32 - the Number of Points we need from 9 games
If
Saints have any realistic fear of being the worst Premier League team of all
time, then they need to get to 12 points from the 9 that they are currently on.
Just the one more win and we will never
have a better chance than today, against Wolves. Of the seventeen teams in the Premier League
that are ringfenced by PSR, Wolves are comfortably the worst, residing as they
do in 17th place, ten points behind West Ham in 16th and five clear of the team
occupying 18th, which of course is the last relegation place. After this game,
we have Leicester to play away from home, which is winnable, but this is the
game if we want to save our fans from the ignominy of supporting a team that is
worse that one with Robbie Savage in it.
The other significant thing about this game is that if we lose it, then Wolves
will be 17 points ahead of us and so automatic relegation will come around
pretty quickly with that kind of gap and only nine games left after today. We
all know it’s going to happen at some point, but it would be good to delay the
inevitable as long as possible.
Or would it? Maybe once relegation is confirmed we can start planning in
earnest for next season. Maybe we can get answers out of all of the players as
to whether they want to be part of the rebuild in the Championship next season
or whether they want to move on. I personally will never not find it strange
that having been part of a shit Premier League campaign that has ended up with
your team getting relegated, you feel you have the entitlement to be a Premier
League player. There is only really
Aaron Ramsdale out of our squad who could legitimately make a case for himself.
Others will move on of course and I’d be
very surprised if we have any of Aaron, KWP, THB or Tyler Dibling in our ranks
at the start of next season. The rebuild is of course the remit of Johannes
Spors, our new technical director, appointed around a month ago and he gave his
first interview this week and came across as very confident in his own ability
and made it abundantly clear that he would be in charge of all football related
matters, including the appointment of managers and recruiting of players. As is
always the case with these types of appointments, they always sound great
before they have started and the merits or otherwise of the person in question
can only be judged further down the line he did make it abundantly clear
however that we almost expect to be promoted next season. Good start.
The future of Ivan Juric will be a talking point from now until either the end
of the season or until he gets sacked. Personally, I find it hard to imagine
him staying past the point of relegation being confirmed but you never know. Last
week he picked a team that didn’t get battered at Anfield but this week is a
different assignment because we have to win this game against Wolves, so
playing without a striker is not really an option in my book playing with a
striker would of course mean one less body in midfield which means the
weaknesses of Will Smallbone, who will doubtless be selected, are more likely
to be exposed.
Wolves chances of exposing anything in our defence have been weakened by the
absence of Matheus Cunha, who is the only player raising their squad above the
levels of the three crap teams who will ultimately get relegated. His ability
has put him firmly in the bracket of someone who could play for a Champions
League level club. His ability to lose his shit and get sent off has however
put him in the bracket of being a complete fucking liability. His second red
card of the season, earned a few weeks ago against Bournemouth, for a punch, a
kick and then a head-butt at a Bournemouth player, means he won’t be bothering
us this afternoon. Wolves still have
threats of course but these are severely diminished without the main man.
Wolves did look to be serious contenders for relegation earlier on in the
season under Gary O’Neil, and in fact got their first win of the season against
us, thanks in the main to two absolutely shambolic VAR decisions. Ryan
Manning‘s goal was disallowed for an arbitrary 50-50 challenge which could’ve
been given either way, after the decision on the pitch had gone in our favour. We all know that a decision overturn doesn’t
often happen and the on field decision usually carries a lot of weight, like it
did half an hour later when two Wolves fouls in the buildup were not given
before Cunha smashed one in the top corner from thirty yards.
The fact that they are not in the relegation shake up is down to Cunha and
their new manager bounce which they got when they sacked O’Neil and appointed
Vitor Pereira. One of the first things that Pereira did when he joined was to
strip Mario Lemina of the captaincy. You remember him, old #TonicLikeLemonade,
who in his time at Saints was much more concerned with his social media than
with actually putting any effort in. A horrific example of the modern
footballer. #TonicLikeWarmPiss was an occasional hashtag I liked to use.
All eyes on the team news to see if Ivan perseveres with the back four that we
had last week to reasonably decent effect at Liverpool… and of course he
doesn’t. Wanker. Looks like it’s a back
five again and there’s no striker on the pitch. What’s the fucking point of
this guy? What’s the fucking point in
turning up to watch this shit? And it will be shit, almost certainly, but the
annoying thing about being a committed football fan is that there’s always just
this off chance that it might work despite all logic screaming at you that it
is not going to happen. For fuck‘s sake.
Smallbone is injured again and Bednarek hasn’t recovered from his
concussion – maybe he’ll wake up thinking he’s Paolo Maldini.
It looks like Matty Fernandes is playing as a false nine and he drops into
midfield to start the first move and ends up with the ball on the wing. He plays it into Sugawara doing what he does
best, which is attacking and he fires it over from the byline low, and Sulemana
has a tap in but plays a fucking air shot, and so the ball bounces off his
standing leg and goes away from the open goal, which is six yards in front of
him.
Unperturbed Saints to keep attacking with Big Les driving into the penalty area
before flicking it out to Sulemana on the left and his low cross into the box
deflects out as far as Aribo who sends up a fucking balloon, high into the
Northam.
Wolves have been crap so far, but they get a bit possession in our half for the
first time with Doherty passing the ball out wide to Bellegarde, who under no
pressure whatsoever from Manning, slings in across and Strand Larson is
completely free ahead of the dozing ABK and flicks a header past Ramsdale who
is wrong footed, and that’s 1-0 from their first visit into our half. Hilarious.
The rest of the first half is wank.
There is no fight to get back in it and it highlights the glaringly
fucking obvious problem of not having a striker on the pitch, as Fernandes
comes deep to try and pick the ball up and then realises that he’s actually the
farthest forward and so has to try and hang onto it until he inevitably loses
it with neither Dibling nor Sulemana making a run to help him out. Ivan waves his arms about but yet again, it’s
fucking shit.
Having shown some promising attacking at the start of the half, Sugawara has to
do some defending late on and he’s predictably shite, gazing up at the sky with
no idea where anything is, whilst Ait-Nouri has seen where the ball has landed
and goes forward before cracking a shot into the side netting.
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Make Others Look Bad By Putting Effort In, Get Substituted
Half time in the latest Juric masterclass and let’s see what the inevitable halftime substitution is. As the players come out there is the unmistakeable figure of Tall Paul waiting to come on, so Juric is basically admitting that he fucked it up with the original team selection yet again and now realises that we do actually need a striker on the pitch after all. Unbelievably, the player he has chosen to take off is Fernandes, who has probably been the best of a rotten bunch in the first half and there is a very audible and prolonged “you don’t know what you’re doing“, raining down from the Northam. The second half starts, and Ramsdale pumps a ball up the middle towards Tall Paul, who doesn’t jump, and he’s beaten easily in the air. The ball is flicked on couple of passes and Strand Larson picks it up on the edge of the box and drills it through THB‘s legs and it flicks off him and goes right into the corner past Ramsdale. Once again, it’s so shit and yet another simple goal. There are people still returning from the concourse after halftime and quite a few are just turning round and going straight downstairs again because having another pint of beer, having a piss or going home are all looking like more attractive options than watching this shit.
Having not covered himself in glory with the second Wolves goal, Tall Paul then gets involved where he should, and holds the ball up before flicking it away to Dibling on the right and the youngster seems to have come alive as he drives forward and puts a nicely weighted ball in front of Sugawara, who smashes it and Sa is forced to make a decent save and tips it over the bar. The comeback is on! In comes the corner from Manning and Tall Paul rises at the back post and heads it goalwards and a combination of Sa and the post keeps it out. Two efforts on goal will probably make the end of season highlights DVD.
The Wolves central defenders had a free ride in the first half with no one pressing them and they still managed to look shit when they were knocking the ball around and they look even more shit when pressed, even when it’s the very slow Tall Paul press, lumbering around after them but the amiable giant gets a foot in which leads to Sulemana playing it through to Dibling, who takes on a couple of players on the edge of the box before his shot is blocked away for another corner. Manning swings in again and Dibling gets himself free about six yards out, but heading is not the strongest part of his game and it flies over the bar.
Archer is on for Sugawara, because what we need on the pitch is a player who really doesn’t give a shit. After passing up these opportunities it was obvious that Wolves would get another one and they do as Les tries to play a ball into Archer who really does not look interested in the slightest and as a result, a defender walks in front of him and takes the ball. Wolves build down the left and Gomes ends up with a free shot from the edge of the box which he places wide.
With KWP now switched to the left, he picks up the ball and sets off on a diagonal run across the box and thinks about shooting abouthe same number of times he’s thought about signing a contract extension and true to form, he doesn’t do it and eventually loses the ball which allows Wolves to break quickly and that’s far too quick for Joe Aribo, who is towing not only a caravan, but also a full sized trailer and an articulated lorry. Luckily for us, they make a complete bollocks of it and Sarabia tries to go round Ramsdale and that’s never happening and we get away with it.
Twenty to go and Tall Paul tries again, holding the ball up and spinning it out to Dibling on the right hand side and he attacks the box, hits it with his left foot and it flies past Sa and bounces out off the post and there is Tall Paul to run in the rebound. That happens in the first half and we have no striker following in.
So what of the last twenty. We do fuck all in the first ten as all the Wolves players simultaneously get cramp and go down. Isn’t that strange? Downes comes on for Les and Gronbaek for Sulemana. It’s amazing that Sulemana doesn’t fall on his arse as he walks off as that’s been more or less his total contribution today. Downes adds some energy and Gronbaek adds some lightweight not touching the ball, and we’ve time for one more tactical masterstroke on 92 with Aribo coming off for Jack Stephens. More abuse from the Northam as a defender comes on but what the fuck, he’s going up front. Full time and Wolves celebrate like they’ve just stayed up. As if you were ever going to go down anyway lads, for fuck‘s sake.
Despite some spirit being shown in parts of the second half, overall, that was fucking dogshit again. A diabolical starting XI with no striker, and an admission at a half-time with a substitution that tells that he got it completely wrong again. Taking off our best and hardest working midfield player and putting on an actual striker was a classic, and totally deserving of the “you don’t know what you’re doing” raining down from the crowd. Fernandes was playing as the furthest forward of our midfield players so in taking him off, Juric was kind of hinting that Fernandes was the problem, which he clearly fucking wasn’t. Playing a false 9 with no one running ahead of the ball was the problem, so blame the wingers or blame yourself. The whole idea of a false 9 is to draw the centre backs out to deal with him but the Wolves defenders just stayed where they were as there was no point in following Fernandes into our half as he had no one to pass it forward to.
So let’s talk about the first half, which was for 4-6-0 in possession and 5-5-0 out of possession. All this against a team that is 17th in the League and quite frankly, shit. This Wolves team would not be staying up in any season in the past 20 years, apart from the last two. So, having set up like we were playing Real Madrid, we knocked the ball around a bit and looked relatively sharp on the ball and the first time Wolves got the ball, they scored when two crosses came in under no pressure whatsoever and from the second of those, Strand Larson had a free head because ABK had dozed off. For the rest of the first half we predictably did nothing and it was absolutely fucking dreadful and then the second goal straight away killed the game.
The half-time change saw Tall Paul came on and even having a striker on the pitch as limited as him, makes the team look a lot better because the central defenders are occupied and at least we have someone to play the ball forward to. Who would’ve thought it. Our goal came from Paul picking up the ball spreading it wide and then following in the shot which bounced back to him off a post. Three goals he has this season, two of them from following in shots. A striker with a striker’s instinct is a good idea. It was a bit like the interesting development in the last ten minutes as well, when Flynn Downs came on and all of a sudden we had someone who could run in midfield and looked like something resembling a functioning team again. Who would’ve thought it?
If the final substitution of Ivan Juric’s Saints career is to bring Jack Stephens on up front then that would be a fitting epitaph. He really didn’t look overly impressed with being asked to chase hopeful long balls, pumped forward for a few minutes at the end.
I want Juric gone now. We are now 17 points behind Wolves with nine games left so it’s all over by the shouting so there is absolutely no point in Juric still being here. The bloke is absolutely fucking clueless, never seems to learn and there is just no point in him sticking out the place a moment longer. Two and a half weeks until the next game – get it done. The language being used around the club has changed with regards to the relegation “battle” that we are in. Spors said during the week that he was purely talking about playing in the Championship and in his post-match interview today, Juric categorically said that we will be relegated. No shit Sherlock.
Once again there were some half decent performances out of there by some players with Dibling (second half) and THB probably being the standouts. Sugawara actually wasn’t that bad either but it’s all relative. There was some awful shite as well with Joe Aribo being particularly off the pace and Kamaldeen Sulemana doing a passable impression of someone playing in a pair of roller skates. It apparently was Aribo’s 100th game for Saints today and in some ways that’s an achievement but in others it’s symbolic of how far we’ve fallen. In recent times in the Premier League we’ve had James Ward-Prowse, Oriol Romeu, Romeo Lavia and Pierre Hojbjerg in Aribo’s position and they are light years ahead of him. Go back further and you find Steven Davis, Victor Wanyama, Morgan Schneiderlin and even the like of Jordy Clasie. It shows how far we’ve plummeted.
It's a gloriously long two weeks and three days before the next game, which is Palace at home. With it being a home game it certainly promises to be a toxic one in the ground unless there is someone else in charge by then, as opposed to Mr Five-Five-Zero but when have Sports Republic ever done the obvious thing.
Up the Fucking Johannes Spors Saints Rebuild..