Premier League Match 36 - Tottenham 1 Southampton 0

F.F.S. - Gareth Bale ruins my weekend

Following on from our abortion of a performance against the Baggies, comes a visit to White Hart Lane to play against Tottenham who as usual, at this stage of the season, are chasing a Champions League spot.  Of course, what usually happens is that they blow it and finish below Arsenal and end up 5^th.  Hopefully, the slide towards that inevitable conclusion will start today and they have another season of Thursday night on Channel 5 to look forward to.  In the same way that relegation usually means that you lose your best players, Spurs not being in the Champions League would more than likely mean that Gareth Bale would be off to a team that he doesn’t have to carry on his own.  It would amuse me no end if he got stolen away by a bigger club.  Hopefully whoever buys him will give them a shit 8^th choice goalkeeper in part-exchange as well.

As regular readers will know, I don’t do many away games any more and if I did, I wouldn’t do Spurs because the ticket prices are usually horrendous and I’ve always had a shit view there.  I once had a pillar in front of both goals and when I moved to an empty seat, some jobsworth steward tried to throw his weight around and to cut a long story short, I got thrown out for the crime of wanting to be bale to see, before the game had even started.  This was back in the days of terraces so I managed to get back into the standing area downstairs with no harm done. 

Back to the modern world and we are still stuck on 39 points which is a strange place to be.  If you’re having a good day and you look at the league table then it looks like enough to guarantee being in the Prem next year.  If you’re having a bad day then you can see it going horribly wrong if we don’t get any more points.  There was an interesting article on Mauricio so on the BBC this week which gave away that we have two players ready to sign in the summer, with the proviso being that of course, we stay in the division.  Bizarrely, after we had two sent off last week, he found himself talking about the Europa League and our chances to playing in it next year through the fair play route.  Luckily, sanity has prevailed and we won’t accept any invitation if it does happen so Gaston and Danny’s efforts from last week are all for nothing.

So, to White Hart Lane we go for what is effectively a bonus game that we are expected to get nothing from.  The first thing we don’t get is a 3 o’clock kick off as there is some unexpected heavy traffic in that part of London and so it’s eyes down for a 3.30 start.  Our team sees two stalwarts absent with Morgan Schneiderlin out with a dead leg and Maya Yoshida only fit enough for the bench meaning we have a Championship defence in Jose and Jos and most surprisingly, a start for the Gulyman – promoted into the team ahead of Punch who had his first sleepless night of many as his partner had a baby Punch the night before.  Congratulations.  The suspension for Foxy was covered by the return from injury of Luke Shaw so we didn’t have to deal with moving Clyne to left back and reshuffling the whole back 4.  The Spurs line-up was Gareth Bale and ten others, no doubt aided and abetted by Mark Twattenburg who to my delight, is the short notice referee appointment for todays game – his first time refereeing us since we chased him around the pitch after he gave that joke penalty to Norwich in the last minute.

Saints look a completely different side from the Baggies match and start well, keeping the ball and all that good stuff which went out of the window last week.  The first time Spurs get it though and Jose’s poor defensive header causes mayhem and Clyne doesn’t cover himself in defensive glory before Defoe fires into the side netting.  Clyne almost covers himself in glory five minutes later as a decent move between Guly, Clyne and Corky sees Clyne play the ball short to Sir Rickie on the half way line and in an attacking move that says everything about the way we are trying to play now, busts a gut to get forward, isn’t tracked and when Sir Rickie superbly picks him out, he’s 1v1 against Lloris with a bouncing ball which he hits first time, across the keeper and inches wide and all the people that had him for the first goal at 80-1 shout ‘fuck’ at the same time.

It has to be said but for the next fifteen minutes we are all over them, admittedly without creating too much but we are first to the ball, more determined and playing the better football.  There is a decent opportunity when another passimg move sees Guly get free on the right but his cross in along the floor doesn’t have enough weight on it and gets hoofed clear by Dawson before it reached J-Rod.  Spurs’ main man is doing absolutely nothing and we’re snuffing him out pretty well and Defoe and Dempsey up front are not seeing the ball at all. 

When you are on top though you have to score and we have another chance on 25 when at the end of another really good passing move,  J-Rod is pulled back by Dembele who obviously doesn’t know that J-Rod is going to smash it over the bar and Twattenburg gives us a free kick on the edge.  We have to wait for the English German Holtby to come on as Dembele has injured himself before Sir Rickie hammers the free kick past the wall and it pings off the post.  Guly retrieves it and chips it into the middle where the flying Davis meets it and heads it straight at Lloris.  Bollocks.  Replays later prove that Lloris got a touch on the free kick to divert it onto the post so it was in fact a superb save but bollocks anyway.

It’s still mainly us playing all the football and it’s amusing when Michael Dawson resorts to pumping the ball long up to Defoe and Dempsey who are getting no change out of Jose and Jos.  The main irritation for Saints fans is listening to the Spurs Massive singing ‘oh when the Spurs go marching in’ – how original.  Somewhat similar to our main song but it’s better than that Chas ‘n’ Dave shit they grew up on in these parts I suppose.  Spurs inevitably have a bit of pressure as the half draws to a close and win a few corners which come to nothing.  A pretty good away performance by ourselves so far and we really should be in front which is something totally ignored by the commentators on the stream I’m watching who are just giving it large about Spurs and Bale even though they and he have produced the square root of fuck all.

The second half begins with a Spurs attack and Bale gets flagged offside, well before he crashes the ball onto the post which is enough to have the commentators creaming themselves even though every other player has stopped.  Normal service is resumed soon afterwards and it’s all us again with us forcing three corners in a row which are all cleared and Sir Rickie trying a ridiculous free kick from somewhere near Arsenal’s ground which is fired towards the back post and bounces wide as Guly tries to get a touch.

Adam Lallana then encapsulates his season in a couple of minutes as firstly he aimlessly floats a free kick about ten feet over everyones’ head and out for a goal kick and then he superbly turns Dawson by flipping the ball over his head and this puts him clean through on goal but the finish is predictably scuffed and shite and ends up as a backpass to Lloris.  Today he’s been up against Assou-Ekotto who, like Tom Huddlestone is rocking the ridiculous afro look but unlike Huddlestone, he’s complete shit and looking like an accident waiting to happen.  Lallana seems to have the better of him all game without producing the telling final product.

AVB has seen enough and with Lennon getting no change out of Shaw at all, removes him and replaces him with Adebayor.  Replacing a tricky pacy winger with a big centre forward must be a bit of a hard one to swallow for fans of purist football.  To be fair to AVB though, Lennon had hardly touched the ball.  We bring on the big guns at this point with Guly going down after a clumsy tackle and being replaced with the little African bloke which is a brave / daft substitution.  The Gulyman has been the target of much stick from Saints fans for about a year now which is mainly brought on by some fans being morons but he’s been decent today and had a better game than say, Gaston Ramirez or Adam Lallana has had in the last two months.

Our first booking of the afternoon is one of those where you nod and smile as a break down Spurs right is crudely halted by Davis who takes that yellow card for the team.  With twenty minutes to go it’s now an even game but Spurs till don’t really look like scoring.  Dempsey lobs a presentable chance over the bar when set up by Adebayor and then the virtually unemployed King Artur makes a total bollocks of a Huddlestone corner and we get lucky as Vertonghen can’t force it in at the back post.

Punch comes on for Lallana for the last 10 minutes and then it happens.  Bale picks up the ball on the right and sets off infield pursued by Shaw who can’t quite get to him.  Across the top of the box he goes and no midfielder comes across to him, onto his left foot and bang, no chance for Artur, 1-0… fuck it!  A right kick in the bollocks.

There are four minutes of normal time remaining but we are a busted flush now.  Spurs are content to sit back and we haven’t got it in us to mount a serious attack in the time remaining.  It’s galling and gutting and undeserved but we limp to a 1-0 defeat.

It’s time for some sour grapes all round now - all written at a time when I was still very very pissed off about today's events.  I’m pissed off that we were the better side today and we ended up with nothing due to a world class goal scored by one of our own but then again, the fact that he was one of our own is not the issue here to be honest.  It’s both encouraging and extremely annoying that we were the better side against a team who are going to finish in the top 5 this year.  They have a world class player and that was the difference and it’s amazing just how much influence one player can have over a team in the upper reaches of the league – they’d be mid-table without him.  The rest of the Spurs side was distinctly average and the game was following the same pattern as our recent wins against Chelsea and Man City etc in that we made the supposedly better team look bad but the difference today was that we couldn’t score.  We defended so well and played superbly in midfield and Bale was anonymous all game.... until the 84th minute.  bastard.

However, we had off colour players ourselves with J-Rod anonymous, Lallana promising much but delivering little and Sir Rickie fading badly in the last half an hour.  Three games without a goal from the team is not good enough.  There also has to be a question mark on Mauricio today over the man chosen to replace Guly.  Punch was the obvious like for like swap if you wanted to maintain an attacking edge and JWP was the man if you want to keep things tight.  Consequently, I have no idea why the little African bloke came on which meant that Sir Rickie and J-Rod both played deeper which didn’t have any positive effect.  The little African bloke won’t score all the while he has a hole in his arse and can’t hold the ball up for others so I really don’t see what he brings to the party.

To make matters worse, the other results came in and Wigan had spawned a ridiculously lucky win at West Brom and Villa had won at Norwich which means that Villa are a point ahead of us and Wigan are just 4 behind with a game in hand.  So much for Villa v Wigan on the last day being a relegation decider and so much for our 39 points being enough to stay up.  Norwich, Sunderland and Newcastle are all still below us so it’s not wrist-slashing time as yet but suddenly, our next game which is away at Sunderland is a relegation 6 pointer.  Win and we'll be safe, lose and we will be needing something at home to Tony Pulis and his hoofball merchants on the final day.  Shite.  Why can’t we ever do things the easy way?