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Champions - My Arse!!!!
Our ultimate failure to win against Wigan put a bit more
pressure than was really necessary on today’s game at home to the current
Champions, Manchester
City
The past week has seen a raft of internationals at all
levels and the England U21 gave Saints a headache when Luke Shaw did one
training session and injured his ankle, making him unlikely to play today. A slight knock to Nathaniel Clyne saw us do a
Sir Alex and rule him out of England duty.
We also pulled the same stroke on Uruguay with Gaston Ramirez but at
least our manager could explain to the Uruguay management in a language they
could understand. Also in the news was
the le Tissier and Cortese thing whereby a private one on one meeting was
arranged and then Tiss went and aired all his grievances in the media causing the
meeting to be canned by The Don.
Personally, I find this issue really really boring.
So, we had the pressure of playing the Champions at home but
a bit of that pressure was relieved by the fact that we were playing at Sky
o’clock and we knew all the other results before we kicked off. Reading had not managed to do their usual and
spawn a result in the last 5 minutes and had lost to Stoke, Wigan had been
buried by Chelsea and most amusingly of all, Queens Park Pompey had been
smashed 4-1 at Swansea under the tiffic guidance of ‘Arry Redknapp and Steve
Cotterill. Needless to say, it wasn’t
their fault. Though it’s an irrelevance to us, the feelgood factor as also
enhanced by Pompey earlier claiming a record 9th defeat in a row in
the South Coast Shit-a-thon at Bournemouth.
We didn’t do a real Sir Alex as both Gaston and Luke were
actually injured and not magically recovered by the next league game, Mauricio
brought in Danny Fox and Steven Davis as expected but the main talking points
were in the City line up. Kompany didn’t
make it so they had the dodgy looking central defensive pair of Garcia (a
midfielder) and Lescott (an alien). The
front six however looked quite awesome on paper and they had one of my personal
hate figures in Samir Nasri. I’m sure
that off the pitch he’s probably nice to his mum and all that but the
impression he gives is that he’s a horrible little shit. It was good to see that Carlos Tevez wasn’t
even on the bench as he was having a personal issue which in the past has been
because he’s been asked to be on the bench, or to come off the bench.
We start off playing our usual high line and pressing City
so high up the pitch that King Artur is stood next to Joe Hart and Sir Rickie
is stood at the back of the Northam End.
City are trying to ping the ball about but not getting too far with
it. On 6 minutes, Gareth Barry plays
with his usual urgency and pace and turns like a oil tanker straight into Punch
who nicks the ball and sets off. He
plays J-Rod clean through who shows no strikers instinct as his jabbed effort
is blocked by Hart but luckily for us it goes straight to Punch who rolls it
into the net. Off he goes to the corner
flag and pulls out the very unique bum-wiping celebration in honour of this
being the first home game since the Everton ‘Dumpgate’ incident. There is a quick chorus of “he shits where he
wants” which is amusing. Punch hasn’t
had a song for the three years he’s been here but he gets one as soon as he
leaves the pitch to have a shite. What
next “Dumpgate – The Rock Opera”
The excitement of us being in front, bum wiping goal
celebrations and Aguero immediately firing in a shot which Artur catches easily
are obviously too much for someone unknown around me in the Kingsland who has
just produced an incredibly eye-watering fart. It’s a disgrace and if anything happened in
the next two minutes then I missed it.
On twenty minutes something very odd happens and we go 2-0
up. Foxy’s raking long ball puts Sir
Rickie away on the right and he cuts in past Clichy and hits a shot left footed
which is straight at England’s No 1 but he has a mare and lets it hit his body
and go through his legs to where it’s bundled into the net by Steve Davis. It’s all a bit surreal.
A quick look at the watch reveals that there are still 70
minutes to go which is a bit of a concern but who cares, we’re 2-0 up against
the Champions and not even another blast from Swampguts is going to ruin my
mood, just make my eyes water a little bit.
The referee Martin Atkinson makes his first decision which gets him
noticed when Sir Rickie gets booked for trying to close down Lescott before
holding him back. To be honest though
it’s fair enough though I’m not sure about the booking that Big Jos managed to
pick up when Dzeko just ran into him.
Jos is playing really well and though Mauricio wants all the defenders
to play the ball rather than Allardyce it up the pitch, it’s apparent that Jos
has a bit more licence to just concentrate on defending. They can’t score if it’s 70 yards away can
they?
It’s nearly 3-0 on a couple of occasions as we continue to
dominate the game. Firstly J-Rod get s
an opportunity from a Big Jos pass and screws his shot across goal and out for
a goal kick when he really should have hit the target. Then Clyne gets forward and picks up a Punch
pass before seeing his shot deflected for a corner. Steve Davis had been knocking in some really
good corners but this one was to the edge and Dzeko headed it clear,
immediately setting up a 2v2 break. 10
seconds later and nearly 3-0 had become 2-1 as Silva put Zabaleta steaming away
up the right before returning it to Dzeko who despite the ball being behind
him, expertly scooped it over Boruc and into the net. Because he’s a big streak of piss he’s always
going to look a bit clumsy but that looked like a very good finish to me.
The ref had managed to annoy the home fans with the bookings
and then compounded it when Toure blatantly bodychecked Morgan in the midfield
to stop a break. The ball had run loose
to Punch so not only did Atkinson butcher the advantage that we had, he then
failed to book the offender. This was
made worse as we reached the 44th minute and J-Rod burst into the
box. Again there was a body check, again
there was no contact with the ball and Atkinson bottled it and gave a corner. Sorry, that’s a penalty all day long and
that’s why you get booed off and end up with a crowd of angry players all round
you.
My half time break was spent having a quick look on Twitter
where the world and his wife who were watching on Sky were saying that it was a
definite penalty. The list of people
saying it wasn’t numbered 1 and she had the name of @Martinatkinsonsmum. There
was a sense of injustice but to retain a sense of proportion – we were 2-1 up
and were in the main, outplaying the Champions.
The anticipated City blitz at the start of the second half
didn’t happen and instead we looked the more likely as Sir Rickie fastened onto
a ball from Davis in the inside left channel before laying it into the path of
Punch who would have had to break out an entire new bum-wipe celebration but
alas, he lashed his shot over the bar.
Within five minutes though we’re celebrating again but the goalscorer wasn’t. Again, Sir Rickie is away down the left and
his cross misses everyone but not Gareth Barry who, under pressure from
absolutely no one, expertly passes it straight into his own net. He’s trying to sidefoot it off for a corner
by the look of it but it hits his heel and goes straight in. Great finish lad.
Yaya Toure is a fabulous player but he clearly does not want
to be out there today. He has a free
kick which he plays into someones feet and gets it back before ballooning it
hopelessly into the crowd. His head’s
gone down though he had managed to put on the cloak of invisibility which means
that the referee doesn’t see him. He’s
had the body check on Morgan and the penalty shout after he trashed J-Rod and
manages another couple of fouls in quick succession without getting
booked. Meanwhile, City go close as
Aguero gets away down our right from a decent Barry pass and bounces a shot
towards goal forcing King Artur to pull off a superb save by flinging himself
away to his left to tip past the post.
Mancini finally puts Nasri out of his misery and to my
complete lack of concern, on comes James Milner who will hopefully do what he
did for England during the week; run up and down and give the ball away
lots. We’re at the hour mark now and
Pochettino brings on Lallana for Punch who gets a standing ovation. Saints have a new sponsorship deal with
Eterna who are our new official timekeepers.
I have an issue with their timekeeping as minutes 60 – 80 seemed.....
to..... pass..... very..... very..... slowly.
In that 20 minute period we created a few chances with Morgan
volleying over and Corky getting into nosebleed territory on the edge of the
City box before predictably wellying it into the Chapel End. City throw on two more subs but bizarrely,
it’s two full backs as Kolarov replaces Lescott and soon after, Maicon replaces
David Silva who I had genuinely forgotten was playing. Surely he’s worth leaving on though? Yaya then finally managed to get booked for
an innocuous foul but the ref in fairness, did point to 47 areas of the pitch
where he’d committed his previous fouls.
Danny Fox appears to have got cramp and is replaced with
Frazer Richardson with Clyne going to left back to combat the mercurial wing
talents of Milner. Meanwhile on the
other side, Kolarov, who has done well down the left since he came on, gets
free to deliver a brute of a low cross into the mixer which is blocked by a
mixture of Big Jos and King Artur who eventually comes up holding onto the ball
in exactly the same way that Joe Hart didn’t.
There are five minutes of normal time left when JWP comes on
for Steven Davis which is surprising considering that J-Rod is looking like one
of those marathon runners in the final straight when their legs have gone. To be fair, he’s run his nuts off but I bet a
little piece of his heart died when he saw the third sub come on and he was
still on the pitch. Prowsey made a
difference though as we regained control and started passing it about again for
the duration of the generous 5 minutes injury time that was added. There was even time for a bit of Ole Ole from
the crowd which was a nice bit of banter designed to really wind up opposition
fans. 94, 95, done.
Get the fuck in there!!!
Two years ago around this time we were playing away at Exeter and managed to scrape a 2-1 win with a
Sir Rickie goal in the 94th minute.
Today we have dicked the Champions of England. I don’t care if they had an off day… their
team cost millions and we dicked them and we should be proud of that. We were superb from the first minute to the
last and dominated the game – of course when you’re watching it as a Saints fan
you always feel that conceding two goals in quick succession is just a breath
away but once it was over, I realised that City really never looked like
getting a point at any time after Barry’s master class in finishing.
It really is worth looking back to the opening game of the
season and comparing the performances of some of our players. Big Jos was a train wreck in the game at City
as the quick feet of Tevez, Nasri and Silva made him look like a clumsy giant
trying to play football with a bag on his head.
Today he was brilliant, won everything and did exactly what he had to do
when confronted with the aerial threat of Dzeko in what I thought was a Man of
the Match performance. Why Mancini
didn’t try putting Aguero or Silva through the middle is beyond me but more of
his tactics later. Then you have Morgan
who at City, got bullied all over the pitch by Yaya Toure but today (along with
Corky) he ran the game himself forcing Toure to have a sulk and no doubt wish
that the Ivory Coast had gone further in the African Cup of Nations so he
could have skipped this one. There were immense performances right through
from King Artur to Sir Rickie and we had strong players on the bench as well to
come on ensure the level never dropped.
So, is it the Pochettino effect? Well today I think it was. City never dealt with us closing them down
(see first goal) but the key difference in this game was the way we closed it
out. Mauricio left Sir Rickie and J-Rod
on even though they were both completely fucked because we needed to give City
something to think about at their end of the pitch and not just retreat to the
edge of our penalty area and wait for the inevitable. The most glaring comparison is Man United at
home where we didn’t look like we had a clue how to close it out when Nigel
Adkins took off our three best players and we let van Persie have one goal for
every player we took off.
As for City – well it was billed for them as a ‘must win’
but to be honest, some of them didn’t look like they fancied it (Toure, Nasri),
some usually excellent players had quiet games (Aguero, Silva) and some just
had complete shithouse performances (Lescott, Garcia, Hart)… and then there was
Gareth Barry. I can understand the
mistake for the first goal as he’s always been slow (remember him losing a 10
yard race with a 9 yard start for England against Germany in South Africa 2010)
and he just got caught being slow but what the fuck was he up to with the 3rd
goal. Hilarious and thank you very much
to a player who has loads of caps for England whereas Jack Cork has none. If I was a City fan I wouldn’t be too
impressed with Mancini for this game – why throw on two full backs to get
crosses in when you have Scott Sinclair on the bench? Why take off your one
natural centre back when you go to 3 at the back? Why pick a midfielder at centre back when you
have Kolo Toure available? Why pick
Nasri at all? I’m sure all of these
questions will be posed in the match reports in the papers and on the web, most
of which will ignore that there was a team in red even playing out there.
Still, I wish we had their problems with only being second
in the league and all that. As it turns
out, we’ve gone above Newcastle and are currently 6 points off the drop zone
with a better goal difference but I expect that to be down to 4 points after
Villa play Dropping-like-a-stone West Ham on Sunday. We have small break now before a trip to
St.James’ Park to play Nouveau Château and their collection of Frenchmen. The break gives a chance to sit back and feel
good about ourselves for a bit and bask in the glow of this win. It started when I got back to the car and
Stan Collymore was on the radio introducing his show on talkSHITE, waxing
lyrical about how good we were and how Sir Rickie and Corky deserve an England
call up. Some people at least, seem to
be noticing.
We were brilliant today, loved it!!! So what if we handed
the title to Man United.
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