Well you can tell by the way I use my walk...No sooner had Peterborough lost to the Fake Dons, then Saints were on the road again playing Charlton away. A win would take us into 2nd place, still with games in hand but a draw wouldn’t be a disaster either. Charlton were doing ok at the start of the season under Phil Parkinson and were in just below the playoff places when they sacked him. Chris Powell, who played for England a few times (no I can’t believe it either) came in and had a decent initial impact before presiding over 7 defeats out of 8. In their ranks, Charlton have ex-Saints Christian Dailly who I liked and Bradley Wright-Phillips who is top of the list entitled “Saints players I’ve actually hated” – a bit of ability sure but no brain, no heart and that feeling of knowing he’d miss when he was clean through against the keeper. Like I say, he’s top of the list ahead of such luminaries as Jermain Wright, Lee Todd, David Speedie and Kerry Dixon.
Nigel had gone continuity crazy and we had the same starting XI and the same subs as we had against Sheffield Wednesday.
The first half, as is the case with most of Saints matches, was pretty lame with Charlton not showing much at all and Saints only threatening through set plays. The closest we got was in the 20th minute when from a Harding free kick, Sir Rickie headed down for Fonte to stab goalwards where it was comfortably cleared off the line. Sir Rickie had a free kick on the half hour and went for placement instead of lashing it and Elliot in the Charlton goal clawed it away.
On 35 minutes there was a worrying development as Lallana pulled up and it was immediately obvious that he couldn’t carry on and was replaced with Dany N’Guessan. As soon as he went off, Merrington and his fellow goon on Solent went into Jason Puncheon overdrive. Should we recall him?, can we recall him?, what will his attitude be like?, do we want to recall him?, answers on a fucking postcard. Bottom line is that however well Puncheon has played for other clubs, whenever he’s played for us this season he’s been complete shit and whatever the reason for that is, it’s reason enough to forget about him for now. Half time, 0-0, dull.
The first notable action of the second half involved Bollocks Wright-Phillips. When caught offside, a sensation he must be used to by now, he decided to kick the ball away and got booked. Nice one, timewasting with 43 minutes to go. The game opened out a bit without either team looking like scoring but the hour mark brought more injury disaster as Chamberlain went over and turned his ankle in the process. Like the Lallana injury, it was immediately obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to run it off either and so on came the Gulyman as Chambo was helped away.
With Lallana and Chamberlain off the pitch, the responsibility for set pieces turned to the Brazilian maestro and from his first corner, he delivered a good ball into the mixer to where Radhi Jaidi lost his marker with a deftness of movement which was almost balletic and smashed it in the net on the half volley. The celebrations are always great when the goal comes from an unexpected source and Radhi’s Travolta pose before disappearing under a pile of bodies was pretty special as they go.
Saints briefly threatened to take charge and go relatively close-ish to a second as after a long run, N’Guessan fired over a cross to the back post which Barnard hooked back, only for the keeper to palm it away from the onrushing Chaplow. We then got the shits and had a bit of a lucky break when a shot by Llera from the edge of the box, hit the bar and crashed down on the line and away. The Charlton players appealed for the goal but it was never over the line which didn’t stop 3000 Saints fans in the ground from shitting themselves.
Having got away with that one, our Nigel replaced Barnard with Johnno Pace in a move that on the face of it, didn’t help either the attacking or defending aspect of the team but for a second, Saints begin to look to be relatively comfortably heading for a 1-0 win. Pace is not an attribute that Christian Dailly has in abundance and he almost headed past his own keeper in panic when trying to stop Johnno reaching the ball first.
So, we’re looking good and heading for 2nd place and then Charlton bloody equalize and didn’t you just know who was going to score it. In many ways it’s typical BWP as a move builds up on the edge of our box and someone shapes to chip it over the centre backs. As he goes to play the ball, the defence moves up and BWP is being his usual dozy bastard self and just standing there like an offside waiting to happen. Unfortunately, Butterfield hasn’t pushed up and so he’s onside but fair play, he finished it well.
In the five minutes of normal time that remain, Saints have the stick or twist conundrum to contend with but we go for it and Sir Rickie puts a wonderful reverse ball in between the left back and centre back which Dany N’Guessan fastens onto and slots past the keeper into the far side of the net. Offside, bollocks was it, not even close but the flag is up and it doesn’t count. So we had the Bournemouth one a few weeks back where it was flagged offside but given against us and now we have a perfectly good goal chalked off.
Final whistle and 1-1 and how do we all feel about that one. The bottom line is that this is a difficult fixture and we got a point but we could and should have had all 3. By all accounts Charlton played much better than they have in recent weeks and a draw was a fair result. You can stick ‘fair’ where the sun don’t shine though – we scored a perfectly good goal in the 90th minute and it was disallowed due to a trigger happy linesman, a fact since acknowledged by the managers of both teams.
It’s a bummer that we were 5 minutes from time when Charlton equalized and it’s even more a bummer that that little fucker scored. For three years I paid to watch that twat be fucking useless week in and week out. We didn’t kill the game off in the last 10 minutes like we should have done and I think that in an ideal world, Nigel would have brought on Schneiderlin or even Gobern to flood the midfield. As it was, it was the straight swap of Forte for Barnard. Maybe a bit of imagination was called for to bring Seaborne on and tell him to play in front of the centre backs or maybe it would have been better having Dickson on the bench to come on in midfield.
It would have been too easy for Saints to win this game at get into 2nd place – as you know, we don’t do things the easy way. Next up is the Fake Dons at SMS on Saturday week which will be a severe test given the form of the Fakes. The Plymouth postponement is looking farcical at the moment as all 3 of their ‘internationals’ are injured and unlikely to play for their countries on Saturday. It may backfire on Argyle as the chances are that neither Lallana or Chamberlain would be fit for this Saturday but I’m sure that they will be, come the start of May.
Next week we have the end of the emergency loan period but until then, expect us to be linked with wingers, midfielders and even Jason Puncheon.
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