At the dawning of a New Year it’s pretty common to
hear people saying “New Year new me” and other such bollocks, pertaining to the
fact that the new year is somehow miraculously going to be different to the old
year just because the year number has increased by one. The fact remains that
it only happens if you make it happen.
Sport Republic have a transfer window to try and make it happen and the first
few days of it, has seen mixed signals
at best coming out of St Mary’s. Firstly, the new manager Ivan Juric made
reference to the fact that he and the board weren’t going to have a meeting
until next week to decide upon any potential incoming transfers. That was a bit
of a clunker to say the least – nothing like being prepared lads. Some things did happen now, with Ronnie
Edwards going out on loan to QPR and there were recalls from loans for Dominic
Ballard and Cameron Bragg, neither of whom are going to make much difference to
our first team this season. There has
been one arrival, with Welington joining from São Paulo. He is a left back with
over 150 games under his belt for the Brazilian top-level side. The fact that
he was joining and this was all signed and sealed long time ago was missed by
most media outlets who started linking Saints with various left backs as soon
as the silly season started.
There have been a few rumours, about some players leaving, amongst them Charlie
Taylor and Ben Brereton Diaz who in both cases, only joined in the summer which
certainly points at an admission from the club that the recruitment in the
summer was shit in the main. Add Maxwel
Cornet to that list as well as noises are being made about his loan being
cancelled and him going back to West Ham.
Brentford are in town today and it’s another game against the club who we
should be trying to emulate, establishing themselves in the top division and
doing reasonably well. As it stands Brentford are on to finish in a kind of
lower mid-table position but are certainly much better than the current bottom
six. Most of their points are gathered at home, to such a degree that they
haven’t won away from home this season. Needless to say, this should be a great
opportunity for us to actually win a game of fucking football.
Anyone thinking this will be easy however is in for a bit bit of a shock. When
you look at the Brentford front line of Mbeumo, Wissa and Schade, it is
certainly enough to keep our defence busy. My current mode of thinking about us
is that it’s not the defence that is the problem, as much as finding a way to
score goals. Maybe Tall Paul will be the man today but he’s going to have to do
it without the supply from Mateus Fernandes, who is suspended having picked up
his fifth booking last week at Crystal Palace, for winning a header cleanly
against short player who didn’t jump.
Team news and a bad feeling straight away.
Jimmy Championship is at right wing back and it looks like Joe Aribo has
once again been included in the centre of midfield, this time alongside Big Les.
The biggest WTF is that Juric has seen enough from Sulemana in his last two
non-entity substitute appearances to put him in the team from the start today. Try though I might, I’m not confident at all
that Brentford’s poor away record will mean more than our shite looking line-up.
Away we go and it soon becomes apparent that the tactics are to go man-for-man
all over the pitch. Now, I’m not a professional football coach but I know that
that is fucking mental with our players against Brentford's. They are fitter and more athletic and it’s
football suicide. The other thing that I
know is fucking suicidal, is our central midfield and that takes all of
five minutes to manifest itself as the ball gets played up to Aribo, who takes
a horrendous touch and loses the ball. Big Les has to leave his man marking
assignment to try and clear up and he half arses it and misses the
ball, which of course goes to Les’ man Damsgaard, who then splits the gap
between THB and Jimmy Championship and Schade runs to finish first time past a
helpless Ramsdale. Fucking wankers honestly. Great job everybody.
Joe Man Marking. Yes, He's Supposed to Be The Other Side
Another Brentford attack and they absolutely piss through our midfield and it’s Mbeumo playing the ball through to Wissa and his shot is well blocked by Ramsdale and we clear eventually but not for long, because KWP slips on his arse and has to drag down Mbeumo, which is a yellow card and a free kick near the corner of the penalty area. The free kick. comes in and he met by the totally unmarked Norgaard, who flicks a header off onto the crossbar and away. We are so fucking shit it’s unbelievable. Norgaard of course shouldn’t be unmarked but Aribo has decided to go with vibes rather than actually tracking his man. It's shambles and looks like the Spurs game.
We haven't had a shot yet because no one is prepared to take reponsibility, so fair play to Sulemana who responds to the crowd and has a pop, sailing into Row Z and sending people scattering high up in the Chapel. Ooooooooooh, go about five people sarcastically. We eventually create a chance as the first half draws to close, when KWP scoops a cross over and there is a bit of tennis at the back post by Jimmy Championship and Tall Paul flicks a header at it but it’s easily picked up by Flekken.
Our brief flurry continues and Jimmy League One finds Aribo on the byeline and
somehow he takes on a man and beats him before laying it back to Dibling on the
edge of the box and he works onto his left foot and pings it into he side
netting.
Half time and that was dog shit but somehow we are still in the game. Juric has
obviously seen something he doesn’t like though as Jimmy League Two is off to
be replaced by Sugawara and Nathan Wood, who has been struggling with all game
with his man-marking job on Mbeumo, is replaced with Charlie Taylor, who slots
in on the left of the back three.
The second off starts off in shit fashion with Brentford passing the ball around the top of
the penalty area before working it wide to Roerslev on the right, who smashes
it at Ramsdale, who manages to push it out for a corner. We clear the corner as
far as Damsgaard, who plays a simple 1-2 with Mbeumo to completely lose his
marker and now has acres of space to slide the ball into Wissa, whose effort is
blocked wide by THB. It’s just so
fucking easy and inevitable that they're going to score again.... and another corner swings in
and there’s Van den berg, rising all on his own to head the ball into the net.
For fuck sake. Bednarek is not happy as he ended up on the deck and we are off
to VAR
Hi Stockley Park – I’ve let Brentford celebrate for
five minutes so I guess we’d better check it
Why bother, it’s a goal against Southampton?
Yeah, but we’d better have a look to keep
up appearances
OK, checking for a foul… got it – Wissa has his arms around Bednarek, who has
dived on the ground. I’d go with the on
field decision and give it. Sending you
to the screen
[Ref has a look on screen] Tell you what
lads. I’m going to disallow it for the
greater good
What?
Well Southampton never get given anything off VAR, so lets give them this one
so that they can’t complain… and it won’t matter because they’re shit and they’re
going to lose anyway.
Fair enough mate. Howard's here, he like it. Genius thinking.
Fucking hell, we won one. I wonder if this will make any difference? I wonder
if we will take advantage of it? There is a replay on the big screen and that
is soft as fuck.
Ivan has had enough of the Rasmus January 2023 Transfer window boys and Tall
Paul and Sulemana are off to be replaced with Archer and Armstrong. Immediately, there’s a little bit of life in
our attack for a couple of minutes until KWP has an effort blocked and
Brentford break away, Van den berg sends it long, Schade flicks on and Wissa is
clean through and as Ramsdale comes out, he totally shits himself and blasts it
into the Chapel. I mean, that is shit. I can't be bothered to laugh at it really because however shit it was, we are worse.
We make the most of another let off by giving the ball away in midfield as THB and
Big Les seem to get in each other’s way and Mbeumo sends Wissa away and he holds
it up long enough for Mbeumo to get outside him, a simple reverse pass and
Mbeumo lashes it into the top of the net from a narrow angle. Pathetic. Game
over. I realise I’m only being bitter
about this because we never score, but how fucking long does it take them
to celebrate a goal?
Mbeumo Shoots Past an Unprotected Ramsdale From Six Yards
Half an hour to go and Brentford’s next attack sees Mbeumo pick up the ball on the right and once again it’s a simple 1-2 and he absolutely blasts the ball at Ramsdale, unopposed from 6 yards and the keeper blocks again. It’s now Taylor‘s job to be man-to-man on Mbeumo and that’s not fucking working as he swings over a left footed cross And Van den Berg is wrestled to the ground by Big Les and that’s a fucking penalty, isn’t it? They used to have Ivan Toney taking their penalties and always scoring but now they’ve got Mbeumo and he casually strikes into the net, even though Ramsdale goes the right way.
Lewis-Potter Shoots Past an Unprotected Ramsdale From Six Yards
Our response is to do nothing and allow left back Lewis-Potter a free shot at Ramsdale but luckily for us, he puts it wide. Dibling has a token effort from 30 yards which skims just wide to the post, but at least it was an effort before Brentford sub Meghoma (not Jaden) runs through three players before feeding Mbeumo on the right and he easily picks out Lewis-Potter who has made his way into the box again completely unopposed by our right back and he easily slots across Ramsdale for four.
It’s just fucking embarrassing now as we wait for the final whistle but Brentford don’t, as they keep attacking. THB shanks a clearance into midfield and then as Brentford give us it back, Sugawara gets involved and there’s no communication between him and THB and the right back’s shit header puts Wissa away and clean through and he finishes with ease as well. It’s just fucking embarrassing. The end and there’s barely any Saints fans left in the ground to witness it. Shite.
Wissa Shoots Past an Unprotected Ramsdale From Six Yards
Well, where do we start with that? Wankers on the pitch – wankers everywhere. Actually, let’s start with the man who is rapidly becoming the latest shit appointment by Sport Republic. The team selection and tactical set up today was absolutely atrocious. It’s basically a two-man central midfield, which you cannot play with Joe Aribo being one of the two because of all the things we all know about. He can’t run, he’s not a great tackler, he doesn’t have defensive awareness and he’s a passenger. The Man-to-man marking set up therefore completely goes to shit because Joe loses his man, Lesley Ugochukwu has to come over and so his man is spare and so basically there is no defensive shield for the back three whatsoever, who are always going to struggle in that scenario. All entirely predictable from the moment the eleven names were announced at the start. I know we don’t have a plethora of midfield options but Adam Lallana is on the bench until the 90th minute, when we desperately needed a proper midfield three out there. Dibling had instruction to get close to Jensen at the start of the game, but eventually Brentford completely took over in midfield and Damsgaard in particular was allowed to do whatever he wanted. Aribo was shit, Big Les was shit. They both played a part in the first goal and Les dozed off to give away the penalty for the third. After a decent opening couple of games for Juric, this was a major relapse for him.
In a day when a lot of people seem to turn on Sport Republic on their second anniversary, we got to see the fruit of the Rasmus January 2023 transfer window today with a front line of Tall Paul and Sulemana. Paul didn’t have much service but was mainly dreadful and Sulemana had a couple of moments but otherwise look like he always does, like a nine-year-old playing a game of men’s football. He doesn’t make runs when he should. He doesn’t want the ball and there’s never any product at all. He seems to specialise in making the odd decoy run but then one of our other players usually makes the mistake of actually given him the ball.
James Bree was selected at right back and he is a League 1 standard player. He wasn’t good enough for us in the Championship last year so why is he starting a Premier League game? The answer to that question is probably that Yuki Sugawara is the alternative and he didn’t play for much today but he did give away the fifth goal. KWP is of course our best full-back but he didn’t look particularly interested in the first half especially. The player signed to be our left back this season, Charlie Taylor, came on at half-time to play on the left of back three and he can’t really be blamed for being shocking, given that he was his first game for quite a long time. To throw him on and expect him to pick up Bryan Mbeumo was always going to end in disaster. Bednarek kept at it all game but THB had a mare on two, possibly three of the goals. At least he tries though.
That brings us to the forwards that we haven’t mentioned yet, Adam Armstrong and Cameron Archer, who are both shit. A little bit of effort when they first came onto the pitch hinted at better things but after the second goal went in they totally gave up and didn’t give Dibling any support whatsoever. People get annoyed at Tyler for losing the ball but honestly, he breaks away down the right-hand side and there’s no fucker anywhere near him. Armstrong and Archer were hiding on the left behind the play, and not trying to support him in exactly the same way that Sulemana didn’t make runs to support him in the first half. That’s all we’ve got, our way to goal is to expect an 18 year-old to beat half a team and do it all on his own. Fucking pathetic. We have much bigger issues than Tyler occasionally holding onto the ball for too long.
The only player who I’d really excuse is Aaron Ramsdale who made it a few decent saves to keep the score down, usually when the rest of the team had allowed Brentford to blast the fucking ball at him from about six yards. He now knows what being the coconut in a coconut shy feels like. If I was him, I would be severely tempted to break another finger, so I didn’t have to play, behind this absolute shit show for the next four months.
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There’s not one of our outfield players that would get into Brentford starting XI and a number of them wouldn’t even get in Brentford’s reserves. They were everything, that we weren’t and better than us in every single facet that makes up a successful football team. They all knew what they were doing, they won all the one-to-one challenges, they picked up all the second balls, they passed the ball with purpose, they closed down and they did all the basics. Thomas Frank – one of the best managers in the Premier League.
The first half was pretty bad and the second half rivalled the Spurs first half for how shit it was. I have issue with Ivan Juric over the first half. We are supposed to be this team that presses the opposition so how do you explain Brentford goalkeeper Flekken, standing on the edge of his own penalty area with the ball let his feet for about 10 or 15 seconds with no one going to him. We were already one down at this stage and that is fucking embarrassing. The reason Sulemana and Tall Paul did not go to close him down because they didn’t want to give him an easy ball out to the full-back, but instead of that he waited and then passed the ball straight through our midfield to a Brentford striker, because the whole team was stood around like a bunch of fucking statues. Humiliating and inept.
Penny for the thoughts of Dragon Solak. If I had invested as much money as he had, I would be pretty pissed off with getting relegated in my first full season and having the asset turnover go to shit. I might have given the people who worked for me the chance to put that right in the Championship but having got back to the Premier League, I would be expecting a hell of a lot better this time around. There must be a part of him that is thinking that the arm of Sport Republic looking after the football side are a fucking shit show. The lack of knowledge on the board is really coming back to bite us and with every passing game I am questioning this managerial appointment and who made it? It might have been Ankersen but he's in Turkey with Goztepe. It might have been Parsons but his area of expertise is the commercial side. It might have been Bitcon but he's more of a sports performance kind of guy. Who's the guy who knows what it takes to have a functioning Premier League team? Let’s face it, Juric would not have been appointed if Jason Wilcox was still the Director of Football, because Juric’s style goes against everything that he was about. With every passing game, this is looking more like a Nathan Jones data driven appointment. It’s almost like someone at Sport Republic couldn’t accept that it didn’t work last time and wanted to have another go at it. Attention is very much on them now with Russell Martin gone and therefore not picking up all the blame and ridicule any more.
I have given up on any prospect of us staying up this season of course, but I just want us to have a couple of decent 90 minute performances between now and the end of the season and be competitive in games and get more than 11 points. We have stopped being competitive recently, and three out of our last four home games have seen us ship five goals. The only one that didn’t see that was the false dawn against West Ham when we managed to lose 1-0 to a team who is subsequently been battered in every game they have played since. It is considerably worse than the relegation season of two years ago and that was abysmal.
Next week is a pointless game in the FA Cup against Swansea at home. It’s pointless for everyone except Ivan Juric, who really has to win it. I do hope no one is thinking they‘d take an FA Cup win and getting relegated. If you are – don’t be a silly bollocks.
Up the fucking Saints.