NPC Match 27 - Southampton 0 Leicester 2

.... we could be Pompey

Monday night, a rubbish night for football and we’re playing Leicester City at home who spent a fortune in the summer under managerial genius and blog-writers dream, Sven Goran Eriksson. Despite having a decent collection of players, they’ve been pretty poor and as a result, unsurprisingly, Sven isn’t there anymore which means I’m going to have to work a lot harder to find things to take the piss out of. Replacing Sven with Nigel Pearson meant that Leicester not only got a well-thought of ex-Saints manager but also, someone who has never shared his secretary with his boss.

Talking of ex-Saints managers (though not so well thought of), ‘Arry Redknapp has helped us out by signing winger Yago Falque from Juventus and then immediately loaning him to us for the rest of the season. Falque sounds like a decent prospect, who will hopefully enable Nigel to play proper wide men in all games, instead of shoe-horning in either Morgan or Corky to play on the wing whilst Chappers and de Ridder are recovering from injuries. The signing also gives the cynical amongst us the opportunity of trying to guess ‘Arry’s angle for helping us out. Another positive bit of Saints news was that Tadanari Lee’s red tape issues were all but resolved and he’s free to join us when the final i’s are dotted and t’s crossed which is likely to be in time for the FA Cup 4th Round next week. We’re away to Millwall who got through after hammering Dagenham 5-0 in their 3rd Round Replay.

We have also, in one of the most hilariously badly advised attacks in history, seen Jason Puncheon take to Twitter to attack Don Nicola Cortese, basically blaming the Don for him being banished from the first team squad and training with the kids. Tell me Jason – what happened to prompt this behaviour from the Don? I expect that he did it for nothing... rumour has it that it has something to do with being dropped in favour of the guy who was the best player on the pitch in the Arsenal v Man United game yesterday. Actually Punch, the answer to that doesn’t matter as I’m sure you’ll find that you don’t fuck with the Don.

In other news, ex-Saints and ex-useless thieving little git Nathan Dyer has been mentioned in terms of a possible England call up. I have been reminded that I said when he left that I would run naked into the sea at Weston Shore with my mouth open if this ever happened. My caveat was though it had to be Dyer AND Bradley Wright-Phillips in the England squad so I can’t see me doing that any time soon.

I wrote a paragraph here on the Skates latest predicament but have decided to remove it because it deserves an entry of its own and I don’t want to sully our match with talk of the Tax Dodging Insolvent Cheating Bastards.

Saints went into the weekend knowing that by the time we played, we were unlikely to be top for the first time in four months and this was a near certainty given that West Ham needed just a point from a match at home to Steve the Bumpkin and his Nottingham Forest all stars. Sure enough, a feast of flowing hoofball from Allardyce and Cotterill resulted in a 2-1 win for West Ham courtesy of two dodgy penalty decisions. Cardiff closed to within a point of us by beating the Skates (useless fuckers!!!) 3-2 in the last minute. I actually groaned when the Skates conceded, unlike my usual reaction of jumping up and down, shouting ‘GET IN THERE YA BASTARDS’ and scaring the cat and children.

Remarkably, my seat of the pants trip from work in Brighton had seen me actually arrive at SMS early. The Saints team announcement confirmed what I’d suspected in that Adam Lallana was out injured and Yago Falque was in. The rest of the team was as expected with a very makeshift looking right hand side of the team featuring Cork and Harding. The bench saw the return of Frazer Richardson which made me wonder why he wasn’t starting. Leicester have a team full of decent names with quite a few of them having played in the Premiership before. Up front they have David Nugent who was a flop at the Skates (aside from costing them a fortune) but was good enough once upon a time to earn an England cap. Jermaine Beckford was the other striker who stunk the place out when he played for Leeds here two years ago and Radhi spend the game treating him like a little bitch. Other notables were Matt Mills, an ex-Saint who Sven paid £5million for, Paul Konchesky who last year was playing for Liverpool and not so long ago England and Neil Danns who is a player I wish we’d bought when he left Palace.

The opening 10 seconds of this match gave an indication that this wasn’t going to be an easy game as Leicester moved forward as a unit and we really didn’t. The next five minutes saw them keeping the ball and us giving it away with Danns and Wellens running the midfield and us trying to get Falque on the ball and failing. Leicester are closing us down quickly and consequently the defenders are having to pump it long and none of the midfield are getting on the ball.

Falque eventually touches the ball after 10 minutes and sends over a decent cross which Connolly just failed to get on the end of beyond the back post. Any goal kick or drop kick from Kaspar Schmeichel is landing on the edge of our penalty area where Big Jos or Aaron Martin are winning it but it’s dropping down into the midfield where we are just not at the races as Danns picks up virtually every ball and constantly feeds Dyer who takes on Harding at every opportunity who suddenly looks very much what he is.... a left back who wishes he was anywhere other than at right back.

We’re creating nothing on our own but we don’t need to as Danns has a shocker and passes straight to David Connolly who is totally free about 20 yards out. Fear of the incoming Matt Mills sees him take the shot early and it’s rubbish – a back pass which Schmeichel just picks up.

Entirely expectedly, Leicester take the lead on 25 minutes as a player I can’t immediately identify, breaks into the vast open grasslands of our right back area, cuts inside and curls a superb shot into the far corner of the net. The horror then hits me – “that was fucking Nugent wasn’t it”. The resigned nod from my Dad confirmed the worst as Nugent pulled out the knee slide in front of the Itchen. Can’t criticize a player for that… class goal it has to be said…. Bastard it has to be said.

Stunned into action, we did nothing and following a corner, centre back St.Ledger skipped easily past Martin on our right before sending in a perfect cross to the totally unmarked Matt Mills who thumped his header past Superkelv for 2-0. At this precise moment I could see us losing about 5-0 as Leicester looked different class and we looked diabolical.

Big Jos and Aaron Martin began getting to grips with Nugent and Beckford and Deano steamed into a few tackles in midfield to at least remind Danns and Wellens that we had a midfield. Jos pulled out a wonderful tackle to deny Dyer who was clean through again before Deano should have pulled one back though as Fox delivered a free kick into the box, Schmeichel came and stopped leaving himself in no-mans-land and left Deano with half the goal to aim at with his header which he plopped wide.

As half time approached we had another great chance as Morgan cut in from the left, passed up the chance to shoot which he maybe should have taken and played it square to the onrushing Cork who kept up his record for today of not kicking the ball in the right direction once, by lashing it over the bar. It was pretty crap from both players as one should have had a shot and the other should have kept the bloody thing down.

Half time was upon us and in keeping with the entertainment dished out in the first half, the soup which my Dad had brought with him had the colour and consistency of vomit with shredded chicken, sweetcorn and diced carrots. It was warm though. Whilst drinking the vomit mixture I pondered that Leicester, for all their domination had had less goal chances than we’d had but as we know, missing chances gets you jack shit. It did make me think though that maybe we could get back in it with a fast start to the second half. Chuckle Brother wisdom was in short supply but I did notice that the Moronic one was wearing a deerstalker hat with a cap perched on top of it and two pairs of glasses… perhaps he thinks he’s both Chuckle Brothers and has to wear two of everything.

My anticipated introduction of Frazer didn’t happen and for that and many other reasons, my optimism went to shit as we started badly. Leicester looked completely in control and we responded to their closing us down by sending long punts up to Guly who unsurprisingly, was winning nothing. When we do pass the ball, it’s sideways and backwards and not being moved quick enough to pull Leicester out of position. Harding is having a mare on the right as Dyer has completely sussed that he can’t kick it with his right foot so every time he gets the ball it’s switched onto his left foot and then wellied.

We have a chance for a second when Connolly has a chance to lob the keeper but sadly, Kaspar is taller than 1 foot 6 so the shot was never going to go over him. We threaten from a Fox right wing free kick which is met by Deano who gets it on target this time but Kaspar flaps it out as the Chapel End half-heartedly appealed that it had crossed the line.

Another 15 minutes of nothing and it’s time for Nigel to make a substitution to get us back into the game and de Ridder comes on for the ineffective Falque who has quite frankly had a debut to forget. He hasn’t been crap but he’s just not done anything, never seeming to know where to run to receive the ball, I see this substitution as a positive move but bringing on Holmes for Hammond is a bad one as he had been playing better than both Cork and Schneiderlin who had both up until this point, been shocking. Deano usually gets taken off when we need to keep the ball a bit better but today’s problem was that we never had the ball in the first place.

It’s nearly 3-0 as the ref buys a Wellens dive and Konchesky curls a lovely free kick onto the inside of the post, which pings across the penalty area and away to safety. We finally get Frazer on the pitch with 20 minutes to go but it only happens at the expense of Big Jos pulling up with a hamstring injury. The resulting reshuffle sees Harding mercifully moved to left back, Frazer to the right and Danny Fox filling in at centre back.

In amongst the complete Leicester cakewalk to victory, we do create a couple of half chances as de Ridder is brought down and Richardson gets on the end of Fox’s free kick but volleys over at the back post. Lee Holmes has an effort to when he finally gives up on trying and failing to get past the full back and gets himself a yard on the edge of the box before curling his effort badly wide. We’re still trying to play from the back but it’s not working and all that happens is Superkelv continually putting the full backs in the shit by passing to them but only when they have a Leicester player up their arse.

It’s petering out and Leicester are now in cruise control as we huff and puff – well, most of us do and Guly’s mind is on a beach in Brazil somewhere. Mind you, who can blame him for getting pissed off with the quality of ball he’d been receiving all game. The crowd give Nugent some stick but what’s the point? If I was him, 2-0 up with a minute to go and I’d scored a great goal, I’d be loving it if the crowd were calling me a wanker. As the full time whistle went, I was irritated by the booing that rang around the ground. I’ve long given up though on our fans having a sense of perspective and an appreciation of where we’ve come from in the relatively recent past. As we walked down the steps, I was more or less alone in the Kingsland in clapping the players for their efforts, which doesn’t make me a better fan than anyone else but come on, the boys in red and white put in a shift and they tried but they just weren’t good enough.

Hmmmm – lots to talk about. I see the gate was officially over 21,000 but there was no way that many in the ground. A lot of Season ticket holders obviously didn’t bother today. If this had been a Saturday game I’d have expected 24,000. Monday night and Sky really didn’t do us any favours there.

When all is said and done it was a pretty abysmal performance. Plan A of passing the ball didn’t work because we didn’t fight hard enough to make it work and Plan B of sending it long was never an option because of the absence of Sir Rickie which brings us to our missing players. Sir Rickie, Fonte, Lallana, Chappers and a fit Frazer would all have started tonight which excuse or not, is definitely a factor when you have half your first choice team missing.

England were rubbish at he last World Cup, partly because they had players in the wrong positions. They got away with it in qualifying as they were playing against poor sides but against the good boys they got found out. It’s the same with Saints – we’ve got away with it against Forest and Coventry because they are both dire. Leicester, regardless of their league position, are different gravy entirely and Harding at right back was ruthlessly exposed. They gave us two warnings before scoring two goals from that wing and Nigel should have reacted quicker, either moving Corky to right back or bringing on Frazer earlier. Better still, start with Frazer and then take him off when he gets tired. I don’t blame Harding at all for this as he was doing his best in a position he is totally unsuited for.

Also, you aren’t going to win many matches with half your team individually having poor matches. To me, Morgan, Corky, Aaron Martin and Connolly were all very poor and Guly joined them in the 2nd half after doing ok in the first. Falque looked like a rabbit in the headlights not knowing where to run – if there had been lorries driving around then he’s have got run over. It immediately makes you question if a player totally new to English football should have been thrown in to the first team without so much as a reserve game or a cameo off the bench. I see his name is actually Yago Falque Silva... did we take him on after a phone call claiming to be from David Silva who said his cousin was a decent player…. Maybe evoking memories of Ali Dia is a bit harsh.

I thought Foxy, Jos and Deano were ok today and two of them ended up getting substituted for one reason or another. Of the subs, de Ridder didn’t look fit and it took us ages to get the ball out to him. As I’ve thought for four years, Lee Holmes just isn’t good enough – he’s great when he gets brought on and the game is already won (Watford 4-0, Forest 3-0) but he does nothing when it matters.

The league table no longer has us at the top with West Ham now 3 points clear and Cardiff, who are up next in the League at SMS, just a point behind us. Nigel Adkins interview suggested that some or all of Sir Rickie, José Fonte, Chappers and Tadanari Lee would be available for the next game which offsets Big Jos joining the casualty list. Of course it’s FA Cup 4th Round time and will we play kids or will we try and get a bit of fitness into the legs of the returning players. Personally, I expect Sir Rickie and Tadanari to play with possibly Radhi Jaidi replacing Big Jos at the back.

Perspective… look it up and after that, read the headlines about that lot 17 miles down the road.

Keep the faith.... COYR!!!