Sadio: What the Fuck Has Just Jumped on Me?
It
has to be said that Pardew has done a decent job at Palace since taking over
from Neil Warnock. He’s brought in a
more attacking style of play and has been rewarded for the bold approach to the
extent of winning their last 5 away matches.
They have a lot of strikers at their disposal as well as Shola
Ameobi. I would have put Chamakh in the
Ameobi bracket but of course he scored twice against us in the FA Cup and he’s
injured anyway, as are Championship striker Frazer Campbell and Yaya
Sanogo’o. In addition, Glenn Murray is
suspended after picking up two yellow cards against West Ham on Saturday for
basically, being old and slow. They
still have Jason Puncheon, Wilfried Zaha, Yannick Bolasie and Dwight Gayle to call
on as well as Ameobi so it isn’t going to be easy.
There’s
a minor surprise in our starting line up as Djuricic is preferred to Tadic,
Steve Davis or JWP who are all on the bench.
Graziano Pellè is given another opportunity with Shane Long again on the
bench. On paper it looks like we’ll be
playing a 4-4-2 formation but if Elia and Mané are on the wings then it’s going
to look like a 4-2-4. Aside from those
I’ve already mentioned, the bench includes Toby Alderweireld for the first time
since we won 1-0 at Old Trafford. We are of course struggling to score at the
moment with no goals since last year (almost).
The Daily Echo have been trying to help by issuing arrows for supporters
to point at the goal. The Echo has been
better recently but this just made them look like complete twats.
The
stated intention to shoot more is evident in the first temn minutes as wel
start well and Elia smashes one over from 25 yards. Next to try his luck is Big Vic who shanks
one along the ground and it turns into a great pass to Djuricic who takes his
own shot and shites it into the crowd somewhere between row x and z.
Morgan
is on set pieces today and his first effort curls in and lands on top of the
net. It always annoys me when vast
swathes of the crowd go ‘ooooh’ and applaud.
It should be the Palace fans applauding and ‘corner…. And you fucked it
up’ because it’s basically a shit corner.
We
have a major scare when Bolasie hooks over an aimless cross. Up goes Fraser with no one challenging him
and manages to drop it behind him. We
are lucky that he manages to fall on the loose ball before Zaha realises that
it’s a chance.
Just
before half time we nearly force him our first goal since the War when Morgan’s
corner drops to Elia who hammers in a shot from close range which is blocked by
Speroni. The ball comes out to the big
Italian bloke with the goal drought and he meets it at the same time as a
defender and the ball squirts wide.
Typically, the referee decides that Graziano got the last touch and gives
a goal kick. The half ends and we’ve
huffed and puffed and played pretty well but again, we haven’t tested the
keeper enough. Palace for their part
have been very poor with no threat at all from their front players.
We
start the second half badly and Puncheon manages to manoeuvre himself into a
shooting position on the edge of the box, past some ropey defending by Yoshida
and hammers it and Fraser makes a decent reflex block. There’s a curious incident a few minutes
later when the ball goes through to Fraser and a Palace player goes down in his
own half and needs treatment. The ref
gestures to Fraser to kick it so Fraser boots it long and then the ref blows to
allow the trainer on. When we restart we
have to give the ball back to Palace which is wrong and it’s nearly doubly
wrong as Palace go straight up our end and we have a pinball carnage
moment. Firstly Bolasie gets away on the
left and hammers in a shot which Fraser blocks.
José Fonte should clear the ball but he dicks about with it and loses it
to Zaha who bobbles a shot across goal which pings off the inside of the post
and comes back out to Ward who lashes it high, wide and shite. We of course should have defended it better
but the fact is that the ref should have blown when Fraser had the ball
initially and just dropped it to him to restart.
The
first substitution sees Tadic come on for Elia who hasn’t been too bad and we
eventually settle into the half and Bertrand optimistically fires over before a
cross from Fonte is nodded over the bar by Djuricic who had as much chance of
scoring with a header from the penalty spot when the cross was behind him, as I
had from my seat in the Chapel End.
There’s
a decent move on 68 minutes as Djuricic shows great skill in midfield and
breaks forward, away from the comedy bearded Ledley, before being trashed by a late
sliding tackle by Delaney. The ref plays
advantage and Clyney’s cross towards Graziano is defended into Speroni’s gloves. That’s a booking all day long but the ref
seems to have forgotten the incident, understandable seeing as it was all of 4
seconds ago. Whatever happened to going
back when the advantage didn’t turn out to be an advantage anyway?
We
win a corner following a run from Tadic and he swings it over himself, Pellè
flicks it on and Yoshida gets a shin on it from 6 yards out but it slides wide
of the far post when any decent contact would surely have been our first goal
since Edwardian times.
Palace
break down our left and Bolasic races into the box before Fonte comes across
and does enough to knock him over.
Hardly any Palace players appeal but the way things are going at the
moment, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d given it. It’s kind of shoulder to shoulder but it’s
the sort of penalty Chelsea always get given.
Graziano’s
number 19 is up on in the 70th minute and Shane Long is on. It’s superb that the Big Man got a standing
ovation as he went off which is exactly the support you need when you are
struggling. Soon after the final change
is to bring on JWP for Djuricic. He’s
shown some lovely flashes of skill but I’m still not convinced that he’s a
player that we need given his similarity to Tadic. He certainly needs to bulk up a bit but the
positives are that he wasn’t afraid to try and make things happen and also that
he got up pretty quickly when he was cleaned out by Agricultural Delaney.
We’re
pressing now and Mané wins a free kick on the edge of the box when MacArthur
decides to body check him rather than tackle him. Tadic whips the free kick over the wall and
for a second it looks good but it’s just over the fucking bar again.
On
83 minutes it happened. An event which
will be celebrated on this day for years to come and should really be a public
holiday in Southampton as we actually fucking scored. JWP was the creator as he picked up a Mané
pass in midfield, drove past a half arsed challenge from Dann and from the edge
of the box, he should have buried it but hit it straight at Speroni who made a
balls of it, knocking it back out to Sadio Mané who dinked it over the keeper
and in for 1-0. People looked at
eachother in the crowd and for a second, no one seemed to know what to do. Sadio was going through the full repertoire
of celebration and dropped to his knees to pray, at which point Big Vic kicked
him up the arse.
What
we did then was takes 10 steps backwards.
Palace threw on Ameobi for MacArthur but he looked like what he is; no
threat and despite a few minor scares and despite us doing nothing going
forwards, we held out fairly comfortably.
Puncheon fired in a corner which Fraser punched back to him and then he
had the chance to cross again but overhit it in a way that used to drive me
nuts when he played for us. The final
action was us giving a free kick in the Palace half and Sadio trying to delay
giving the ball back. Delaney decided it
was ok rush over and barge him to the ground to earn the most overdue booking
in history.
Well,
it was scrappy as fuck but we got there and nicked the 3 points. Palace didn’t really threaten the goal much
apart from the three shots in 20 seconds in the second half and though we
didn’t make Speroni make many saves ourselves, no one could dispute we were the
better side – even Alan Pardew who had a bit of a moan about José Fonte’s
challenge on Yannick Bolasie which he thought should have been a penalty. Yes it was a bit robust but after our last
home game, I think we’d have been somewhat aggrieved if that had been given. When Pardew left Saints there were various
rumours about an issue behind the scenes so for him to be complaining about
José Fonte going though the back of one of his players is amusing. The worst offences of the day were both
committed by Damien Delaney who trashed Djuricic and then did a Matic on Sadio
Mané at the end.
Morgan
Schneiderlin was brilliant today and showed how much we’ve missed him
recently. Sadio Mané also looked our
most dangerous attacker and deserved his goal and it undoubtedly made a
difference when Shane Long came on as he pulled the defenders around and
created more space. Defenders like
Delaney and Dann are ok against a big centre forward but put them up against a
smaller quicker player and they’ll struggle.
The dodgy performance today came from Nathaniel Clyne who was pretty
awful and has been on a dip since he played for England when he no doubt got all
that friendly advice from twats like Mourinho / Rodgers / van Gaal via Chelsea
/ Liverpool / Man United’s England players.
I have no proof of this aside from last year’s example, otherwise known
as the ‘Lallana Principle’.
The
downturn in results recently has brought out the keyboard pessimists of
course. I saw one comment which had the
opinion that we have far too many average players earning to much per
week. OK, certain players may not be to
your liking but you’re disappointed about falling out of the top 4 in the
Premier League where we’re competing against sides who have several players on
more than £100k a week. As Koeman has
said in interviews – we can’t pay that much at Southampton. We win games and punch above our weight if we
play well as a team – it’s not about individuals for us and we’re not usually
going to win many games with moments of individual brilliance. We haven’t got a Yaya Toure who’s going to
bend a ball in the top corner from 25 yards regularly and when we buy a player
in the transfer window it’s going to be a loan or a cheap player who can’t get
a game elsewhere, rather than paying near on £30 million and £150k a week to
sign Wilfried Bony. Yet, some expect us
to be competing with that. We haven’t
had a season as good as this since 1983/84 so for any moaners under 30 – this
is the best season we’ve had in your lifetime.
A
little break in the season now as the staff and players are off the Switzerland
for a few days on a tem building exercise.
The break should ensure that we have Toby Alderweireld fully fit for the
next game which is against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. They have Matic available after the FA deemed
that it’s ok to jump up after a tackle and forearm smash someone in the head if
there are mitigating circumstances, having just said that the tackle on Matic
that was the mitigating factor, wasn’t worthy of a ban for the
perpetrator. The only team that loses
out from this ruling is of course Saints.
The referee in the Matic incident was Martin Atkinson who got stood down
for his performance the following week.
He was back today and refereeing Saints and Palace tonight and you know
what, on the whole, he was decent.
The
Chelsea game is a free hit so hopefully we’ll play with a bit of freedom and as
long as we can offer a goal threat, I don’t see why we can’t do something up
there. Sadio Mané and Eljero Elia will
be the key up front and I’d be tempted to give Long a start to give them three
quick players to worry about. Maybe
bring Graziano on when we’re 2-0 with 20 minutes to go and we need to play
longer balls out from the back.
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