NPC Match 25 - Brighton 3 Southampton 0

Adam El-Abd's Car Spotted at the Amex

Welcome to 2012 and Saints have the relatively short trip along the coast to Brighton.  I say “short trip” when I actually mean, short trip as the crow flies.  If you drive or use the train then you get there in about the same amount of time as it takes to get to Scotland as the roads are crap and the trains are shite.  Still, at least it’s not the Withdean... it’s the brand new £90 million Amex Community Stadium.  I’ve had rants about corporate naming of grounds before but at least Amex is a decent name, unlike King Power or Western Homes Community or whatever Colchester’s ground was called.

With the transfer window being open and all that, we’ve had a bit of news in that a Japanese striker looks like he may be joining us from Hiroshima, only he’s not Japanese, he’s Korean, well one of his parents is but he plays for Japan.  Depending on which paper you read, he’s called Tadanari Lee (his Japanese name) or Lee Chung-Sung (his Korean name) or Tadanari Oyama (his ‘alien living in Japan’ name).  I wonder who out of Nigel Adkins, Andy Crosby or Dean Wilkins speaks Japanese.  It’s looking like a done deal though with just work permit formalities to complete.  It’s a bit of a left field signing if it comes off and of course, he could be rubbish or brilliant or anywhere in between.

I was expecting a more or less unchanged side with hopefully Fonte coming back in but as it turned out, we had other problems.   The defence had Aaron Martin at centre back once more and Dan Harding came in for Danny Fox who dropped to the bench.  Morgan had managed to reach 5 yellow cards so Deano came in which I think would have happened anyway and Guly was on the right as Steeeeeve had some sort of unpublicised groin injury as it turned out.  Up front with Sir Rickie was David Connolly, making his first start for a while.  It was the bench which sent shivers down the spine with the attacking option being Johnno Pace.  Ben Reeves was also on there along with Lee Holmes and the aforementioned Foxy.  Much had been made of the fact that Brighton were down to the bare bones but if you get 5 yellow cards every week and a red card every two matches then that tends to happen.  I don’t usually mention the ref before the game but today it’s Andy D’Arsehole who is one of the worst refs in the business.

The first 20 minutes were largely forgettable but Brighton had the first incident when Adam El-Abd tried a little dive in our box.  It really should have been 1-0 to us five minutes later as following a superb passing move, Cork created a wonderful chance for Guly but he got his legs all mixed up in Bambi-on-Ice stylee and somehow scooped over the bar from 6 yards. In the build up for this chance, D’Arsehole had managed to miss a blatant body check by Cook on Harding about a second after he’d passed the ball.

Lallana was adopting a shoot on sight policy with Brezovan looking dodgy in goal but we had our own dodgy going on with Harding having a mare at left back and he’d already carted a couple of players over when he got booked for what was a 100% hard and fair tackle on Mackail-Smith who of course, rolled around like a big fucking girl who’d been shot.   Maybe the booking was for that one tackle or maybe it was for repeated fouls.  Either way, the tackle that brought the booking wasn’t a foul but was bought by a cheat.  Dan then brushed against another Brighton player who went to ground in spectacular fashion to earn a final warning lecture from D’Arsehole before he was substituted and replaced with Danny Fox.

Major controversy on 40 minutes as Connolly’s goalbound header was parried out by Brezovan for Lallana to return with interest.  It was a good foot over the line before Cook pulled out a clearance but neither referee nor linesman saw it and play went on.  We arrived at half time at 0-0 when in reality, we should have been 2-0 up.

The second half started with Sir Rickie going up for a header and being assaulted in typical Brighton fashion in the penalty area.  It has to be a penalty, there can be no other outcome but there is as D’Arsehole decides that he’s seen nothing and waves play on like the useless twat that he is.  Brighton take a long shot from the right wing and Kelvin flaps it back into play in unconvincing fashion.

On 51 minutes it all goes decidedly pear shaped as Brighton defender and well know wind-up merchant as well as a diving cheating fucker, Adam El-Abd, brings down Sir Rickie and then prevents him from getting up by holding onto him.  At this point, Andy D’Arshole, as he was 5 yards away and looking at it, really should have given us a free kick.  He didn’t of course and because of this and probably because he was still pissed about not getting a penalty, Sir Rickie gave El-Abd a little shove in the chin which of course resulted in the horrible little shit rolling around on the ground like he’d been punched.  And so it came to pass that Sir Rickie was shown the first red card of his career by Andy D’Arshole who of course, had seen the retaliation clear as day.  Adam El-Abd is an utter disgrace of a footballer – just a cheat, no other word for it.  He carried on rolling round until Sir Rickie was off the pitch.

Initially we seemed to cope with the loss quite well, leaving Connolly up front on his own with Guly breaking forward whenever possible.   Superkelv redeemed his flappyness from earlier with a decent save from Forster-Caskey who found enough space to build a fucking house in on the edge of our box. Things went further wrong on the hour mark as Guly pulled up with a pain in the arse and with everyone screaming for Holmes to come on to make a solid 4-4-1 formation, we brought on Jonno Pace to run about aimlessly.

The goal that the game didn’t need finally came on 66 minutes and it’s another one for NotsoSuperkelv to want to forget.  Lua Lua fired in a speculative pot shot and just like against Bristol City last week, Davis should have held it or parried it sideways but instead, parried it straight out of Forster-Caskey who wasn’t going to miss from there.

At one 1-0 down and your main goal threat having been sent off, what you don’t need is a mystifying substitution in which one of your other main goal threats is replaced with a kid who doesn’t have a preferred position and has never played in the league before.  I know everyone has to start somewhere but Ben Reeves, your time should not have been now.  Adam Lallana departed and bearing in mind that for one reason or another, Sir Rickie, Steeeeve and Guly weren’t on the pitch, Saints hopes of a moment of inspiration to get back into it went with him.  The moment of inspiration was to arrive three minutes later but sadly, it was wearing a blue and white shirt as Sparrow smashed in a beauty from 25 yards – 2-0 and game over.

We have a decent chance to at least make the last 10 minutes interesting as Frazer did his thing down the wing and his cross fell perfectly for Reeves but he played an air shot.  The ball carried onto Corky who wasn’t expecting it and he scooped it over the bar in crap fashion.  To add further salt into the wounds, Sparrow popped up again with 5 minutes to go to slam in a loose ball via a deflection to make it 3-0.   Jesus...

And finally, a new definition of pointless.  Brighton captain Germaine Greer who had spent the whole game chatting to D’Arsehole, trying to get players sent off and congratulating El-Abd when he managed it, decided to give Jonno Pace a bit of a slap off the ball.  This was pointless and stupid because.....
      a)      Jonno isn’t worth hitting as it can’t make him play worse

b)      Brighton have a terrible disciplinary record and are short of several players because of it

c)       There was one minute to go and the game was won.

When we played Brighton at St.Mary’s earlier on in the season and won 3-0, we did so with the help of a dodgy penalty decision when Jose Fonte was so far outside the box when he was fouled, he nearly collided with a ball boy when he went down.  The fact that we had two blatant pens not given that day and the other fact that we were already winning when it happened have been forgotten and ever since then I’ve had to listen to Brighton fans light-heartedly calling us ‘cheats’ but boy, with the aid of Andy D’Arsehole, his assistants, Craig Mackail-Smith and in particular Adam El-Abd, did Brighton get their own back today.  Would it be going too far to suggest that Poyet would have encouraged El-Abd to try and get Sir Rickie sent off, given that we’re only as good as Dagenham and Redbridge without him ?  Regardless, Rickie gave El-Abd the opportunity to act like he’d been punched and D’Arsehole did the rest.  The other big decision in the game was of course Lallana’s “goal” which of course, was a decision that we ended up the wrong side of.  I predict that goal line technology will be in place sometime in 2054 or sooner if Sepp Blatter dies.

Last year we came down to the Withdean and won and Nigel was a genius.  Everything he tried worked that day but today was the complete opposite.  Playing Harding from the start was wrong, bringing Forte on was wrong, bringing Reeves on was wrong.  Gus Poyet was quite calm afterwards though he did acknowledge that the decisions had gone for them today.  He’s in charge of one horrible team though – a decent side but I couldn’t stand watching the cheating every week.

The goal not being given and the sending off, changed the game and 3-0 is a ridiculous scoreline when you look at the balance of play over the 90 minutes.  The facts remain though that we missed sitters, our keeper coughed up the important first goal and Sir Rickie invited the possibility of getting sent off.  Also, we didn’t deal with being down to ten men as we should have due to the bench we had. and the way it was used.  On that subject,  I’ll give a shout out to Ryan Dickson who I think is a decent player and wonder why he wasn’t on the bench today as he’s better than all those that were on there aside from Danny Fox who was only on there himself to give Harding a game – didn’t that work out well !!.  I get the feeling that Ben Reeves is on the bench because he came through the Academy, not because he’s better than Ryan Dickson – maybe that’s harsh and he may be a very good player in the future but right now he just isn’t.  Taking that a step further though – haven’t we got an academy striker prospect who is better than Jonno Pace?

Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong today and guess what, we’re still top of the league but now it’s on goal difference from West Ham with both Middlesbrough and Cardiff within striking distance.  It’s no secret that we need a couple of signings to ensure that the superb start of the season is not wasted and turns into a promotion season.  Today was not a great start to 2012 and we’ll have to work out a way to score goals without Sir Rickie as he’s going to be banned for 3 matches. The only silver lining is that one of those will be next weeks FA Cup game against Coventry.  I wonder what odds you could get on Lukas Jutkiewicz making his Saints debut against the side he’s just left.  I’m sure the Echo will run a story on that one.