FA
Cup 3rd Round and Swansea City at home. This is a huge game for Ivan Juric
and not a huge game for absolutely everybody else. I’m sure that this will be
reflected in the attendance today which promises to be very low indeed. It’s
not a particularly interesting tie for away fans, so there’s not gonna be many
of those here and the clubs tone deaf insistence on charging between £20 and
£25 for an adult ticket for this game, is going to ensure that a vast majority
save their money to pay the Christmas bills.
If there was any air left in any of the balloons after the appointment of a new
manager, it has totally gone now after the absolute mauling we got by Brentford
and our last home game, hence the importance of this game to the new manager.
It’s hard to imagine him not going as full strength as possible for this
particular game to try and get something happening, get anything happening.
Silly season is here of course with the transfer window and as far as we know
it’s just about outgoings though the message needs to be sent that Sport
Republic are in some way in control and either not giving up on this season or
planning for next season in the Championship. Our one January arrival Welington, played his first game for the Under 21s last night, completing the first half of a 5-0 win which included a Dominic Ballard hat-trick.
Talk of the transfer window can wait however because today is about the FA Cup, which is of course the
oldest and greatest cup competition of them all, or rather it was. Now, the
Premier League and the FA have combined, in the face of greed, to all but kill
it and certainly kill the magic of it. The big clubs would rather finish fourth
in the Premier League than win the FA Cup and that says it all really. A cup
run for a team like Saints is exciting for the fans but even if it goes well, there’s
always that moment when you get to the quarter-finals and you begin to dread
the bun fight for tickets at Wembley and the damage it will do to your bank
balance, just for a semi-final.
Swansea are mid table in the Championship and so will be looking for a run for
a play-off place in the second half of the season. They also have the small
matter of the South Wales Derby to play against Cardiff next week.
Consequently, they are going to be resting players for today. When we played
them last season, their best player was Matt Grimes who used to play for
Russell Martin at Swansea and was clearly, brought up to pass the ball and was
on a completely different wavelength to the rest of his more limited teammates. Russell Martin’s shadow looms large over this
game – I wonder who he wants to win? I
wonder if Lucy Pinder has an influence?
Team news and no Tall Paul and in fact, no striker at all so we can only assume
that Sulemana is up top. Well that’s a
bit of a reach. Fernandes is back in for
Armstrong and Ryan Manning is in for Nathan Wood, which I assume means Jimmy
Champo slotting into a back three and KWP on the right.
Away we go and what is this? Saints
looking like the better side by a long way and an early chance as KWP brings
down a cross on his right foot before firing wastefully over with his
left. If anyone was looking for which
team was haunted by the ghost of Russell Martin then it was Swansea, who
coughed up first with McLaughlin in goal passing to a defender who turned and
played it backwards straight to Sulemana, who cuts inside a couple of defenders
and has to score from the box and ….. no, he drags his shot just wide.
In true anti-Russell fashion, the next chance came with some genuine route one
stuff from us with Ramsdale’s big boot forward being challenged for by Big Les
and as the ball bounced behind him, Sulemana used his pace to get there first
and when he got there, the goalkeeper McLaughlin had come out and was standing
in the very definition of no man’s land, which made up the strikers mind for
him and he executed a lob sailing over the keeper, no bounce into the net for
his first goal in what seems like forever.
Yes, it was made easier by shit goalkeeping but still a decent finish.
Ten minutes go by with no Swansea threat at all and Big Les drives to within 25 yards of goal on the left, lends Aribo the ball, on to Sulemana on the left and he plays a give and go with Les and is in round the back and he fires of ball across the 6 yard line to where Tyler Dibling has made it into the centre forward position to knock it past the keeper with ease. Excellent goal and good play all round.
With a two goal lead established, there’s not much going on before half-time and unlike the Stoke Carabao Cup game where we threw one in, we go into the break two goals up with no alarms at all. Another goal at the start of the second half would of course see this game completely done and we have to wait ten minutes for the next chance as Manning’s corner from the right is met by Captain Janny at the back post and his thumping hits the keeper and bounces out, hits a defender suspiciously high on the arm and it smashed away. No VAR so we don’t have to sit through all that shit and we can marvel that we’ve nearly actually scored from a set piece.
It’s still all a bit of a stroll, which suits Aribo of course and he storms out of defence and gives the ball to Manning out on the left and his low cross into the box is not cleared and Dibling stumbles through a couple of half-arsed tackles before smashing it into the net from just outside the 6 yard box. 3-0 and Wembley here we come.
The goal is Dibling’s last involvement and off he goes along with Sulemana, who gets what is probably his first ovation as he leaves the pitch and on come our reserve strikers, Armstrong and Archer. There’s another change in midfield with Big Les coming off for the returning Little Will Smallbone. Matty Fernandes, as he has done all afternoon, brings some class to the proceedings by threading a lovely ball through to Archer who turns down the opportunity of a first time shot, and eventually runs into the keeper to block it out for a corner.
As we approach the last ten minutes, there is time for both teams to pay tribute to Russell Martin. Firstly, McLaughlin plays that straight pass into midfield that we’ve seen so often from our keepers this season and it gets picked off and the ball ends up with Adam Armstrong on the edge of the box and his low shot is pushed wide by the keeper making up for his own mistake. Arma, to the shock of no one, is offside.
Our own tribute sees Ramsdale playing a ball to the edge of the box where Smallbone doesn’t move quickly enough and he can’t control and Joe Allen picks it up and drives a low shot past Ramsdale, pinging off the inside of the post and going across the goal and wide to preserve our clean sheet in the most shit way possible.
Lallana is on for Aribo and Saints respond to the near miss with a really good incisive move up the pitch to send Armstrong away and he takes on Christie for pace, which he can do against championship defenders, but when confronted by the goalkeeper he bobbles the shot wide in eye-rollingly typical fashion. No matter though, mission accomplished though for Ivan Juric and Saints are through to the 4th Round.
Russell salutes Bravery of Both Teams As They Give Away Chances
Because the FA Cup is shit these days, the draw has already been made and because the Arsenal v Man United game has finished during our second half and we have got Burnley at home in what promises to be a keenly fought Free Nathan Tella Derby. I wonder if they’ll price it to get the ground nearly full or are we going to end up with another 12,000-ish gate like today.
That’s for another day though. Today? Well, that was easy and if you wanted an illustration of the difference between the Championship and the bottom of the Premier League, then this was it. I’d be interested to know what Swansea fans thought of their performance. Maybe they will think it wasn’t too bad but from our point of view, in the context of our season, they were shite and there was never any doubt that we would win the game, even before we took the lead.
On paper it didn’t look encouraging with Sulemana as the only real striker on the pitch, but today it worked. It was a nice finish for the first goal, with the keeper lending a hand with the decision making but the give and go and injecting pace into the move for the second goal was exactly what we have been crying out for him to do since he got here two years ago. He’ll get a run of games now to try and prove himself at the higher level in the league and he simply has to take the chance.
Sulemana’s work on the second goal provided a tap-in for Tyler Dibling and likewise, the third goal from Ryan Manning’s cross. Whilst Tyler might have had a relatively quiet match, the fact that he got himself into that position twice to finish off crosses into the box is something that we have been failing to do all season. Tyler gave a beautiful "teenager" interview afterwards when presented with the Man of the Match award, being somewhat bemused that his two tap-ins got him the nod. He and Kamaldeen are an unlikely strike pairing but no one else has taken their opportunity, so why not?
You would’ve liked to have seen Saints pushed on and tried to score some more goals but once the third one went in, it just became a case of playing out the rest of the time. I think we can be forgiven for that given what has gone on in the league this season and there’s a bigger couple of games coming up in the week.
I assume that Juric will take some things from this game and take them forward into the Premier League in the next few weeks. I would not be surprised at all if we saw Sulemana being used as a striker but as it stands, I’d be absolutely amazed if that works in the Premier League but I’m sure we are about to find out. KWP on the right and Manning on the left today looked very well balanced and in his games so far, Ivan has tried all of Manning, Charlie Taylor, Jimmy Champo, Yuki Sugawara and Nathan Wood in a bid to find two defenders to partner the ever-present Bednarek, KWP and THB. I think that Manning has nailed one spot for now and it’ll be between Wood and Jimmy Champo for the third centre back spot.
The lack of midfield options was evident again today with Downes being missing. Joe Aribo was generally decent against a poor side but in the second half he did seem to have spells where he is always positioned just where the ball had moved from. When Big Les, who had a good game, went off, we had Aribo and Smallbone as the midfield. Try that in the Premier League Ivan and we will be conceding ten. However, Aribo was made to look like Ngolo Kante when Lallana came on for him, with the veteran giving a pretty good, impression of someone who has never played football in his life before.
Onwards and Thursday against Manchester United at Old Trafford and the Decaying Theatre of Penny Pinching.