Carabao Cup 3rd Round - Everton 1 Southampton 1 (Southampton win 6-5 on penalties)

 

I've Been Diving the Wrong Way Since Before You Were Born Son

Time for the Carabao Cup all-Premier League mega clash between Everton and Southampton, being beamed live by every broadcaster all over the globe. Or not as the case may be. Everton are currently 20th and Saints are currently 19th in the Premier League, both with zero points. Everton have been different to Saints in that they have got themselves into winning positions in their last two games, having been 2-0 up in both of them and have spectacularly managed to lose both.

Back in the day, both teams would’ve seen this game as a chance to improve morale and get that winning feeling back again to give the league program a boost but these days, with virtually all Premier League teams changing 10 or 11 of the starting players, that’s not really relevant anymore.

Sean Dyche needs to win this game because there is a growing clamour for him to be sacked because Everton of course, are still a big name, even though they have been pretty shit for a number of years. Dyche did a good job with them last year and overcame points deductions, without which, they would’ve finished comfortably mid-table. Another preseason of financial weirdness has happened though with important players like Onana moving on. They are still battling with PSR restrictions and have been involved in some of those “Cheating In Plain Sight” deals, swapping youngsters with other PSR threatened clubs like Aston Villa, for ludicrously overinflated fees. I guess if the rules allow it then you can’t complain though not exactly in the spirit of things bearing in mind the reason that the rules were brought in.

Whatever team Dyche puts out will of course carry the Dyche hallmark of being physical and pretty direct so maybe it’s not a game for us to put out a bunch of kids.  The incoming physical challenge is one reason why Saints team selection will be interesting because since the Cardiff game in the last round, the status of a few of our players has changed. Matty Fernandes and Tyler Dibling are first team starters, as are Cameron Archer and Big Les. Joe Lumley is now no longer required to bring the vibes to the Carabao Cup so I am sure that we will see Alex McCarthy in goal today.

Team news and we do indeed see McCarthy and there are just two players who could reasonably expect to start against Ipswich on Saturday.  THB captains the side and there is also a place for Big Les.  Other than that, it’s the usual ‘reserves’ like Bree, Taylor and Wood, the recently dropped like Armstrong and Aribo and the fitness seekers like Cornet, Fraser and Lallana.

Away we go and the pattern of the game is obvious straight away with Saints having possession but then looking very shaky whenever we don’t have it.  Dyche is still reassuringly old skool in his approach.  His goalkeeper gets the ball, the defenders push up to halfway and he thunders it up the pitch towards a big unit striker.  Beto is his name and they signed him for £30m after they’d tried to sign Che Adams from us for £15m but we weren’t happy to accept £1 a year instalments.

Our first effort is from a Taylor cross which deflects up to the edge of the box and is met by Aribo flying in but he must have had his eyes shut because a perfect 50p header flew well over the bar.

Beto, for it is he, has the first shot of the day as he picks up the ball inside the box and from a tight angle, drills it at the near post but McCarthy easily pushes it wide.  Another Everton attack and Lindstrom is blocked by Wood and wins a corner. McNeil puts in the in-swinger, which is flapped at by McCarthy, kept alive be on the back post by O’Brien, headed goalwards by Keane and nodded into the net by Doucoure, who at least has a good Grace to use his head this time, instead of slapping in his hand like he usually fucking does. Bollocks.

Saints respond pretty well but get caught on the break again with Lindstrom running through from the left hand side before trying to open up and curl it into the far corner but instead of that, he passed it straight to McCarthy. Another chance as Everton build down the right and a pass in behind the hopelessly out of position Wood, who appeals for offside but THB clears up before his line-breaking pass finds Big Les, who turns and again plays forward to Fraser who gets absolutely trashed by the young impetuous Everton full back Dixon. In it comes from Taylor and THB is free at the back post to head powerfully down and bouncing into the top corner.  1-1, Get in.

The game settles down again into the same pattern of Saints possession and Everton waiting for us to screw up close to our goal.  There is minor excitement as Cornet shows a bit of what he’s about by flying in from the right and lashing wildly over the bar with his left foot.

Half time and that was OK I guess though it’s hard to square off that we have apparently had 77% percent possession and six shots to their seven.  So, say it was 45 minutes…. That means we’ve had the ball for 35 minutes and had 6 shots, so just under 6 minutes of possession per shot.  Everton have therefore had the ball for 10 minutes and had 7 shots, so roughly 1.5 minutes of possession per shot.  Lallana has been different gravy in midfield with his skill and ball retention but no more as he’s off the be replaced with Fernandes.  I assume this will mean Les playing a bit deeper.

Wood has gone a good 20 minutes without a mistake but 15 of that was spent in the dressing room at half time.  His lightweight, off-balance effort at defending puts us right in the shit and a flick on by Beto sends Lindstrom through and going behind beckons until McCarthy meets him and superbly blocks the effort again.

Saints are offering a bit going forward but not too much. Matty Fernandes jinks past the right back before finding Wee Man and he bundles his way through and through and from a narrow angle, goes for the far post and the goalkeeper sticks his foot out and deflects it away.

In pretty quick succession, the forward line is changed with Armstrong, Cornet and Fraser all going off along with Big Les and in their place emerge Ross Stewart, Tyler Dibling, BBD and Flynn Downes.

Saints are looking to get the ball out to Tyler Dibling at every opportunity as he’s now up against Ashley Young, who is twice his age.  Young has just come on as a sub to a crescendo of abuse from Everton fans, which was aimed at the manager for bringing him on for a striker – even though the striker in question was Beto, and he is shit.  Downes eventually does find Dibling, who weaves past two players as if they weren’t there before cutting in and lashing over the bar.  He's at it again straight after, lining up Young and going past him as if he's not there and into the area and Young has a nibble and over he goes.  Penalty surely..... corner, fuck off.  One thing for sure is that he didn't play the ball so that's a penalty or a goal kick or you've just fucking bottled it.  Where's VAR when you need it?  Oh yes, this competition doesn't bring in VAR til later in the competition, as opposed to the FA Cup that uses it when the ground has capability.  Shambles.

Three minutes of injury time and can we just be put this out of its misery. It’s largely been a shit second half and bring on the penalties so there is at least a bit of excitement.

Fernandes up first, I have confidence …. Bang, no problem and high past the goalkeeper down the middle. 1-0

Michael Keane…. he’s a big donkey but I reckon he’s going to score this and…. he comprehensively sends McCarthy the wrong way. 1-1

Ross Stewart… will probably get injured running up to this ball.  Here he comes… Virginia gets a fingertip to it but he’s not keeping that out, 2-1

Dwight McNeil, got his mouth hanging open but that’s no reason to expect him to miss… miss it you fucker….. no problem and McCarthy the wrong way again. 2-2

Ben Brereton Diaz.  I assume he’s going to show us what we were missing on Saturday and… sure enough, right-footed and drilled past the goalkeeper who goes the wrong way. 3-2

Ndiaye for Everton and … Groundhog Day as McCarthy emphatically goes the wrong way again.  Whatever is written on his water bottle is clearly wrong. 3-3

THB…. Hmmm, don’t like centre backs taking one.  Come on Captain…. Bang, absolutely drilled it past Virginia, who is competing with Alex in the ‘going the wrong way’ stakes. 4-3

Lindstrom… this has to be a chance as he’s shit himself every time he’s seen the posts today and oooooh close.  No, Macca’s gone the wrong way again but it’s hit the other post and bounced in. 4-4

Joe Aribo looks cool but left footed kickers always worry me…. but he scores easily enough as the keeper once again goes the wrong way. 5-4

Jack Harrison to take the fifth and easy…. with McCarthy again showing maximum commitment to going the wrong way, flying through the air and gracefully landing in the opposite corner to the ball to keep up his 100% record. 5-5

Sudden death and down to the people who you don’t really wanna take one and it’s James Bree.  He strikes a good ball so I’m hopeful and … easy, Virginia goes for a hot dog again in the wrong direction. 6-5

Ashley Dung steps up. He’s always been shit and this is a chance…. and McCarthy stands his ground and sticks a hand out and deflects it onto the post and we are through.  Get in.

You Can Still Get Excited About Winning a Carabao Cup Game

Well that was fun in the end and a perfect illustration of how one average penalty and your goalkeeper finally going the right way, can change the entire feeling of an evening.  Small margins and all that. The game itself was pretty torrid to watch and it was one of those ones where we have 75% possession and have less shots than the opposition.   Too much sideways and backwards and this was acknowledged by the manager afterwards.  The main problem was is that we couldn’t get the ball through to the forwards players and didn’t stretch the Everton back four enough during the game.  One issue was that we seemed slightly unwilling to pass the ball forward for whatever reason and another issue was that there were not many options higher up the pitch.  

Part of that was because Adam Armstrong has completely lost his confidence from last season.  He very rarely came short to receive the ball and he never attacked dangerous spaces in between defenders and spent most of his time standing behind defenders so there was absolutely no option to get the ball to him.  It looks to me that he has completely accepted that he is not good enough at this level but he absolutely needs to get that out of his system otherwise we may as well put him behind some glass, like a fire extinguisher with ‘do not break until relegated’, written on the front of it. You may very well not be good enough at this level but you at least have to have the mindset that you are good enough. It wasn’t solely his fault of course, Ryan Fraser and Max Cornet both showed flashes on the wings but Fraser was too willing to turn back and not take on his full-back, whereas Cornet is still trying to work the rust out of his game after his long injury.  Fraser was particularly frustrating, playing as he was against Everton fullback Dixon who was incredibly rash.  I liked his enthusiasm because he played the game at 100 miles an hour but steaming into tackles every single time at full pelt is not going to end well and indeed, that is where our goal came from.  The free kick that led to our goal was a forward pass from THB to Les, a turn and forward pass to Fraser, who ran at the full back and got trashed.  All positive, forward-thinking bits of play.

In midfield, everyone did well on the possession front but there was a lack of intent to play forward and nothing much when we got to the edge of the box. Joe Aribo played furthest forward of the three, making a complete bollocks of one decent headed chance in the first half but was on the whole ineffective regarding goal threat, as was big Les and Adam Lallana. Somewhat mystifyingly, Lallana played the deepest of the three with big Les attempting to be a box-to-box midfielder which on the face of it, doesn’t appear to be his game. Adam Lallana was wonderfully neat and tidy in his 45 minutes but I would have liked to have seen him in a more creative role with Big Les deeper. It’s not as if Everton were playing a lot of football in midfield.

The tone of Everton‘s performance was set by their goalkeeper Virginia, who was the very antithesis of the modern goalkeeper who plays the ball short to his defenders. Every time Virginia got possession he just screamed the ball as hard as he could towards Beto, Everton’s big but useless £30 million striker who was at least causing a few problems for Nathan Wood with his physicality.

Sad to say, Nathan Wood was bullied all over the place as usual. He is a tidy footballer but he really needs to get in the gym because there’s not a striker in the Premier League who wouldn’t be able to just manoeuvre him off the ball. THB had a decent game at the back and I thought it was a very good idea to make him captain as he’s going to be playing in the Premier League on Saturday and it can’t have been anything but a boost to his confidence. The goal he scored will also have done that. He had a couple of loose moments but in the main stood up well to the somewhat limited one-dimensional Everton approach. James Bree and Charlie Taylor were what they are, solid and unspectacular. Bree struggled early on against Dwight McNeil but grew into the game and ended up as one of our better performers. It’s a shame for him that he has KWP and Sugawara ahead of him for the right back position so no matter how well he does, he is never gonna be more than a Carabao Cup player this season.

THB - Back on Track

And then there’s Alex McCarthy. Having spectacularly and emphatically dived into the opposite corner to the ball for the first five penalties, he managed to make himself a hero by saving the decisive one from Ashley Dung.  It was a bit like a striker who misses five chances and then scores one off his arse and it turns out to be the winner.  His contribution to the Everton goal was a bit wet but he made a couple of decent saves in the second half when Everton got through and can be pleased overall with his nights work.

Of the substitutes, the obvious stand out was Tyler Dibling. I didn’t particularly want him to be involved tonight but he was more or less the only player to get anyone off their seat in the second half.  One move cutting in from the right wing before firing over the bar was excellent and he should undoubtedly have had a penalty in the 90th minute as he pulled exactly the same move that he pulled on Diogo Dalot at the weekend and Ashley Dung carted him over. Maybe I’m missing something here but I am amazed that no one appealed for that.

This game is of course, small beer compared to what we’ve got coming up at the weekend with the visit of Ipswich Town. Relegation six pointer in coming and we are going to need everyone - manager, staff, players and fans to step up. We need those three points.

Up the fucking Saints