This game against Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park
may not have much bearing on the automatic promotion chase, such as it is, but
it will have a bearing on how the rest of the regular league program is going
to play out. Blackburn are still needing points to guarantee staying in the Championship
next season, though it would take a pretty unlikely turn of events for them to
get seriously involved.
So, can we raise our going against a team like this or not? We should certainly
be too good for them if we play anything like our best, like we did when we
smashed them 4-0 at St Mary’s earlier on in the season.
Russell Martin has been forced to defend some of his more questionable
decisions in the press this week, most notably leaving out KWP. No one really
pressed him on the fact that the replacement he chose was partly or majorly
responsible for virtually everything that went wrong in that game. It would be easy to think that the Ipswich
game has totally killed the season as far as the regular-season is concerned
but noises are still being made about 24 points left to play for.
Blackburn have one name that stands out and that is of course Sammie Szmodics,
who has single-handedly scored enough goals to keep them out of serious danger
of relegation. It does make you wonder what a player like that could do in a
better team and I would be sure that he will be at a better team next season.
Last week his partner upfront was Sam Gallagher, formerly one of ours of course
and they were high hopes for him when he was 17 but he didn’t really kick on
after good initial impact. To be fair, he was hardly given a chance to kick on but
a move away was probably best for all parties in the end.
An hour before kick-off and Russell‘s team selection today has a couple of
things I’m questioning. We have the usual one full back and three centre halves
as a back four and despite our attacking play going to shit when he went off
against Ipswich, Che Adams is left on the bench and we are trying that Adam
Armstrong at centre forward at centre forward, you know, that thing that
doesn’t get the best out of him and doesn’t help the team, or at least it
hasn’t done so far this season. The front three looks very lightweight with
David Brooks being brought in on the right wing. There is also a chance in
midfield for Joe Rothwell, with Stuart Armstrong being out with concussion.
Both Rothwell and Adam Armstrong are of course playing against their former
club. Adam appears to be appreciated by
the Ewood faithful, Joe does not.
Positive signs from the off with a positive run by Brooks in the opening couple
of minutes and from our next attack, THB switches it out wide to Brooks in
space and the Welshman fires over a great ball along the six-yard line and Adam
Armstrong makes a good run and goooooaaaaaaafuckingairshotforfuckssake. Just what you need after not being clinical enough
recently.
The game settles into a pace that you could politely call ‘predestrian’. We are the better side and put together a
quality move out on the left with Stephens exchanging passes with Fraser and Captain
Jack curls in a cross and up goes Joe Aribo and nods it over the keeper, off
the bar, back off the back of the keeper and away. Shit.
Blackburn are offering nothing, but then they are happy with a draw even at
this early stage, but we mess up when Bednarek plays a wayward ball out and it’s
knocked first time to Szmodics and he goes for the chip with Baz off his line
and fuck…… roof of the net. Really should
have scored that and we’ve got lucky there.
There is one more moment in amongst the tedium as we approach half time when Fraser
wins a corner, which gives Rothwell the opportunity to wind up some fans in the
sparsely populated home end by dummying to take the corner from out of the
quadrant. Having put pressure on himself
to not put in a shite one, he puts over a good ball and Stephens heads well
wide at the back post.
Half time and I’m getting the word…. Boring.
God it’s shit. Should be ahead of
course but it has the feel of one of those games where the longer it goes on,
the less likely that anyone will score. We
even look likely to keep a clean sheet… and we look likely not to score. Not enough pace in our game and we’re not
testing the defence enough.
A few challenges start flying in midfield and Blackburn break down the left and
Dolan earns a yard on KWP and fires across the shot which Baz saves easily
enough. After that brief excitement, we revery back to a nothingness
again. Russell Martin has clearly seen
enough and it’s a double Bournemouth substitution with Rothwell and Brooks off
for Smallbone and Adams.
Blackburn make the mistake of trying to play out from the back and Brittain
plays a ball straight to Aribo who goes forward before playing in Adams on the
left of the goal and his first-time effort towards the far post goes a yard
wide. There’s minor concern at the other end as Szmodics wins a corner and Blackburn
work it short before crossing to the back post, where Gallagher is free but he’s
not 6 foot 10 and can’t get anything meaningful on the header.
The ineffective Adam Armstrong and Ryan Fraser are both off for Edozie and
Sulemana and this flatlining game briefly threatens to breathe as Sulemana
skins the full back before playing it infield to KWP and he steps inside a
defender before shooting left footed, past the keeper and Brittain has got back
on the line behind him to block and also been alert enough to clear before
Adams got to the rebound.
Having been involved at one end, KWP then dozes off for so long that Gallagher
gets a tackle in on him and he gives it to the wonderfully named
Rankin-Costello who drills it straight at Baz from a narrow angle. Good save but he would have done well to not
save it.
One sub remains and nothing says “we aren’t scoring” more than KWP coming off and Mara coming on. We now have a 3-3-4 formation, and it very nearly works as Edozie breaks through midfield and attempts to play a ‘Stu versus Ipswich’ ball in between the defenders and Sulemana gets there as the keeper comes out and can’t quite lift it over him.
94, 95 and Sulemana get brought down about 35 yards out. Smallbone is over the free-kick and everyone is up. Instead of swinging it straight in as you do, Will goes for the element of surprise straight off the training ground and plays it short, behind a player and when he gets it back he gives it away with eight of our players in front of the ball. Luckily the referee has had enough of this shit and ends it.
Well that was painful. When you write about the highlights of games or see highlights on TV, it can often obscure just how shit the game was. Trust me – this was shit. My first instinct is that Saints were a team who knew they have fucked up automatic promotion and weren’t really interested in today’s game. Some 0-0 draws are exciting with lots of goalmouth action and the ball just doesn’t hit the net. This wasn’t one of those. Blackburn are what they are, a team battling near the bottom of the division, scrambling to get enough points to stay up so they will be delighted with their days work. We on the other hand, are supposed to be better than that but we were fucking awful.
Another strange team selection by the man who is rapidly becoming the king of the strange team selection as we had the thing going on again, with Stephens playing at left back – more on that later. We also went with the frequently “tried and failed” selection of Adam Armstrong playing as the central striker. It has rarely worked in his three seasons as a Saints player and it hasn’t even worked this season in the Championship. Virtually all of his goals have been from playing from the wing. The front three of Armstrong, Fraser and Brooks were pretty much non-existent. Brooks had a decent run in the first five minutes and look like he was interested but after that, nothing. Fraser looked a bit more lively out on the left but couldn’t get the better of Callum Brittain who made up for his ridiculous ending off at St Mary’s by putting in a decent display. Armstrong himself missed an absolute fucking sitter from six yards after about 10 minutes when he played an airshot and other than that, his first touch under pressure was absolutely shocking and gifted possession back to Blackburn whenever we got it near our front line, which wasn’t often. Despite taking him off being moment that the Ipswich game fell apart, Che Adams was on the bench and we were predictably, not as good.
Joe Rothwell was given a chance in place of the concussed Stuart Armstrong and he was shit. Lightning has already struck twice with the two games where he’s scored two goals but that was never happening today as he just disappeared and by the time he got substituted, I had forgotten he was out there. Joe Aribo putting a decent shift in midfield and was up there for our man of the match award with THB, who both did their jobs really well.
When Oi Grow Up I Wanna Be Paolo Maldini at Left Baaack
Jack Stephens did what he does in that he was neat and tidy on the ball without
doing anything spectacular and defensively he didn’t have a lot to do because
Blackburn didn’t do a lot of attacking. Russell Martin came up with his plan to
get an extra passing option into midfield when Hull had success in pressing us
high up the pitch. What he has forgotten is that the only reason they were able
to do that was because Flynn Downes was missing. In the Hull game, it would’ve been okay to use
Jack Stephens this way but instead of that he tried the Smallbone at 6, Rothwell
at 8 madness, which was fucking awful and Rothwell of course, coughed up a goal
with a panic pass on the edge of the box.
There is no need to do this Poundshop Pep thing now Downes is back, certainly
against weaker sides and all it meant today was that we had absolutely zero
threat from full back on the left so the opposition can basically deploy a
player elsewhere and Blackburn did that and crowded the midfield. Ryan Manning
may not be the best defender in the world, but he does at least offer the
occasional attacking threat from the left-hand side and we need it. Yesterday
it really did Ryan Fraser no favours at all because he couldn’t beat Callum
Brittain who is a big strong and quick defender and he would’ve found a hell of
a lot easier if he had had Manning in the team doing decoy or overlapping runs
to make a bit of space for him. Instead of Manning, he had Stephens standing
behind him in field so it blunted our attack because Blackburn had another body
in midfield also.
In the Championship, given the strength of our squad in comparison to a
majority of other teams, we do not need to be over-complicating things,
especially when the starting 11 that played virtually throughout hour-long unbeaten
run, are all available. If Flynn Downes isn’t available then maybe, but he is
available now and there seems more downsides than upsides to this tactic. Ryan
Manning was bought in, because in part, he knew the system and he knows how to
play full-back in the system which means you occasionally turn up in central
midfield to receive the ball. He knows how to do this and he is so much better
at the other, more conventional side of being a fullback - getting forward and
supporting the winger, crossing with his left foot and all that stuff.
There were some successes and failures off the bench today. Sulemana set up our
best effort of the game for KWP which was blocked by a defender and Edozie was
much more effective on the left than Fraser was. On the downside, Will Smallbone,
as he usually is when he comes on as a substitute, was not what you want when
you want to add energy and pace to a performance. I can’t get my head around the decision making
process that must have gone on for that last minute free-kick. Our final throw
of the dice was Sekou Mara and his contribution was to give a couple of free
kicks away and that was it. I don’t know why we bother even having him on the
bench and I repeat my call for Sulemana to be on the bench as the back-up
central striker option.
The positives are that we kept a clean sheet and the caveat for that is that
Blackburn were shit. It’s good for the confidence of Baz, regardless.
Next up is Coventry at home, fresh from beating Champions-Already Leeds United.
With this one and Watford coming up on Saturday, we could certainly do with a
bit of feel-good factor returning.
Up the fucking Saints.
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