Premier League Match 27 - Southampton 0 Brentford 2

We're Fucked Lads

Brentford at home in the game that was originally supposed to be played on the weekend that the Queen died. Due to the way the fixtures have fallen, it is a chance for us to get a win that would take us out of the bottom three for the first time in what feels like forever. Brentford have already provided one of many nadir days for the season because it was when we went to their place that we lost 3-0 and Nathan Jones had his incredible dickhead interview, statistically.

As I was pondering before the last time we played them which was only a couple of months ago, Ivan Toney still has not been banned for betting breaches and he’s even admitted some of them. Strange one. Brentford have carried on from where they were at that stage and have been around the eighth or ninth in the league and on a pretty long unbeaten run which came to an end at Everton at the weekend. As we know ourselves, there are always teams who are doing unexpectedly well and then the wheels fall off towards the end of the season, so we have to hope for the Everton defeat can be repeated today.

In the recent past, there have been a few occasions when Saints have had a chance to win one game and for example, push into the top half of the table and on virtually every occasion, we have proved that we are not good enough to do so. This is a game that we have to believe we can win and getting out of the bottom three, even for a few days, will be huge if we can manage it. We are getting to the stage of the season where the league table does start to play psychological games with everyone involved. The difference going into the Tottenham game on Saturday will be huge depending on whether we are 16th or flat last.

A lot will depend today on our new found defensive resilience. The aforementioned Toney and Bryan Mbeumo will provide a very stiff test for Janny B and ABK.  Recovery from the Manchester United game will be important as well so you wonder about Theo Walcott playing two games in four days but I do not expect any sort of rotation today because we are at the stage of the season and in the situation where you have to target the game that’s in front of you and not think about the one in three days time.

Talking of the Manchester United game, their fans, fucking hell.  A quick scan of Twitter give you the biggest collection of football illiterates you could ever come across in one place. The majority still don’t think Casemiro should’ve been sent off and also believe that United should’ve had three penalties and some even think KWP deserved the racist abuse he got and that the racism was Anthony Taylor’s or VAR’s fault.

Anyway, tonight, Itchen Bridge, raining.  Team news and meh!  Ruben has decided to rest both Romeo Lavia and Theo Walcott, two of our better performers recently and replace them with two players off of my shit list. Mt shitlist is a list of players who cannot be relied upon to play two decent Premier League games in a row. Elyounoussi and Diallo are starting.  It’s really hard not to be pessimistic but assuming we line-up with the same formation, our creativity is going to be provided by two wingers, Elyounoussi and Sulemana, with zero goals and zero assists this season.

Away we go and Brentford are predictably the more assured looking side from the off. We are defending solidly enough but predictably are not creating a thing. Brentford are course very good at set pieces and from the first of them, Ivan Toney find himself completely unmarked at the back post but someone gets a boot to it and we just about get away with it.

Hickey gets in across from our left which is flicked on and Mbeumo meets at the back post and Baz just throws himself at it making himself as big as possible and it hits his foot – great save and booted clear.

It’s a temporary reprieve though as Brentford win a corner on our left.   In it comes From Mbeumo, flicked on at the near post by Norgaard who makes a really simple movement and there is Ivan Toney at the back post to knock it into an empty net. Brilliantly simple and 1-0 to Brentford.

I Bet He Doesn't Miss From There

In the 15 minutes that follow before half time, we do absolutely fuck all aside from one always rising shot from Alcaraz, which comfortably clears the bar and surely there has to be changes at half-time. We are so fucking static in front of our midfield when we’ve got the ball and there is absolutely no one to pass to. We come for the second half with exactly the same 11.

We do actually start the second half well with JWP and Alcaraz combining for Charly to put a lovely ball inside the full back for KWP to run onto. He gets to the line and pulls it back to Adams who of course, doesn’t score.  He manages to not hit th e goalkeeper this time but manages to hit the one defender who has got back behind the keeper. Can’t blame Che for that one.

We win a freekick on the right hand side as KWP gets chopped down and JWP tries a swinging effort at the far post but it swings quite a long way wide than it actually looked at the time.

The substitutions eventually arrives and mercifully it’s not the Chuckle Brothers today but it’s Romeo Lavia and Theo Walcott replacing the two stand-ins who have both been incredibly average.

The referee is beginning to get on my tits because Brentford are now time wasting for England and he is doing nothing about it. Every single challenge sees a Brentford player stay on the deck and the time taken over throws and goal kicks is getting ever longer.

Tall Paul is on for Alcaraz and we actually get a ball into the mixer, with Paul challenging Raya and through the keeper takes the ball comfortably enough,he then decides he wants some afters and gets in to Paul’s face.  Paul just looks at him and laughs. The referee fusses over and does fuck all.

Ivan Bet365 then follows in a shot that Baz comfortably reclaims having palmed it out and clearly goes to leave something on the goalkeeper.  Bednarek gets in his face and the referee decides that that’s worth a booking. Toney is booked as well, thus bringing in the bet he had on Ivan Toney scoring and getting booked.

90 minutes are up and there are seven minutes of extras for all the time wasting but Brentford are really good at it now and the first six minutes of it sees about a minute and a half of actual football as the referee does fuck all.  In desperation, we throw everyone forward with one minute to go and Baz’ goal-kick is met by a Brentford player, then flicked on by Toney and Wissa has a free run at goal and draws Baz out before slotting it past him. 2-0. Mass exodus. There should of course be about another four minutes to play, not that it matters but of course, the whistle goes straight away.

Well, we just fucked aren’t we?  Today started as another day of hope, a day when we would win and be out of the bottom three for the first time in ages. However, as usual, when given a clear target to achieve, we absolutely shat the bed on with a typical performance.

The likelihood of this happening started of course with the team selection. It’s a home game against a team that you have a decent shout of beating. Ruben picked a line-up to protect a couple of players with Walcott and Lavia left out, basically to save them for the more difficult game against Tottenham at the weekend. I could kind of see the logic of leaving those two out following the Manchester United game but it cannot be denied that the replacements chosen were a massive downgrade. Diallo is half the player that Lavia is - quite literally. If Lavia was struggling with the after affects of the United game then he shouldn’t be on the bench but if he wasn’t then he has to be on the pitch for us, bearing in mind how a few games he’s got left in a Southampton shirt.

Whereas Lavia will always find space to get attacks moving, Diallo simply does not though the lack of movement in front of him didn’t help him much.  On that score, it was actually the loss of Walcott it was felt most keenly especially when we went behind. Theo, despite his age, has that one thing that none of our other wide players have and that is movement ahead of the ball.  He gets himself into spaces with darting runs away from players. He uses the ball well. I’m not for a second saying he is a wonderful player anymore, but we are dealing with a pretty low bar here when it comes to wide players.

I heard people all around me moaning when the ball gets passed sideways across midfield but you can only complain if there was a forward pass on and the option was not chosen. 99% of the time when the midfielders have the ball, there is absolutely no forward pass on because none of the forwards fucking move. We are so static when our central midfielders have the ball but literally the only pass available is out of the full backs or back to the centre backs. The best central midfielders in the world wouldn’t be able to find forward pass with these strikers.

Elyounoussi has many flaws in his game or one of the worst ones is his lack of movement and he needs to move because he’s not quick enough to beat a player with pace and he’s not skilful enough to beat a player using a trick or dribbling.  He is just there. On the other wing we have Sulemana, who cost us £22 million to basically sign the same player as Sam Edozie, one that works hard, does the occasional dazzling thing on the ball but one who has absolutely zero end product, none whatsoever. He basically can’t pick out anyone with a cross and if it gets anywhere near the goal has absolutely zero composure.  Like Edozie he has a load of potential but potential has to turn into excellence (I sound like a LinkedIn Twat) right now because of where we are.

Che Adams battled away but he was as guilty as anyone of being static and Pinnock and Mee will really have had an easier afternoon. I think we took them out of their comfort zone once at the start of the second half and that was it. The introduction of Tall Paul in the last 25 minutes did little to change things. Again, I think we gave him one cross to compete for but he does look painfully out of his depth.

There will be people looking at our January transfer dealings and saying “ I told you so -  Sulemana from a French teams reserves, Onuachu from the Belgian league, Bree from the Championship, Orsic from the Croatian league… What impact of any of them had? I think we all had reservations about all of them.  Charly Alcaraz has contributed well but we kind of needed more than 1 out of 5 to hit the ground running.

Brentford didn’t have to be any good to stop us scoring. Once they went ahead with the free-kick move, all they had to do was remain organised and we had absolutely nothing. We completely wasted the half hour following going behind and for a team that needs as much time as possible to get the ball in the opposition there, that’s not good enough. Yes we have tightened up the defence and we needed to do that but when we get relegated, it’s going to be because three managers this season have not come up with any plan for the attacking third of the pitch. Surely movement off the ball is a coachable thing?  Since the World Cup we have scored seven league goals, five from JWP, of which most are free kicks and two from Charly Alcaraz. You don’t stay up with the lack of contribution we are getting from everyone else. Ultimately the reason that we couldn’t beat 10 man Manchester United was because we couldn’t stick the ball in the net and the reason we didn’t get anything out of the game today was because we couldn’t create anything and stick the ball in the net and ultimately the reason we will get relegated is because… You know the rest.

As if today couldn’t get any worse, there was another hamstring injury for KWP, one of our few genuine Premier League level players. With AMN being injured, the next cab off the rank was James Bree who seems to struggle regulating how hard he kicks the ball. He can ping a diagonal 60 yards from one flank to another but when it comes to getting any quality on a cross then it’s the knee-height dribbler that doesn’t reach.  Statistically though…

Thomas Frank, the manager who we should’ve gone all out to get when we appointed Nathan Jones, summed us up in one sentence and his post-match interview when he said that we were decent between the two penalty areas but the game is won in both boxes. Mic drop, the end.

In a week where consistency of refereeing has been questioned, we had a great one today involving the goalkeepers. David Raya threw his toys out of the pram because he got challenged by Tall Paul. It wasn’t a foul, it was just an aerial challenge. No one got booked. Ivan Toney takes a kick at Bazunu on the ground and Bednarek gets annoyed about it and Bednarek gets booked.   Also, there were seven minutes of injury time to be played and whilst ultimately Brentford scored again to make it irrelevant, the first six minutes out of the seven saw the ball in play for about a minute and a half as Brentford employed every Mickey Mouse time wasting trick in the book. There should’ve been another three or four minutes after Brentford scored the second goal, not that it would’ve made any difference.  If we had played until I had walked back over the Itchin Bridge in the rain and got back into my car, we still wouldn’t have scored.

Still, a win against Tottenham and we will have a little bit of optimism again but make no mistake, today was an absolutely major blow. We had an opportunity, and we blew it. We will not be getting many more opportunities and with a depressing manner of this defeat, I don’t blame anybody for preparing for the inevitable.