very pacey attackers but in games like this, he is absolutely ideal. I loved the sight of the 6 foot 7 centre back tiptoeing through three players in midfield and then passing a perfect ball into the striker.

Hojbjerg and Romeu cleaned up in midfield, so much so that Lemina wasn’t missed but he did really well when he came on because he knows that despite playing really well this season, he is not an automatic pick any more, having missed a game through injury.  This is the way it should be.  Ings, Armstrong and Redmond in particular, scared the shit out of Huddersfield at the back and forced them into those mistakes which lead to goals and then there was Obafemi. I was amazed that Ralph put him on to replace Ings ahead of Austin and Long.  He immediately missed the chance when Vestergaard put him through and I was wondering whether it was the right move.  Logically though, it is because Long would’ve missed as well and Austin probably would’ve been in the pub still and not been in that position.  Obafemi tucked away his second chance and probably should’ve had another when he ran through on his own. We have to remember that the lad is 18 and he will make mistakes, he will miss chances but if he doesn’t play, how is he going to get any better? Now he has got his goal, it will be really interesting to see what difference the confidence of that will bring to him.

And so to Ralph. I was a big fan of Glenn Hoddle as a Saints manager back in the day because he took Dave Jones’ shit squad and immediately made them better just with tactics and organisation. The difference the Ralph has made in the space of two weeks with a failing squad is absolutely ridiculous. I was convinced we were going to be rock bottom of the league at Christmas at least four points worse off than what we are already. It’s not just the results though, it’s the performance levels and the intensity and the plan.  In the space of two games, he has got everybody looking forward to the rest of the season where as before, most people were just having the life drained out of them. 

The tactics were basically a 5-2-3 formation with the 5 quickly dropping into shape when we lost the ball with the two in front of them screening and leaving the three up, meaning we were always dangerous on the break and we had players committed forward.  This meant we could pressurize the defence and all three Huddersfield central defenders coughed up goals for us – Kongolo fell over for the first goal, Jorgensen’s crap touch led to him fouling Ings for the second and Schindler lost the ball for the third goal.  Tactically, it worked like a dream.  Later, when Lemina came on, we went 5-3-2 and just left two up but because the two were Obafemi and Redmond, there was pace to burn when Huddersfield committed bodies forward in search of an equalizer.  Long live King Ralph

In his post match interviews, Ralph spoke really well about the tactical differences between this game and the Arsenal game in that Huddersfield would not give us as many chances to win the ball higher up the pitch which is the cornerstone of Ralph’s tactics. However, if you look at the goals, especially the third one, we did manage to win the ball high up the pitch and we regularly forced Huddersfield to defenders into mistakes. People say that Huddersfield made shit mistakes at the back but they were pressured into that and shown up to the players who are not good enough to play out from the back but the problem was that the Huddersfield players thought they were good enough to play out from the back when they should’ve just belted it into Row Z.

As for Huddersfield, I’ve just seen an interview with David Wagner who admittedly, has a very hard job with trying to find any positives with that. One of the positives he found was that they scored a goal at home but he didn’t really mention that it was a bit of a fluke and nine times out of 10, the goalkeeper wouldn’t have misjudged it. Not that I really care about Huddersfield or their manager but they are fucking dreadful and will deservedly be relegated at the end of the season and not be missed by anyone much apart from Saints fans who live near Huddersfield.

Happy Christmas one and all and on to West Ham - hopefully you’re next.

King Ralph