Premier League Match 9 - Manchester City 1 Southampton 0

Pep Loves Us

Here we are ladies and gentlemen for the latest episode of the Premier League game show “What’s the Fucking Point?“. In the blue corner we have a billionaires of Manchester City complete with there are 115 charges, world-class manager and world-class squad, where one player is probably worth £200 million and then the red corner we have newly promoted Southampton with their limited PSR allowance, no charges because they play by the rules and squad of players that includes players who can’t run, players who are barely good enough for the Championship and a manager who on occasions, acts like he’s on a level with world-class manager in the Blue corner.

Just what you need when you haven’t won in the opening eight games of the Premier League season - a trip to the Etihad to play Manchester City who of course, haven’t lost yet. They have drawn a couple and only beat Wolves away in the last minute last week but these are very small cracks of light in the darkness that is our prospects of getting anything from this particular game.

It does start 11 against 11 though and since last weeks fiasco against Leicester, where virtually every substitution made us weaker, I have arrived at the theory that we must leave our starting players on the pitch for as long as we possibly can because the squad players are just going to inevitably drag things down. That theory can probably be saved for the two games that follow this one against Everton and Wolves because this one is surely just a case of damage limitation. Mind you, we said that when we went up to Arsenal a few weeks ago and we actually put on a decent performance and to be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me if we did that today. It’s one of those when you just have to take ten minutes at a time and stay in the game for as long as you possibly can. On the face of it, this is the biggest home banker of the season in the entire league.

With Saints being where they are and with what happened against Leicester, we officially declared silly season open with regards to stuff that turns up on the internet. Just now I saw us linked with David Moyes as a manager and Patrick Bamford, currently languishing on a Championship bench, to be some sort of saviour for our season. Agents hard at work I suspect.

I don’t usually pay much attention to Pep Guardiola‘s pre-match press conferences so I don’t know if he does this with every club, but every time he talks about us he always seems to be playing mind games, talking up how brilliant we are at something or how brilliant the manager is at something. I know he has to say something and he’s not going to say “they are shit and they have absolutely no fucking chance playing like that”  No exception this week and the usual talking up of Southampton was in place. Russell Martin’s clear vision for how the game should be played and how you shouldn’t compromise that. With all due respect Mr Guardiola, what the fuck do you know about managing a team with a bottom three squad at the bottom of the league? Manager of peak Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City. I totally get that he’s one of the most respected man in football ever, but do me a favour?

More usefully, he did mention that City would be missing a few players like Doku, Walker, Grealish, de Bruyne and long-term absentee Rodri. Trust me when I say you can still pick the Champions League winning level first 11 without those guys that was far as we are concerned, it’s much better but those guys are unavailable.

Saints got one of the famous PGMOL apologies during the week. Well, not so much an apology but an acknowledgement that Anthony Taylor should’ve given us a penalty last week. Well that’s really fucking useful isn’t it? So on the one hand they are acknowledging that Anthony Taylor made a mistake as a vital point of the game but on the other hand, they’ve given him the most high-profile game of this weekend fixtures as he referees Arsenal against Liverpool.

Team news and Lallana instead of Aribo was a bit unexpected given Russell’s comments last week about Adam not being suited to a game where we don’t have much possession.  Jack Stephens, fresh from the end of his ban and elevation to 'legend' status, for calling a referee and 4th Official ‘c**ts’, also came into the team in place of Sugawara as we are undoubtedly going with a back five.

The first of what will probably be many processions towards our goal ends with City working the ball in from the left and Rúben Dias having a shot from 30 yards which is straight at Ramsdale who stops it easily. To be fair,  if Rúben Dias is having shots from 30 yards, we are probably doing our jobs.

Bednarek As Dog Toy

Another attack down the left and Nunes sends Gvardiol away and he just puts a cross into an area but in that area is Erling Haaland, who treats Bednarek like a dog treats a new toy and just chews him up and gets him out of the way before making contact and knocking it straight into the roof of the net. Fucks sake. 1-0, five minutes and you just know that everyone in the mainstream sports media is getting their calculators out.

Whatever our game plan is, we stick to it and things calm down a bit and we are keeping the ball pretty well.  There are a few alarms but everyone is digging in and we get to 20 minutes still just the one behind. On a rare Saints break up the right hand side, the ball is played infield from Dibling to Downes who tries to let it run and is clearly fouled by Lewis but referee Tony Harrington decides to let play go on and it ends up with Haaland bearing down on goal but a Bednarek makes amends for his dog toy impression and gets a block in which takes it through to Ramsdale.

The next City attack sees Bernardo Silva bring the ball forward and Downes comes in with a perfect tackle to take the ball of him but referee decides that’s a free-kick which provokes an angry response from both Downes and Lallana and it’s Downes that picks up the yellow card for dissent . To add insult to injury, Russell Martin managed to get booked as well, all whilst Lallana gave out a similar opinion of the referee as Jack Stephens did against Man United.

Approaching half-time down our left they come with Silvinho getting a cross into the box, which is half cleared and Kovacic smashes it and it’s moving all over the shop but Ramsdale gets a good hand on it and we smuggle it away for a corner.  The final threat of the half is ours however as we play out, with Downes finding Stephens, who has made an extra man in midfield and he pokes it through and suddenly Archer is motoring towards goal.  On he goes into the penalty area and a touch left and bang, past the keeper, hits the bar and out.  Shit.

We Have a Shot

Half-time and just the one down and to be honest we played pretty well and given a good account.  We are working at not letting City have the ball all the time and that’s going well but we need to create more chances.  The risks we take to get to the half way line and beat the press are not being backed up with creating chances – the Archer effort being our only shot of the half.  One change with the quiet Tyler Dibling being replaced with Adam Armstrong. I assume that Dibling is just feeling the pace after so many consecutive games at his age.

Within a few seconds of the second half starting, City break and Foden picks up the ball at the edge of the box and drags his shot about a foot wide of the post. Adam Armstrong then goes into the book with his first involvement in the game as he brushes past Nunes and he goes down like he’s been shot. In comes the free-kick and it’s headed across the goal by Gvardiol and Bednarek has to clear it out from under his own crossbar. In comes the corner to the back post to Haaland and THB heads off the line.  Danger not over though as back it comes and Haaland can only pick out Ramsdale with his second header.

Thought it’s looking like a second goal is coming, Saints are still a minor threat with KWP chipping a pass over the full-back for Adam Armstrong to run onto.  Just the one thing in mind as he cuts across Rúben Dias before smashing it straight at Ederson who catches it dismissively..

That brief foray is momentary respite as Foden feeds the ball in from the right hand side and it meets the run of Haaland at the back post but in about an event more rare than finding white dog shit these days, Haaland taps a sitter wide of the post.

Three Players Laughing at a Decision

More greatness from Tony Harrington as we win a free kick in midfield but in typical City fashion, Foden stands on the ball to prevent a quick one being taken.  Lallana taps the ball into him and the ref does nothing. Lallana taps it into Foden again who has still not moved away and it’s Lallana who gets booked.  A few minutes later and Lallana has to be removed before he kills the referee and on comes Joe Aribo.  Silvinio immediately gets away down the City right and picks out Haaland with a cross and he seems to get caught in two minds between heading for goal and heading across and Bednarek hacks it away again.

Are City getting nervous as we reach the last 20?  Probably not but you can hear that their fans are and we attack down the left with Archer feeding the ball back infield to Aribo, on to Fernandes and he plays it wide to Armstrong on the right and his shot from an angle is shite and always going over.

A spate of substitution seems sees us bring on James Bree, Sulemana and Tall Paul, with Manning, the injured Downes and Archer making way.  Saints are still trying to play and get out of our left corner and find Bree on the right, on to Armstrong, who hangs up a cross towards the big man and Tall Paul heads it down and it’s hacked away by Akanji for a corner. It’s our first corner in the 92nd minute and it comes from Fernandes, but headed out and of course there is a City break which ends with Haaland bearing down on goal and Ramsdale throwing himself at his feet – great save.

96 minutes and we get a free kick on the halfway line and it’s surely “land it on Tall Paul” time…. but instead of launching it in the general direction of the massive bloke, which every other team in history would’ve done, we pass it around for a bit before our goalkeeper launches it up to no one in particular and that’s the end of the game.  Sometimes I just don’t get us.

To be honest, that wasn’t bad against the combined might of Manchester City and Tony Harrington making sure that we could never get a foothold in the game. We pretty much did as well as we possibly could today and it says a lot about the spirit within the camp but we can go 1-0 down that early and still be in the game as time ticked down. If you are being hyper-critical then you could look at the usual failings of us taking all these risks to get to the halfway line and beat the press and then having very very few ideas of how to progress it any further and actually threaten the opposition goal. There were a couple of moments, with obviously the closest one being Archer hitting the bar just before half-time. Adam Armstrong had a similar chance in the second half but smashed it over and there was the 90th minute header by Tall Paul that could've caused problems. Slim pickings.  City and Pep will be very pleased to have got over the line because we didn’t make it easy for them and that is more or less all that you can ask for. The goal we conceded was not down to any ridiculous giveaway and they scored it because they have the best number nine in the world.

Other than the goal, we kept Haaland relatively quiet. He missed one sitter from close in but the defenders can all be pleased with themselves for the way they handled him after the goal. For the goal itself you could say the Bednarek should’ve been stronger but no matter how strong you are, Haaland is stronger and that’s what happens. What I love about Haaland is that he is not looking to hit the deck at every opportunity and at all times he just wants to make things happen.

A lot has been written and said about how as well as having all the advantages in the world, city get most of the decisions of the referees as well. This is not a new concept as it happened a lot for Manchester United when they were the dominant team in English football but today was almost funny. The Lallana booking - to be fair to Tony Harrington, he had probably been waiting to book Lallana throughout the game, which mostly stemmed from the other ridiculous incident with the Downes tackle. This isn’t the reason we lost a game of course as City are light years ahead of us, but it certainly doesn’t make it any easier. Today’s gripes of course, come on top of the acknowledgement we got from PGM Oh Well, that Anthony Taylor should’ve given us a penalty last week.

The standout performance in the back three was from Taylor Harwood-Bellis who was happily throwing himself in front of everything and looked more like the player that we hoped he would be after his season in the Championship. Today he certainly looked like he has adjusted to the step up, which bodes well for the rest of the season. I was pleased for him today and for Aaron Ramsdale in particular. He had no chance whatsoever with the goal and managed to repel everything else. We should also mention the fact that we responded well to the setback of going behind because it would’ve been very easy for us to cave in and I think most people would’ve seen that early goal going and expected it to be five or six by the end but by the end of the game we were pushing for an equaliser.  Ryan Manning had a decent outing and all of the midfielders did their bit defensively – no one had a bad game but we do need to work out how to create more chances against the good sides, when the get into their half in broken play.

The good news is that on Saturday, none of the other winless teams managed to register their first wins of the season but Wolves got a late point at Brighton which does drop us to the bottom of the league. On Sunday, the good news didn’t last because Spurs shit the bed at Palace and handed the Eagles their first win of the season. 

Pep was predictably complimentary about us being really brilliant, whilst having one point from nine games and Russell Martin will come out of today’s game relatively unscathed and you could argue that outside of Southampton, his reputation will have been enhanced.  Amongst Saints supporters, no one who hadn’t already, will have turned against him after the defeat today but you could imagine that he has the next two games to keep his job and it won’t matter if the performance is good, average or bloody dreadful - we have to get at least four points from the next two games, starting with Everton at home on Saturday.

Up the Fucking Saints