League 1 Match 42 - Brighton 1 Southampton 2

Out-thought, Outplayed, Out-Managed

A trip to one of the worst grounds in League football to play against newly crowned Champions of League 1, Brighton and Hove Albion. Gus Poyet, the manager, has build a team with not a lot of money that has maintained a superb level of consistency throughout the season and they totally deserve to win the league. So, Gus was a great player and is proving to be a good manager.

Yesterday, both Huddersfield and Peterborough had played in matches that I was hopeful they would drop points in. I fully expected Huddersfield to lose to the Fake Dons but they won handsomely by 3-1, despite not playing very well. Fantastic result for them – bastards. Peterborough and Fergie Zero however, lost to a last minute goal at Leyton Orient…. Excuse me being childish but ha ha fucking ha.

In the league last year, Brighton came to SMS in what was ironically, Poyet’s first game in charge and won 3-1. Within a day, they had a DVD of the game on the shelves which I remember thinking at the time as being a bit pathetic and small time. Pathetic and small time have reached a new level today though with none other than the official match programme having a dig at Saints and Nigel Adkins on the front cover in response to a pretty jokey remark Nigel made around Christmas. When asked if Brighton would be major challengers to Saints this year, Nigel smiled and said ‘if they can keep up with us’. In this age of cut and paste and twist, remarks get blown out of all proportion and the maximum offence possible is taken. Instead of having a touch of class and ignoring it and celebrating winning the league, we get the dig in the programme, a pre-match playlist including ‘Catch us if you Can’ and ‘Making Plans for Nigel’ and an interview from Poyet referring to the Adkins remark and the fact that they want to get to 100 points. More acceptably, we had some humour from the Brighton fans with some decent banners which is what you expect but I feel the stuff from the staff of Brighton just shows one thing – small time. Let’s face it, it’s rare for a team to win a division so to spend the lap of honour baiting the opposition rather than celebrating yourselves… small time.   

We further wound them up by refusing to do a ‘Guard of Honour’ as they came out onto the pitch.  Personally, I’d have been furious if we’d done this.  Fuck ‘em.  Incidentally, did anyone hear that tool Adrian Durham on talkSHITE during the week suggesting we were a disgrace for not doing it.  You have to remember that a) he’s a Peterborough fan and b) he’s a professional Devil’s advocate who cannot possibly believe half the crap he comes out with.  Fair play to Alan McLoughlin on Solent who despite being mainly an ex-Skate (and a little bit an ex-Saint) said we were right not to do it.

To the game and there were 2 changes for Saints with Oscar the Ninja and Chaplow coming on for Stephens and Barnard. Oscar was making his first start of the season in the League which I found strange in such a big game but in Nigel we Trust. On the bench were the potential game changers – Lallana, Connolly and N’Guessan. Brighton had their first choice team out as after all, playing some kids and losing would make them look stupid given all the winding up they were doing.

Saints start well and on five minutes have the first chance as the Gulyman plays a 1-2 with Sir Rickie before rounding Wankergren and running out of pitch. Just before he does so he gets a shot in which is smuggled away off the line. Five minutes later we have a free kick with Sir Rickie takes, hard and low but straight at Wankergren.

A good start but then the half settled into being quite a tepid affair which was spent mainly in midfield with half chances falling to Murray and the Gulyman, neither of whom tested the opposition keeper. Saints forward line is non-functioning with Johnno Pace in particular, not touching the ball.

Saints have shaded the first half and would have been quite happy with half time and 0-0 but that didn’t happen as we gift wrapped Brighton a goal when following a boot forward from the keeper and a flick on, Jaidi’s back pass sold Davis short and he was beaten to it by Barnes who scored with aplomb. Jesus – what a terrible goal. Jaidi has been a rock for the past few months but this was dreadfully casual and really not what was required. Shit.

Half time and 1-0 to the Champions. Can we keep up ?

Adam Lallana came on for Johnno Pace at the start of the second half. Hopefully someone gave Johnno a ball to play with while he was getting changed because he hadn’t seen one all afternoon. The first notable action of the second half was Davis winning a 50-50 with Murray and flattening him. Murray hobbled round for a few minutes before going off, being replaced by Chris Wood, he who missed the dodgy pen they got awarded at SMS.

Lallana is making an immediate difference being as he is the best player in the League and on 55 he fed Dicko whose superb cross was missed by irritating shit El Abd, brought down by the Gulyman and smashed goalwards.  It had ‘goal’ written all over it until Wankergren spread himself and got lucky as it hit him and flew over the bar. To be fair, it’s a top save – there, I praised him. He’s still a wanker though.

On the hour mark we got one of those incidents when you begin to wonder if it’s going to be your day as Butters gets in a good cross from the right and Sir Rickie, totally unmarked, leaps high to power a header against the post with Wankergren beaten. Head in hands all round. Ohhhhhhh!!!

Wankergren decides that he hasn’t been as big a bell end as he usually is and decides to over react to something (don’t know what) and get in Chaplow’s face. Strange fellow is Casper. Maybe it stems from getting promoted out of this division with Leeds who immediately decided he wasn’t good enough for the Championship and got rid. Maybe he’s in a bad mood cos Brighton have gone up to the Championship and he’s waiting for that ‘not required’ call from his agent. He’s indebted to his defenders again a while later as Lallana gets a shot away which beats the keeper only for Bridcutt to get back to head it clear. Aaaarrrgh!!!!

Brighton remind us that they’re still here a minute later as Noone, who has just replaced the goalscorer Barnes, skins Butters and creates a chance for Wood which he really should have done better with but we’ll take him hoofing it over the bar all day long. Also hoofing it over the bar is Oscar the Ninja who gets on the end of another Lallana and Dicko production before getting his legs in a knot and scooping over from the edge of the box. Aaaaaaaargh !!!! The strain of getting his legs in a knot has done for Oscar who is replaced by David Connolly. There are ten minutes to go and Brighton are winning so of course, it’s time for all the ball boys to fuck off and go and do something else.

8 minutes of normal time to go and this time it’s Hammond who provides the cross which is just a little too far ahead of Chaplow who gets a 50-50 to go for with Wankergren. It’s as predictable as you like that Chappers comes away with a booking and it’s also predictable that Wankergren stays down a good three minutes longer than is necessary from the studs in the thigh that he got. You reap what you sow Casper.

Another minute gone and another chance for Saints as Chaplow wins ball in the Brighton area and instead of shooting, ;ays it back to Sir Rickie who instead of bulging the net - misses. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite!!!! It’s not happening is it?

Oh but it was happening a minute later as Butters got enough room on the right to swing in a cross which Sir Rickie headed down. One second it was behind Connolly but the next, he’d swivelled and turned it past Wankergren. Poachers goal, great goal, come on you Saints. The sight of me punching the air and shouting ‘YES, GET IN!!!” must have been a bit strange for my fellow inhabitants at Royal Victoria Country Park. My dog just looked at me as if I’d said ‘biscuit’.

On the radio, the Saints fans are coming across loud and clear which is some effort considering they are about 3 miles away from the pitch. They’re called Brighton and Hove Albion because the pitch is in Brighton and the away end is in Hove at this joke of a ground.

Saints get a free kick in their own half out on the left wing and the master of all creative free kicks, Kelvin Davis goes to take it. He booms it forward towards the back post to where Jose Fonte Baby, rises like Big Ron in his prime and heads it over Wankergren and drops it in at the far post. Off comes the shirt, round the running track in 40 seconds, across the long jump pit, over the steeplechase barrier and with a hop, skip and a jump he’s with the Saints fans who have all gone nuts and the advertising boards have fallen down. If it had been politically correct for me to get semi-naked and run across the park and hug strangers then I would have. I settled though for more shouting and fist pumps.

Five minutes of injury time for all of Brighton’s time wasting but no alarms and no ball boys. Final whistle, oh yeah baby!!!

Heaven. Fucking have some of that you pathetic bastards. Fabulous win and one which I thought we were never going to get. It just looked like it was never going to happen when chance after chance got created and missed. As it was St.Georges Day, it would have been kind of poetic if an Englishman had scored but we’ll settle for St.Patrick and did you know that St.George was also at one time, the patron Saint of Portugal and then he was replaced by Jose Fonte…. Part of that’s true anyway.

Tis also true that Gus is an ungracious bastard. He refused to shake the winning managers’ hand at the end and he gave a very bitter interview where he described us as Dagenham and Redbridge with added Rickie Lambert. Tosser – how sour are those grapes boy? Apparently they pay all the football and that’s why they won the league. Remind me how you got your goal today... oh yes, big hoof forward, flick on, dodgy backpass - a well crafted total football goal then?  To call us a long ball team is ridiculous – we dominated the game pretty much from start to finish and the fucking “holier than thou” approach cracks me up considering they came to SMS and started wasting time from the first minute, they have a keeper who feigns injury to waste time, they have Adam El Abd who has a history of collapsing when nowhere near anyone and trying to get opponents sent off, they have ball boys that disappear on 80 minutes when they are winning, they wave imaginary cards from the dug out (something that has annoyed both us and Huddersfield this season). I wonder, did the ball boys come back when you went 2-1 down Gus? Tool. Where’s your 100 points now? Oh yeah you can’t get there.  Well done for winning the league – can we play you every week?

Gus was today comprehensively outmanaged by Nigel Adkins who kept trying things and kept changing things and eventually found that Brighton couldn’t defend balls into their box and weren’t effective if you pressured them high up the pitch. What did Gus do to counteract what Adkins was doing? He could have pushed his defence up and played a higher line meaning a long ball would have gone through to the keeper – Forte had gone off so we didn’t have much pace up top but no, all he did was piss and moan afterwards. Better get used to the long ball in the Championship Gus, especially as you’ve just flagged up that you can’t defend it.

Nigel took all the banter and bullshit that came his way and kept smiling and got on with it. The gamesmanship obviously annoys him and so does the handshake refusal. He said it shows that you’re a lesser man and he’s right. Maybe Poyet has apologised for that when he calmed down but I bet he hasn’t. Adkins was proved to be a genius in this game. The narrow midfield does my head in but he kept with it and kept chopping and changing to get an advantage and won. Fabulous performance from everybody, especially the manager. It no doubt helped that Brighton had already won the league and maybe all the aggro was a ploy to make sure their players were all up for it.

Our one remaining rival for 2nd place, Huddersfield, go to Brighton next week and Poyet’s team selection should be interesting as he had his best side out today. Next up for Saints is an Easter Monday game v Hartlepool. I expect a bit of squad rotation with Lallana on the bench again and no doubt it will be tight but I can’t see us blowing up in this game, that’ll probably happen at Brentford.

4 games to go, 9 points needed.

Genius!!!

Adkins pic from http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/Gallery/0,,10280~2345537,00.html