Jonjo Shelvey Celebrates his Goal
The Jack Army are in town to see if their Swansea side can
get back on track against our good selves at St Mary’s. They’ve not been having the best of times
recently with their main striker Wilfried Bony being picked off by Manchester
City and their most creative player Gylfi Sigurdsson very obligingly getting
himself sent off last week so he can’t play today. Despite our ongoing issues regarding player
availability, we really should be winning this one to maintain our unlikely top
3 position. The trouble with trying to
stay near the top of the league is that the bastards around you in the table
invariably keep winning which is brought into even sharper focus when most of
them have won already this weekend.
It’s been a relatively eventful week since our FA Cup exit
against Palace. Shane Long has been
confirmed to be out for 6 weeks and because the transfer window is open,
speculation has been rife that we will sign another striker with Shane joining
J-Rod and Sam Gallagher on the strikers injury list. To offset this loss, Senegal very obligingly
got knocked out of the African Nations Cup so Sadio Mané is once again
available. He returns to the squad along
with Maya Yoshida whose Japan side crashed and burned in a penalty shootout
against the United Arab Emirates. I
would have expected that Japan were favourites to win that one.
With just a few days left of the transfer window, the rumour
mill has been turning as usual with the incoming rumours being the curious case
of Filip Djuricic. It’s curious because
the Serbian FA announced that the loan signing for Saints was done and dusted
but as I write, there’s been no confirmation from Saints though Ronald Koeman
has said that he is interested. He’s
also confirmed an interest in Tonny Vilhena, a 20 year old defensive midfield
player who is currently at Feyenoord and not getting much of a game. We may need a player in that position soon as
Jack Cork is off to Swansea.
Jack is leaving basically because he wants to play football
and I totally respect that. Remember
that he spent the first part of his career getting dicked around by Chelsea and
never getting a game for them. He’s not
first choice here any more and was used for Cup games and whenever Big Vic had
just got back from playing in Africa in midweek. I would say that as he was behind Morgan, Big
Vic, Steve Davis and JWP for a midfield slot and Harrison Reed is coming
through, that this is the right move for both parties. By all accounts the club offered him a decent
contract but we were slower getting round to Jack’s deal than others. Steve Davis for example is 6 years older and
his deal had longer to run but he was offered a deal first. The only caveat I
have is that if as expected, Morgan leaves in the summer. Jack is a very good midfielder and he’s
chosen to move to a decent club who play decent football so he’ll fit right
in…. as long as he plays better than he did on Saturday when he had one of his
worst games ever for Saints. Good news
was also forthcoming in that James Ward-Prowse has signed a new deal until
2020. Here’s a player who can only get
better and will be in the England squad before long.
There must be outgoings and wild rumours and the latest
are that Morgan will move to Arsenal for £15m and Clyney to Man United for the
same amount. Morgan at £15m when Arsenal
paid more than that for Chambers… and Lallana was sold for £25m. Clyney at £15m when United paid £27m for our
other full back who is not nearly as good.
Good luck with those figures chaps.
To today and we’ve made 2 changes from the Palace game. Harry Reed is in for Corky and Maya is in for
Florin Gardos who drops to the bench. We
only have 6 subs for some reason (later it turns out that Isgrove got injured
just before the game) which is tinpot to say the least and the second time
we’ve done that this season. Surely we
could have called up an U21 player at short notice.
The game starts and Swansea retreat. Here we go then. Their game plan is obvious after some recent
heavy defeats and we need to score early which we should do. Tadic and Clyne combine down the right before
Clyne’s low cross is stepped over by Pellè to give JWP a free shot from 8 yards
which he connects with but Fabianski saves with his feet. It’s a decent reaction save but it’s right
next to him. He should have been waving
that one by with no prayer of stopping it.
Out of nowhere and in their first incursion into our half,
Swansea nearly score on 13 minutes as Shelvey plays it to Gomis who takes one
touch and then smashes a shot just wide on the volley. Elsewhere though, Fabianski is already
slowing things right down to the point of timewasting and Swansea make a
substitution on 15 minutes which I thought it was a bit early to make a
timewasting substitution. Emnes is the man going off and he looks a bit injured
but it’s hard to tell as he hasn’t run at all in the game so far. His replacement is the entertainingly named
Momdo Barrow.
Gomis is a handful up front but he’s on his own, quite often
literally the only player in our half as the other 9 camp between the penalty
area and the half way line. It’s hard
for us to create anything given the lack of space and when Tadic has a cross
cleared, Reed should do better than shank it off the pitch from the edge of the
box. We create a couple of openings in
the rest of the half without testing the keeper and the ref is doing us no
favours giving goal kicks instead of corners on a couple of occasions as
players closed in on crosses by Bertrand and Elia respectively. Half time comes and we’ve been ok without the
cutting edge. Swansea have been boring
and when they’ve tried to pass it out of midfield they’ve invariably played an
awful pass with Fulton being the main culprit.
The second half starts and mainly due to the fact that they
haven’t had more than one player in our half, Swansea are yet to win a corner
and Fraser seems keen to preserve that record as Shelvey tries to break but the
ball ricochets off of Clyne and is heading out for a corner. Fraser decided to pull off a full length
sliding clearance to prevent this and succeeds only in passing it straight to
Taylor who has an open goal to aim at.
Luckily, Fraser’s kamikaze moment has taken the Swansea left back by surprise
and Reed and Clyne combine to smother the situation.
It’s slightly worrying that though our possession percentage
is still high, we’re just passing it round in front of them and then losing the
ball, usually with a piss poor cross.
Swansea on the other hand look dangerous on their sporadic attacks and
Shelvey fires a warning by finding space 20 yards out and drilling a right
footed effort all the way along the ground and off the far post with Fraser
beaten. He really didn’t have to work
hard to make that chance for himself as everyone stood off.
As Swansea have actually got into our half and had a chance,
they retreat back to their own penalty area and we have a couple of efforts on
goal but they unfortunately fall to JWP.
Firstly, his header from a Tadic cross drops straight to Fabianski and
then following a neat 1-2 between Pellè and Tadic, JWP sees an effort blocked
by the keeper as he rushes out.
Koeman decides that it’s time for Mané to come on and it’s
quite a surprise to see Harrison Reed come off as he’s been decent. With Sadio on we got to 4-4-2 with JWP and
Davis in midfield, Elia and Tadic on the wings.
It’s a brave move to try and win the game so fair enough. Immediately Mané spins in behind the defence
and makes his way along the line only for his pull back to go straight to the
keeper and not Graziano who is on his knees when the ball doesn’t reach him,
probably giving it the big ‘Mamma Mia’.
Frustratingly, we are now trying to walk it in and no one
wants to shoot. Both Davis and Tadic
pass up shooting chances before Elia scoots down the left again, gets to the
line and puts over a ball along the ground, three yards out but no one has
gambled and it runs right across the goal and it hacked away.
And so it happened on 83 minutes, Swansea broke on our left
past a non-tackle by Elia and Gomis fed Shelvey who advanced to 25 yards out
without a midfielder closing him down. I
know what he was going to do and so did every fucker in the ground but still no
one closed him down and he smashed it right footed, curling away from Fraser
and into the net. Great strike but
shockingly bad defending by us as a team.
Should Fraser have stopped it? I
think it’s harsh to blame him but I reckon he himself will think he should have
done better.
With 10-ish minutes to go I’m quite calm. Of course you want your team to get back into
it but somehow today I knew we wouldn’t.
There had not been enough dynamism in our forward play all game to think
that anything was going to change in the last 10 minutes. Mane had a go at proving me wrong as he
played a 1-2 with Pellè before chipping Fabianski only for Williams to head
clear. It went straight back to Mané but
Williams was there again to block the second shot on the line.
With 90 minutes up and another attack breaking down, the
ball went out to our left and Bertrand went in for a challenge with the very
speedy Swansea sub Barrow. Bertrand went
in hard and Barrow hit the deck. Up went
Garry Monk and the Swansea bench which Ryan wasn’t happy about and when he
turned round, the ref was waving a red card in his face. Very harsh in my opinion. He’s gone for the ball and he’s got a decent
touch on it but he’s a fraction high and caught the player. When we restart after Barrow has been carried
off, Seager is on for Elia and once again, I can’t believe Tadic has stayed on
but stay on he does to hit the first man with a corner and then when under no
pressure, cross a ball from the right over everyone and out for a goal
kick. Aaaaargh! We have one last chance as Pellè nods a ball down,
Seager competes for it and it falls to Graziano on the volley and he smashes it
into orbit. Bollocks. The End.
Well where do we start with that one? Every interview I’ve read or seen since the
end of the game seems to say that we played really well in the first half and ok
in the 2nd. I beg to differ - I thought
we were pretty average in the first half and shite in the second. All the possession in the world is useless if
it’s in front of the opposition and more or less every dangerous opening is
ruined by a piss-poor cross or final ball.
I applaud Ronald Koeman for trying to force a win and Harrison Reed was
taken off to try and win the game and it ended up being the reason why we lost
it. I can understand the reasoning as
Swansea were no threat whatsoever up until that point but it was the wrong move
anyway. JWP had been pretty anonymous
and Tadic, aside from a couple of moments, was complete shit yet again.
Anyway, with Reed gone, Shelvey was given the space he needed to stroll
forward without being closed down and smash in the winner.
How does one analyse Swansea’s performance without it
sounding like sour grapes? To most,
their performance will be compared to ours at Manchester United this
season. I slagged off Rooney and van
Gaal when they said that we didn’t try and win.
However, in that game – sure, we defended but the difference is that
when we broke we broke with 3 or 4 players.
Swansea, in the first half in particular, had one player in our half at
most. They weren’t much better in the second and their passing was in the main,
woeful. As we tried to win it in the
second half they broke with a bit more purpose and got lucky, though it was a
great strike. Garry Monk spoke absolute
bullshit about the Bony sending off when we played up there when it was the
clearest red card ever so when he says they thoroughly deserved to win today, I
think we can safely cry ‘bullshit’ again.
It matters not though, they won and fair play to them – they have a load
of players missing and found a way to win.
It’s fucking annoying though.
This was another reality check regarding qualifying for
Europe through the league. You can’t
afford to lose games like this one and you can’t afford to be so
under-resourced that you only have 6 subs on the bench. We got away with it at Newcastle but against Palace in the Cup and again today, the absence of both Big Vic and Morgan has
killed us. The team just does not look
the same defensively and doesn’t have the solid base to give it the freedom to
perform going forwards. When we have the
ball, we’re as good as ever at dominating possession in that area but we are
certainly missing something.
I feel sorry for Graziano – he’s fed a diet of balls to
compete for which he continually wins but there’s no one near him. JWP was anonymous for most of the game and
Elia and Tadic were too wide to help out.
I like Elia and his skill and ability but it was his half arsed tackle
at the start of the move for the goal.
Tadic obviously has the ability but his final ball is miles out at the
moment. He won’t use his right foot to
cross a ball but will continually turn back onto his left so he can fire over a
shite cross with his good foot. Sadio Mané was a bright spot for this game and
he came very close to rescuing the game for us when he came on. It’ll be good when he can start again.
Ah bugger, stop moaning!
We’re still 4th in the league, still above Arsenal, Liverpool and
Tottenham and on the grapevine I’m hearing that Big Vic and Morgan are back in
training and will probably be available for QPR away next week. No doubt that saggy faced old twat will be
hanging out his car door on transfer deadline and bringing in a ‘top top
player’. Regardless of who they have on
the pitch, it would be nice to put another nail in their coffin. Charlie Austin will score as he always does
against us but despite their decent home record, I’m
optimistic that we’ll be back to winning ways.
PS... one advantage of being late again with this entry is that the transfer window has now closed and we've signed Filip Djuricic on loan for the rest of the season. A Serbian international team mate of Dusan Tadic who will add to the competition for places behind Graziano Pelle in the side. In other news, Ryan Bertrand has signed on permanently which is one less to worry about in the summer. I'm pretty sure that Eljero Elia will be signed but the big one is of course Toby Alderweireld.
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