Premier League Match 8 - Southampton 1 Everton 2

 

Ralph Offers Out The Itchen North Corner

The international break has come and gone and we are back in Premier League action today with Saints entertaining Everton at home. Using the word ‘entertaining’ might be a bit of a misnomer but we will go with it for now.

The one thing that you can guarantee for the international break is that JWP will be well rested having not played for a minute for Gareth Southgate’s England in either the pathetic defeat to Italy all the entertaining but comical draw with Germany. Our centre back pairing of ABK and Salisu will be buzzing from having made their international debuts for Ghana and Germany respectively and Che Adams and Stuart Armstrong are now Nations League, League A players and will be playing on a higher division than Gareth Southgate’s England when the Nations League rolls around again. Well played Gareth, officially worse than Scotland and if you manage that by any metric, then you are clearly not doing a very good job.  What remains to be seen today is whether Ralph he’s as stubborn as Gareth Southgate. Will Elyounoussi be his equivalent of Maguire?

Everton have had a relatively solid start of the season under Frank Lampard. They have gone down the Experienced Premier League Journeyman route regarding new signings with the likes of Conor Coady, James Tarkowski, Neil Shitbag Maupay and Idrissa Gana Gaye coming into their side. They have had to replace the shitbag Richarlison but overall, seem to be in a better place than they were last season. They are shaping up to be very much like ourselves, solid at the back with not a lot going forward. There was a lot of attention at the start of the season on Anthony Gordon and the fact the Chelsea seemed ready to spend a ridiculous £60 million to acquire the services of a player who scored about four goals in his career. That move didn’t happen and Gordon is still there, joining Maupay in taking on the Richarlison role of diving about whenever an opposition player does so much as breathe on him.

This is a big game for Saints with Manchester City coming up next away from home.  Seven points from seven games it’s kind of acceptable but seven from nine doesn’t look as clever and so three points today is a bit of a must. It’ll be interesting to see how Ralph goes about solving the central midfield conundrum as hopefully they’ve got Maitland-Niles up to speed over the international break.  Two weeks should surely be long enough.  Also interesting of course, will be how brave he is with the players who start behind Che Adams but you would think that after the shower of shit that was Villa away, Joe Aribo and Stuart Armstrong would all feature very heavily in his thinking for this game.

Today was of course the day that the trains were all on strike so the traffic in and around St Mary’s was absolutely horrific.  Having eventually managed to park the car in Ocean Village, The team news dropped in the pub, along with my jaw.  Six changes from the team against Villa. I expected 3 or 4 but SIX - looks liek Ralph has had two weeks of over-thinking again!  Out went the ‘against the ball’ three, with Elyounoussi, Djenepo and Adam Armstrong - all on the bench and in came Stuart Armstrong, Aribo and Sekou Mara. There were two other slightly unnecessary looking changes at the back with Perraud and Salisu on the bench and Juan Larios and Duje Caleta-Car getting their first starts. Also, Ainsley Maitland-Niles has obviously learned how to play football enough to start in the centre of midfield.

Away we go and hang on,  Sekou Mara is right up front and we are playing 4-2-2-2 with Aribo on the left and Stuart Armstrong on the right.  We nearly go one or down in the first few seconds as Iwobi slings over across on the left hand side and the giant Onana comes in at the back post, marked by 5 foot 2 Larios.  Larios fortunately does enough for the ball to bobble up to Baz who gratefully gathers.

Saints first task is created by Mara, who plays one of those clever balls in between so the centre back and left back and Che Adams is in and his chip goes wide for a corner off Pickford’s chest but Andre Marriner is refereeing today so it’s a goal-kick of course.

After this initial flurry in the first half settles down to be incredibly tedious. There is a half chance for Everton as Demarai Gray’s cross, skids across the 6 yard line without anybody getting a touch but the main feature of the rest of the first half is Everton‘s time wasting which Andre Marriner completely fails to get a grip off - beckons at Pickford to hurry up a few times but that's it.  It works like this. Everton get a goal kick and Jordan Pickford stands there with the ball and gestures for his to centre backs Tarkowski and Coady to come closer to him. About 15 seconds goes by while they lumber back to the 6 yard line and then they turn start running forward and Pickford bangs the ball up the middle. Rinse and repeat. Pickford has absolutely no intention to give the ball to either centre back except for once when he almost accidentally gave it to Coady who just smashed it up the pitch.  Piss take.

The other feature of the rest of the first half was the chronic lack of movement of the ball that Saints have we literally are playing 4-2-2- with the three lines of two all narrow. There is no one to pass to in the wide areas unless Larios or KWP get forward and because they have no one behind them, if they do get the ball they are frightened to take anybody on so all just funnels back into the middle.   What we have is two desperately poor sides lacking in any attacking quality.

Player With Composure Scores Goal

Half-time, no changes but maybe a change in attitude as Saints look more fluent. Larios bursts through the centre and finds Adams on the left and his clever ball inside is picked up by Aribo, who takes a really good touch before drilling it low past Pickford who maybe wasn’t in the right position. Either way we’ll take it. 1-0, big surprise, fucking get in.  Now – keep it tight, draw them out, they’re shit, win the game on the break.

It’s the first time we have scored the first goal in any home game this season so the next thing to do straight out of the Saints playbook is for KWP to give away an absolutely needless free kick over on the right hand side by pulling back Onana who was going absolutely fucking nowhere.  In comes the free-kick and Onana has got himself on the back post against Mara and heads across and there is Conor Coady with the freedom of the Chapel End to knock it into the net. Fucks sake.  About two minutes.

Everton try to return the favour virtually straight from the kick-off as a shit ball from Tarkowski goes straight to Aribo and he drives forward before finding exactly the right pass to Che Adams coming in on the right hand side and as we all scream ‘first time shot’, he has a touch, then shoots but doesn’t get hold of it properly and Coleman manages to get back and block it and Pickford would’ve saved it anyway.   The ball bounces to JWP whose shot is blocked and Everton eventually clear.  Straight up the other end they go with Iwobi putting in a cross towards Onana again arriving to cause havoc and the ball dropped to Dwight McNeil who absolutely lashed it past Baz at the near post.

Ralph rolls the dice when we’ve gone behind, which he has to do with the ineffective Mara coming off for Adam Armstrong and the tiring Maitland-Niles being replaced with Edozie. Stuart Armstrong is the latest therefore to step into the Lavia shaped hole in the centre midfield.  Saints broke down the right hand side with Che Adams getting a ball across and Adam Armstrong takes a touch away from the defender before turning in smashing it goalbound but Pickford is across to save easily enough.  If we are to create a chance with I hope it feels to Joe Aribo because he’s is the only player who demonstrates any composure in front of goal whatsoever.

Six minutes on the board but nothing much happening here.  Marriner actually gives us a free kick out on the right hand side as we approach the 90 and JWP get a delivery right for a change and perfectly picks out Caleta-Car at the back post and he really should do better than volley it onto the roof of the net. Fucks sake.  There is time for one more half chance for Adam Armstrong, which he doesn’t hit cleanly and it rolls through the Pickford.  Andre Marriner of course doesn’t add anything on for the time wasting that went on in the six minutes, so spot-on 96 minutes, the game is over. and that’s it.  A third  defeat in a row against dreadful opposition. Wolves, Villa, Everton - all shit - all beat us and we played dreadfully against all three. 

To be honest, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference if we played another hour or so. Today there was a distinct feeling that once Everton went ahead, that would be it and their experience and know-how would see the job done for them.

The first half was an absolute waste of 45 minutes of everyone's life when even with us having all the attacking players on the pitch, we contrived to do very very little as everyone stayed really narrow apart from the full-backs who seemed reluctant to take on their opposite numbers.  It was hard to count three consecutive passes by either team and there was a massive lack of quality all round. We came to life in the second half, got our goal, then we totally threw away the advantage which all came from KWP giving away a completely unnecessary and pointless free-kick which led to Conor Coady‘s equaliser. The brain fart by KWP was a key moment but the other key moment of the game was where Che Adams was teed up with a free shot but he again showed his talent for picking out anything but the net and straight from that, Everton won the game as Onana arrived in the box, completely untracked for about the 5^th time and allowed McNeil to score the winner.

We did create a couple of chances and a half an hour that remained, in amongst all the Everton time wasting and Andre Marriner not giving us a fucking thing, Adam Armstrong and Caleta-Car should both have scored.

Che Adams gave a glimpse in the Leicester game in the Cambridge game that he could be the centre forward that we need to score the goals for us to have a decent season but since then, he’s reverted back to type with missing simple chances. If he scores at Wolves then we get a point. If he scores today with the game level, then we almost certainly would’ve won. He is the best that we have got though because neither Sekou Mara or Adam Armstrong look equipped at this level.  Mara may get there in time but he’s not there at the moment.

AMN had a bit of a mare trying to fill the Romeo Lavia shaped void in midfield – maybe Ralph was right to be cautious about using him but maybe he’s not suited to playing in a midfield two – looks less mobile than Romeu to me.  JWP seems to be a burdened down by the average players being deployed next to him and his own game is suffering. Virtually every corner in the first hour hit the first man and after that he was almost overcompensating and giving them too much air.

It was a strange to play Juan Larios today. I know we save money on the VAT because his kit is child sized but that didn’t seem to be any logical reason to leave Romain Perraud out of the starting line-up today. Likewise Salisu - I know Salisu played a game and a half on the international break but it’s not as if he was travelling to Africa. The games took place in Spain and France so I don’t really know why he wasn’t playing today unless he picked up a knock and if he picked up a knock then why was he on the bench. To be fair, Caleta-Car looked decent.

The first half was ridiculously disjointed and the reason for that was because Ralph came up with a combination of changing six players (some of which were obviously needed) but also, changing the formation to something that at least four of the new players have never played before. 4–2-2-2 only works if the spaces between the players are correct and rigidly enforced. We’ve learned this the hard way over the last four years.  The line-up that we had against Villa needed changing but there was an element of desperation and chucking the baby out with the bathwater and this is now the third major shift in a couple of months. It was five at the back in pre-season, then it was 4-3-3 and now it’s 4–2-2-2. The only consistent thing with all these formations is that we don’t look particularly good at playing any of them. Our identity as a pressing team and being difficult to play against has completely gone. The formation today is supposed to be ‘the pressing formation’ that Ralph built his name on but there wasn’t much of it and I’d love to see what the individual duel stats were after the game because it did seem like a very men against boys kind of game.

You can pinpoint a couple of incidents as I’ve said but we don’t look like a team that’s going anywhere and there doesn’t seem to be a plan that would work on another day.  Sport Republic haven’t spent £70 million quid on this team to see it go backwards and there is going to be a tipping point somewhere soon along the line if things don’t change quickly.  Speculation on Ralph’s future is only going to ramp up and the statistics stretching from this season back into last season do not make good reading.  I have always found the boards support for Ralph quite reassuring but like with anything, there comes a point and I’m not sure that Ralph himself has really regained the enthusiasm and fire that he had in his early days at the club and maybe the team is a reflection of that at the moment, similarly to how Claude Puel’s team reflected the boring nature of the manager.  Managing Southampton is fucking hard work and Ralph looks like it’s just become too much over the past year and he’s worn out. It’s getting near the point where a change seems inevitable.  I can’t see Ralph still being here if we get nothing from our next two games and one of them is Manchester City away.

I wonder if he'll be 'not unhappy' if the axe falls?  What a shit soundbite that was.

Next up of course it’s hilarious because it is indeed Manchester City away. Against them in the past, we have done well with the 4-2-2-2 shape and everybody being on it for 90 minutes and not giving them a second.  We are not that high pressing team anymore and even if we were, the addition of Erling Haaland has made them a completely different beast and it scares me to think about what might happen next week.