Premier League Match 35 - Southampton 0 West Brom 3

Boing boing bloody boing, it’s time for a visit from the acceptable side of Midlands football, West Bromwich Albion who have over the past few seasons, emerged as the best club in that neck of the woods with Villa being poor in the Premier League and Birmingham and especially Wolves being shite in the Championship.  One of these sides even appointed Dean Saunders as manager and so deserve all they get.  The Baggies started the season brilliantly and when we played them back in October, we were appalling and got beat 2-0 with barely a whimper and the writing was on the wall for Nigel Adkins from around that moment, no matter how much he tried to draw a blue line under it and move on.

The nadir of The Hawthorns has been recognized by the players as well with Maya Yoshida referencing it in his pre-match interview and promising that West Brom would see a different Saints today.  Let’s hope so.  He, along with Mauricio and Artur Boruc last week, mentioned aspirations of getting in the Champions League either next season or the one after.  I really wish we wouldn’t come out with this embarrassing bollocks.  Yes, aim for the top, fine but keep it in-house because otherwise there’s a very good chance you could end up looking completely deluded and stupid.

To today and I’m very late.  The pre-game dog walk has ended at 2.15pm after retrieving the little bastard from the middle of a bloody great hedge and 44 minutes later I’m hearing the teams being read out from behind the Chapel Stand as I make my way round to the Kingsland turnstiles, trying to get my swipecard thing out of my wallet and devour a bacon baguette at the same time.  So, with onions and brown sauce going everywhere, the team news is that Luke Shaw is injured so Foxy is at left back again so in fact, it’s the same side that played at Swansea with Lallana and J-Rod supporting Sir Rickie and as you were.  West Brom appear to have named three strikers in Fortune, Long and Lukaku so they’re obviously going for it and they have Liam Ridgewell, who is one of those ‘how the hell is he getting a regular game in the Premier League?’ type of players. Refereeing today is Richard Madeley which is a bit confusing, as was his decision to marry Judy, who is his mum.

We start the game well and encouragingly, we cut a swathe down Ridgewell’s side and Lallana gets to the line but his pull back is too close to Foster who gathers.  Straight up the other end and the Baggies do indeed have three up front and Lukaku manages to get himself completely free of Big Jos as he chases Reid’s ball forward and hammers in a shot which King Artur blocks away well.  Far from heeding the warning signs of how easily Lukaku got through, we allow the Baggies to win the first header from the resulting corner, then allow Lukaku to win the second ball and then allow Fortune to have 3 efforts at putting it in the net.  Twice he’s blocked by Boruc but at the third attempt he forces it goalwards and Foxy clears it from about three feet over the line.  Up goes the lino’s flag straight away, goal given and there’s a surreal couple of seconds before the Baggies fans realise they’ve scored.  Trust us to get a decent linesman, rather than the twat we had at Swansea last week.

It’s chaos whenever the Baggies go forward.  If Lukaku wanted to go Fox hunting then he’d have a job as he’s nowhere to be seen as the Chelsea loanee finds himself clean through again after a superb move and once again, King Artur comes flying out to make another good save.  We do look like we may be able to get back into it though as we finally start doing the things that we’re good at like passing the ball to a red shirt.  One such move results in Morgan hammering in a shot from the edge of the box which a Baggies defender throws himself at to block.  A couple of minutes later and Sir Rickie gets free on the right and picks out J-Rod with a cross but his header is always clearing the bar.

Jos Hooiveld is looking like a Sunday morning park player who has been out on the piss til 3am, has woken up with a mouth like the bottom of a birdcage and the worrying smell of kebab is wafting around… and is playing at 10am the next day.  If you get the wrong side of a player and then grab his arm, you are going to get booked you muppet.  Mitigating circumstances were that he can’t have been expecting Foxy to expertly flick on Reid’s pass straight to Fortune.  Another cross, another free player and we’re lucky to get away with it again as the ball across narrowly evades the incoming Lukaku.

I’m clinging to the cliché that ‘goals change games’.  The general performance from us is woeful and listless and I’m just hoping that we manage to score and change the game before our defence coughs up another goal and it becomes a long and painful afternoon.  Nathaniel Clyne is having a decent game though and he gets himself into the box to meet a Sir Rickie cross to force Foster to tip his blast over the bar.  Next we have Claudio Yacob taking one of the Hooiveld book of defending by pulling back J-Rod and Sir Rickie’s free kick flashes wide.

We are trying to build up a head of steam going forward but West Brom are killing that by defending well and slowing things down, taking an age over goal kicks and throw ins etc.  Has there ever been a more stupid rule introduced that being able to take goal kicks from either side?  The intention was to speed things up so you could take it from the side where the ball ended up.  Of course, what we get is goalkeepers taking an age to walk to the opposite side from which the ball went out and waste time.  Why don’t referees do anything about it?  Why don’t they do anything about the ball going out in West Brom’s half and Ridgewell taking the throw five yards in our half?  How difficult is that to spot?  Why does Richard Madeley, make us re-take a free kick on the half way like three times because we are two yards too far forward.  Yes, we’re all looking at you Richard, it’s all about you, I haven’t paid forty quid to watch some twat with a new whistle though so kindly fuck off.  The final action of the first half is to see Lukaku again get played in and have a free shot at Artur which once again, the keeper saves well.  We could easily be 4 down as Lukaku shouldn’t be giving the keeper any chance at all with the opportunities he’s getting.

Half time and that was pretty dreadful.  In my opinion, we have Clyne, Boruc and Davis playing to anywhere near their potential.  The other 8 have all been poor – Lallana may as well not have been out there, Corky and Morgan likewise as they failed to get a grip in midfield but Maya and Big Jos were the worst of a bad bunch, losing headers against every West Brom forward, even against Long who is not the biggest and generally not clearing the ball.  Up front we’ve been piss poor as well, Sir Rickie looks knackered and J-Rod is back to the form he showed before his recent good run with speculative long range efforts ending up endangering spectators.

Fair play to Pochettino – he’s not hanging around to see if it gets better but I’m not sure I’d have done that as Corky is replaced with Gaston Ramirez and we line up in a 4-4-2 with Steve Davis and Morgan in the centre of midfield.  The only other time this season that that pairing was used in a 4-4-2 was, spookily enough, at West Brom when we were marginally more shit than we have been today so far.  Maybe this is the day though that Gaston rediscovers his form of the Villa and Newcastle home games – the sun is shining and we need him to be on it and the first thing he does is promising as he gets himself some space, takes aim, and hoofs it miles over the bar.  Maybe not then.

Having seen the ref book two players for pulling back others, Foxy checks out the ref’s consistency by doing the same thing and what do you know, another yellow card.  In amongst the general stupidity we come very close to scoring as Davis picks out Clyne on the right who cuts in before hammering in a shot from a narrow angle which (possibly via Fosters glove) hits the bar and ended up on the opposite side.  I feel that if we get one we may actually go on and win this but more shit defending does for us on 65 minutes as Fortune spins Big Jos in painfully simple fashion before playing a ball through to Lukaku who skip round Artur as easily as you like and makes it 2-0.  I coach my sons Under 9 team and at 11am today I’d been telling them about not getting too close to the attacker, or else they will easily roll round you.  Jos was so tight up Fortune’s arse he was nearly out the other side.  Ridiculously poor defending.

We are now in need of some Gaston magic more than ever and he sets off on a run from halfway with Shane Long in close attendance.  He’s clearly being held back which is not going to wash with anyone as an excuse if you elbow him in the face.  There’s the usual finger pointing and handbags and all that.  Richard Madeley has seen it and Gaston takes the long walk.  The only good thing from our point of view is that Fortune has piled in to get involved with something which had nothing to do with him and got red carded as well.  Later replays show him shoving Gaston in the face so fair enough Richard.  The only problem I have with Richard over this incident is that he was trying to play advantage but once Long has held onto him for a couple of seconds then there’s no advantage and he should have blown.  If he had, 2 players wouldn’t have got sent off.  He didn’t book Long for the holding either but I have no problem with the red cards.  They were both twats and deserved all they got.

So, we have 10 players and one of them is Adam Lallana who to put it politely, hasn’t done anything since he called ‘heads’ at the start and decided to kick towards the Northam End.  Off he goes to be replaced with that little African bloke but before he can do anything, Lukaku races Clyne to a long ball to the corner and then beats him and cuts along the line, only to see his cut back to Morrison superbly dealt with by the covering Morgan.    The Baggies have adapted to having 10 men better than us and straight away, a ball up the left results in Yoshida putting in a piss-weak challenge on Lukaku who turns him and plays in Long who fires underneath Artur to make it 3-0 and spark a fire-drill amongst the home sections because after all, supporting your team is just about when you’re winning.  Maya’s effort at defending was as bad as Jos’ effort on the second goal and exactly the same as he did repeatedly against West Ham – trying to dive in, missing the ball and putting us in the shit.

Mayuka, for that’s the little African bloke’s name is trying hard but he doesn’t look like he has a clue – no awareness and no first touch but despite this, a Baggies player sees fit to hoof him over on the edge of the box and give us a free kick which one again, looks decent as it leaves Sir Rickie’s boot but it flies just wide.  We’re into looking for a consolation goal now and a decent move later, a pass goes out to Foxy on the left who is back on his heels and not concentrating.  He then decides to go for it, gets beaten to it by Reid and then pulls out a shit two-footed lunge and the red card was almost out before he landed.  Total and utter shit.

Mauricio does the right thing and settles for a 3-0 defeat as Jose Fonte comes on for Sir Rickie with Big Jos going to left back.  We are treated to one run and surprisingly decent cross from Big Jos but the game can’t end soon enough and thank God it has.  What a complete and utter load of shit and totally outplayed from start to finish by a very good side that made us look completely ordinary.  Champions League… oh my sides.

Talking of Europe, there has been some speculation that we may qualify for the Europa League through the Fair Play table.  Oddly enough, we were behind Liverpool who have a player who bites people, obviously in a ‘fair play’ kind of way but with any luck, we’ll have dropped below a few others after today’s efforts.  It’s a bloody farce though as it’s not just based on red and yellow cards and things that happen on the pitch but on various other subjective stuff.  If your fans sing a song about the ref being a wanker then you’ll get docked a point – stuff like that.  We’re not ready for it anyway and anyone who thinks we are is severely deluded.

There was some truly dreadful stuff out there today and we got found out in my opinion.  Big Jos has been getting away with iffy performances for a few weeks now and today it all came home to roost.  How the hell Jose Fonte isn’t back in the team yet is beyond me and then there’s always the Norwegian man of Mystery, Vegard Forren who as a left footed centre back, may find himself playing at left back next week as Shaw won’t be fit by all accounts and Fox is now gone for the season.  If not Forren then I’d throw Matt Targett in who is only a bit younger than Shaw.  It’s ok, we’re only playing Spurs and they’ve only got Bale and Lennon on the wings.  If it was down to me though, I’d go Clyne – Fonte – Yoshida – Targett across the back 4 next week.  If Targett really isn’t ready then stick Forren there.  Also, it’s time to leave Adam Lallana out again – he’s been a lot worse than Punch was before he got dropped.

In the great relegation picture, this week saw Reading and QPR confirmed as down so two of our ex-managers took the drop, Nigel Adkins and the other fucker who will hopefully have ‘Houdini’ replaced with ‘Relegation’ as his tabloid suffix.  Failing that, maybe it could be ‘Is a Wanker’. Third bottom Wigan were heading for a home win against Spurs until they scored an own goal in the last minute.  Newcastle are the latest team to get a bit twitchy as they were even worse than us today, getting dicked 6-0 at home by a Suarez-less Liverpool.  How much is a Pardew’s remaining 7 years on his contract going to cost to pay up?  Talking of relegation – well it wa a great day for the Baggies fans.  Not only did they get three points on the road but the news came through that Wolves had lost at home and are almost certainly relegated to League 1 now – boing, boing, bloody boing.

So, what brought on our performance today after 6 games unbeaten.  Did we feel that we were safe so psychologically we eased off or were West Brom just too good or had all the players gone to a private party round Artur’s house and tried to keep up with him in the vodka drinking games.  Maybe we believed our own hype that we are a Champions League side in the making.  Whatever the reason was, we played like a Sunday morning pub team that were all hungover.  In order to write this report I tried ‘method-writing’ like proper writers do and went out and got smashed on Saturday night and then tried to write this with a hangover to get inside the characters I was writing about.  Hopefully my efforts are better than the players because their efforts were shite.

3 games left, 4 points needed… ok, two games if we forget the Bale FC one up next.