Hands Up if you Thought I Was Shit!
I heard that Chelsea think they have it tough as they have 4
games in 11 days. As far as I can work
out, Saints have games on the 26th, 28th, 1st and
4th, which unless I can’t count, makes 4 games in 10 days. This is clearly absurd when there’s hardly a midweek
game scheduled for us in the Premier League for the rest of the year. To cap it all, Sky are putting out an advert
saying how great it is that all 20 Premier League Clubs are playing on the same
day. Do they not even see the irony of that? There’s nothing much that any match-attending
football fan would like than for all games to be Saturday at 3pm. The reason this doesn’t happen is because of
Sky.
Still, Boxing Day football is one tradition that Sky haven’t
torn up and thrown away so here we are with an away trip to Crystal
Palace. Roughly this time last year they
made an inspired managerial appointment in Tony Pulis which miraculously kept
them up. When he walked out just before
the season started they made the opposite of an inspired managerial appointment
and appointed Neil Warnock. Warnock’s
reign has seen Palace revert to being bang average with the same set of players
and one of the favourites for the drop and as a bonus we’ve had to put up with
his performances in post match interviews on Match of the Day where his tactic
is to say ‘such-and-such is a good referee but here’s a list of things he did
wrong’. No one’s buying it Neil, you’re
still a twat – Pompey manager in waiting.
Palace on the face of it have a very good winger in Bolasie
and they managed to get Zaha back on loan from Man United who have nearly but
not quite ruined his career. They also
have ‘Shite Where he Wants’ Puncheon who was delighted when Warnock came to
Palace, having been threatened with court action by his former QPR manager over
some ill-advised but probably true Twitter comments. The also have Australian Mile Jedinak who I’m
told is a good player which is completely at odds with what I’ve seen with my
own eyes when he’s been slightly worse than completely shit.
The questions regarding the Saints line-up were over who
would play as we had Morgan, Big Vic and Gardos returning from suspension and
Tadic from injury. As it turned out we
kept the 3-5-2 formation with Florin Gardos coming in for the suspended Fonte,
Morgan coming in for Harrison Reed and somewhat surprisingly, Sadio Mané coming
in for Shane Long meaning that JWP stayed in the team ahead of Big Vic. The bench included, Long, Vic, Tadic and Reed
alongside ever-present Kelvin Davis and defenders Matt Targett and Jason
McCarthy.
As Palace’s strength appears on paper anyway to be on the
wings, I was surprised we were playing with wing backs as I thought we’d want
to double up on them but as the game kicked off you could immediately see why we
had 3 giants at the back – hoooof, straight up to Campbell. Great tactics Neil. You have Bolasie on one wing and Punch on the
other and you boom it up to Campbell’s neck.
This is Frazier Campbell, a Championship standard striker who is on his
own up against international players from Japan, Belgium and Romania who are
all well over 6 foot tall. Good luck
with that.
Once we get the ball on the earth and start playing we begin
to make inroads and win a corner which is slung over by JWP. Palace clear it and Davis retrieves it and
the ball bounces to the retreating Alderweireld who controls on his chest and
volleys it back into the box and the back-pedalling Speroni had to tip it onto
the bar and over for another corner.
Palace’s first attempt to do something on the floor created
a chance fro them as the Comedy Bearded Ledley chipped a pass over Gardos and a
couple of lucky breaks saw the ball roll across the top of the penalty area
invitingly for Puncheon but he hit his right footed dribbler which we know so
well from him time with us and it was in easy reach for Fraser.
We were playing some nice stuff and confirmed we were by far
the better side on 17 minutes when Toby lobbed one forward and Pellè headed
down to Mané. He passed it first time to
JWP and spun away to receive the through ball as one Palace defender obligingly
stood five yards behind the others playing him onside. Mané skipped round Speroni and with his
weaker right foot, the one responsible for that horrible miss at Spurs amongst
others, slid it neatly into the net to put us 1-0 up. Great goal.
Mané is playing some great stuff and I’m particularly
impressed with the one-touch layoffs without trying to do anything too
clever. This is Palace though and
Delaney decides to wipe through the back of him which according to this
referees book or rules, is not a yellow card.
He’s nearly in again on 22 minutes as a Forster clearance is left by
both Speroni and Dann and Mané nipped in and robbed them only to be pulled back
for coming back from an offside position.
Offside at the other end was Championship Campbell. His smack against the bar with the linesman
already having flagged was at the end of a flowing Palace move which consisted
of a 60 yard free kick bombed forward, a clearing header from Yoshida and a returning
header from Jedinak. Quality football
all round.
When we were struggling in recent weeks, we doubly suffered
as our set piece delivery was shocking and Palace have the same problem as
Punch whips in a corner which is so low that first man Bertrand has to duck low
to head it away. A rare mistake by
Steven Davis on the edge of our box gifts the ball to Bolasie but Alderweireld
is in quickly to clear any danger.
Up the other end some decent football has broken out with
Mané spinning past the Comedy Bearded Ledley and he and Pellè combined to
tee-up JWP and the less said about his sand-wedge effort into the crowd the
better. More decent and patient play
outside of the Palace box and Mané slides a ball through to Bertrand on the
left. His cross loops up into the air
off the defender and JWP makes a decent effort of trying to loop a header over
the keeper but it drops on top of the net and so we go in at half time one goal
to the good.
At the start of the second half we’re knocking on the door
again With Clyney and JWP feeding Pellè who scoops the ball over the defender
and into the box which causes carnage before Palace get a foot on it and we get
a throw. Clyney takes it to Mané and he
totally leaves the ex-Skate Ward looking like a complete clown as he spins
behind him and makes his way along the byeline.
Graziano takes a swing at the low cross and misses but Bertrand arrives
behind him and thunders it into the top corner with his right foot and we’re
2-0 up against a side who never seem to score more than 1. Great goal, great move and the ex-Skate looks
stupid – what could be better?
Yes it can… as another delicious passing move involving
virtually everyone ends when Mané’s cross is deflected behind off of ex-Skate
Ward. JWP’s delivery is spot on and Toby
Alderweireld loses ex-Skate Ward who is having a great few minutes and thunders
his header over Speroni to make it 3-0.
Game fucking over. Get in!!! I would donate my left nut to sign Toby
Alderweireld permanently in the summer.
He’s fucking brilliant.
It gets even better for Palace on the hour mark as Bic Vic
comes on to replace Davis and he’s immediately at it with a great crossfield ball
to Bertrand who megs Punch and eventually it falls to Clyne whose shot is just
about kept out by Speroni. We’ve eased
off a bit now and are allowing Palace to get some territory but they really don’t
look like scoring unless we do something stupid and Graziano’s the man as he
starts fucking about playing keepy-uppy on the edge of our penalty area. One trick was enough and the second was funny
but instead of clearing it and getting a round of applause, he tries a third,
loses it and pulls the Palace player down to give them a free kick. Once Toby cleared it we could laugh again as
Big Vic rumbled up the pitch with the ball, chased by 5 Palace players.
Mané is having his best game for Saints by a mile and he’s
being helped by a Palace team who have all bar given up. A simple ball from Morgan is taken in and one
shimmy leaves two defenders for dead before he curls a right footed effort just
over the bar
We still have a slight issue with Fraser Forster being a bit
prone to being nailed to his goal line and one cross has to be cleared by
Gardos from 4 yards out. Gardos is
having a much better game than against Sheffield United and some of his passing
forward is decent. One 50 yard ball
along the deck went straight to Mané’s feet but unfortunately he slipped
over. On our next foray forward, Big Vic
tried a shot from 40 yards which was like his 40 yard goal at Hull in every
way, apart from direction and height.
Zaha is on for the Comedy Bearded Ledley and fair play to
Warnock for going for it and for a bit, Palace tried to pass it but invariably
they didn’t have a clue and kept passing it out of play. Warnock’s next substitution doesn’t go down
well with the Palace faithful as Bolasie comes off for Kelly, a full back. Cries of “you don’t know what you’re doing”
ring out. Yes he does – this game is
dead and you have QPR in two days time you muppets. Pick the battles you can win.
We’ve packed up early for Sunday as well with Pellè being
removed so Ronald can tell him about playing keepy-uppy on the edge of your own
box and Shane Long is on. We’re still playing
some decent football though with a JWP backheel sending Clyne away before he
was trashed by Delaney who finally got the booking he’d been trying to get
since the game started.
As the game dwindles down Punch takes on Clyne twice and
fails twice but he does win a corner. On
this one, Fraser does superbly to punch away despite being flattened as the ball
came in. Palace are having a bit more
ball now as there is little or no hold up pay from Saints and it just keeps
coming back. Zaha attempts to run past
Bertrand on the left, leans into him and falls over to win a soft free
kick. Our marking is all to shit at the
back post and Palace have two men behind the Saints back man which is Big Vic
and Dann gets up to give Fraser no chance.
Clyney is subbed and replaced with Jason McCarthy for his
debut and he’s pitched into a minor shitstorm as Palace are throwing the sink
at it for the last 5 minutes. Ward wins
a corner off McCarthy and though it’d cleared, McArthur fires in a shot which
Fraser saves with ease.
The End and a very good and comprehensive win. Once more the formation looked good and we
were dangerous – since we changed to 3 at the back and 2 up front we’ve played
2 games and scored 6 goals, conceding 1 so what’s not to like. Personally I like the fact that Ronald
decided he wanted to play that formation and put round pegs in round
holes. Bringing in Gardos for Fonte was
a good sign as it shows he has confidence in his squad. It would have been very easy to play Big Vic
and go 4-3-3. The revelation was Sadio
Mané who was brilliant – one goal, one assist, won the corner for the 3rd
goal, created other chances for himself and others and what I particularly
liked was the one touch laying off of the ball with his back to goal. Maybe being stuck out on the wing is not his
best position. Playing in the ‘10’
position means of course that he has little or no defensive responsibility. The guy showed in his first couple of games
that he has the ability but his form has dropped off. The same could be said of Dusan Tadic who has
been very quiet since the Sunderland 8-0 game.
Tadic though has not become a hate figure for many supporters though.
Whatever our formation and however well our players played,
this was Palace and Sunday is Chelsea and a different ballpark altogether. I just want us to go out with the belief that
we can win the game. They are a fabulous
side but any side can get rattled and can be got at. Everything will have to go right for us to
get a result but let’s go for it. Today’s
win and the Everton win has taken the pressure off…. And you get to shout abuse
at John Terry. Playing 3 at the back
will bring Jose Fonte up against Eden Hazard and I don’t fancy that one much
given Jose’s tendency to dive in but whatever formation, I expect Big Vic to be
in the side to get right on Fabregas’ case.
Graziano will have to contend with Terry and Cahill but they won’t fancy
playing against Sadio Mané. I guarantee
one of them will get booked for flattening him and that a Chelsea player will
have a ridiculous dive somewhere and we have to hope the ref doesn’t fall for
it.
Talking of winning, we’re back in the Champions League
places as we’ve moved above West Ham into 4th. If we’re still there after our next two games
at home to Chelsea and Arsenal then it’s a very Happy New Year indeed. The opposite of winning is of course losing
and Palace have done a bit too much of that and on Saturday, Neil Warnock was
sacked as manager of Palace. He was a
shocking appointment anyway so it’s no surprise. Maybe that Pompey job will soon be yours
Neil.
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