Graziano looks on as Shane gets his Ribs Broken
They’ve hardly mentioned it on Sky so you may not be aware
but the Premier League is back and Saints feature on Day 2 courtesy of our
Europa League exertions. Newcastle were
of course a shambles int he second half of the season under the bizarre
management of John Carver and they appointed Steve McClaren in the summer who
failed to get a Derby in the playoffs in the Championship when they really
should have got promoted automatically with the squad they had. McClaren is of course an ex-England manager
where he failed to get the so called golden generation to the finals of Euro
2008. Since then he’s been crap at
Forest, crap at Derby and crap at Wolfsburg – only bucking the trend when
winning the Eredivisie with FC Twente.
He succeeded there because he speaks fluent Dutch. His language skills will enable him to
converse perfectly with new signing Giorginio Wijnaldum as well as having a
chat with Ronald and Erwin after the game.
For my own part, I’ve never liked him and I see him as a forerunner to
Brendan Rodgers in the grinning smug tosser stakes who somehow has a great
reputation based on not very much at all.
Mike Sports Direct Ashley appears to have loosened the purse
strings a bit, bringing in a new spine to the team with the aforementioned
Wijnaldum, Aleksander Mitrovic up front and Chancel Mbemba in defence. He’s shelled out about £40 million overall
but the RRP was £130 million and the goods were stacked three miles up in the
air and had to be got down with a massive pole with a hook on the end. The three players came with a complimentary bastard
great coffee mug.
In a week where Chelsea have been panned for their players
speaking about a player at another club in reference to him signing for
Chelsea, it was somewhat disappointing to find that we’ve done the same with
José Fonte going to print with how good a player he thinks Virgil van Dijk
is. That’s for another day but in the
present, Ronald is in a Dutch hospital having had his achilles tendon operated
on and Erwin Koeman is in charge today.
Our line-up is eye-catching in that we have what looks like a 4-2-4
formation with Steve Davis as one of the defensive midfielders. Tadic, Mané, Pellè and J-Rod all starting...
wow! Of course, this is great for J-Rod
but assuming he’s going to be deployed on the left, let’s hope he has the legs
to give Matt Targett a hand at left back in the same way that Tadic probably
won’t help out Cedric on the right.
Personally I’d have started with Harry Reed ahead of one of the forwards
but he’s on the bench, along with Stephen Caulker who hasn’t displace Maya
(yet) and Shane Long who has recovered from whatever illness he had.
I was hoping to see the useless
Newcastle from last season but as soon as the game kicked off ..... ah, they’re
better than last year. From the opening
whistle we looked wide open and they soon won a free kick on our right as
Cédric tripped Obertan. The resulting
free kick was poorly defended and it flicked off of Davis and was well claimed
by Stekelenburg. Next up as a good block
by Davis as Newcastle poured down our left and Sissoko teed up Wijnaldum. J-Rod was not really ont he ball defensively
and Targett was completely isolated. The
early pressure was wrecking any composure we might have had and Cédric was into
the book for a foul on Wijnaldum. At the
other end of the pitch, Cédric had our first chance as Tadic chipped a ball
over the defence and Cédric bundled past Coloccini who bottled the challenge
but then found himself too close to Krul who blocked the shot as soon as it
left his boot.
Papiss Cisse is a strange player. He had massive impact when he signed for
Newcastle as a replacement for Demba Ba and he scored loads of goals and that
is completely at odds with the clumsy oaf with no first touch that I see before
me. He has a horrible dive after a
nothing challenge and fails to get booked and then hits a shot straight into
Stekelenburg’s midriff when he had the whole goal to aim at.
‘End-to-end’ game is a cliché but it happens to be accurate
as Tadic let fly from 30 yards and saw Krul scramble across to tip it wide
before Newcastle got the ball gifted to them by a stupid Mané backheel in the
right back position. The cross caused
havoc and Coloccini tried to ball juggle it past Yoshida who stuck an arm up
and I’d have been howling if that wasn’t given for us.
Though we’d created a couple of
chances, it still felt against the run of play a bit when we scored. Mané ijnked his way across field, fed Cédric
who was allowed time to measure a cross and big beautiful Graziano got himself
in between Janmaat and Mbemba and thumped a textbook header down and inside the
near post with Krul getting a hand to it but being unable to keep it out. Three in three for the big man. Maybe he’s going to do even better than last
season.
Far from kicking on after scoring, we allowed ourselves to
get a pasting, mainly through Sissoko who was finding all sorts of space on our
right. Our defending resembled a team of
8 year olds playing against a force 9 gale.
We tried to clear it and we failed and the ball kept coming back. Fonte and Yoshida in particular were all over
the place. J-Rod finally made it back
into a defensive position and there were more handball appeals as the ball hit
his chest but he was waving his arms all over the place. Up the other end, we broke and Pellé put
Tadic away and his cross was met by J-Rod but it was a bit of a 50p-head effort
and went well wide.
With our eyes being on hanging on
until half time, Newcastle attacked again and Haidara swung over what looked
like a hopeful ball from the right but it looped up off of the challenging Mané
and looped perfectly (for Newcastle) over Stekelenburg and basically landed on
the goal line where Papiss Cisse ran it into the empty net with his chest. Ok, it’s lucky because the cross has
deflected and looped straight to him but why has no defender gone with
him. Just going with him might be enough
to put him off because he’s crap but unchallenged strikers tend to score when
given a chance from one yard.
With Cédric looking like a red
card waiting to happen, Erwin had received the message down the Batphone from
Ronald to take him off and bring on Cuco Martina. The real problem in the first half was how
open we were and how little control we had in midfield so I was disappointed
that Reed wasn’t on for J-Rod.
Having said that, J-Rod charged
forwards at the start of the second half and was taken out by Mbemba on the
edge of the box. Davis swung in a superb
free kick for everyone to attack and Yoshida had a free header from 6 yards
with just Krul to beat. He heads it,
everyone jumps up and shouts ‘GOAAAAAAAA.....fuck. Krul has fallen back in the goal with his
legs flapping and somehow kicked it over the bar for a corner. You can say it’s unlucky and you can say that
Krul makes a great save and both of these statements are true but come on! It’s
a free header from 5 yards and you have to bury the bastard thing. Maya just lets it head his head and plop
downwards. From there, even if Krul gets
something on it he should be in the net with the ball. Whilst we’re all wondering how on earth Maya
hasn’t scored, the corner is cleared, Targett tries to return it but gives it
straight to Cisse. He puts Obertan away
on the right and he skins Targett before lumping over a cross which Wijnaldum
meets on the run as Martina just stands and watches him and the new darling of
St.James’ Park shows Maya how to give the keeper no chance by thumping his
header past Stekelenburg to make it 2-1. Newcastle should be kicking off at 2-1
down and instead of that, we are. For fucks sake.
Shane Long come on for J-Rod and
takes up the same position on the left hand side. For Newcastle, on comes Mitrovic. Targett takes a throw in and Davis knocks it
back to him and Mitrovic piles through Targett after he’s cleared it, knocking
him miles up in the air. The ref gives
him a yellow which is very fortunate for him.
In an away game that’s a red card all day long. Almost straight after that he smashes into
Yoshida with an elbow raised. The ref
gives a free kick but the inevitable 2nd yellow doesn’t come
out. Bullshit. To add to the sense of bullshit, Mané breaks
away from Colback who pulls him back by the arm, grabs his shirt and because he
still hasn’t stopped him, kicks his legs away.
There are three yellow card tackles in this one incident alone.
Having not
really strung much together for the previous 80 minutes, out of nowhere we
suddenly looked like the better and fitter side as Newcastle dropped off and we
passed it around and keep possession until the Mighty Kenyan sorts it out,
gives it to Tadic on the right who cuts back onto his left and sends over a
cross which was met by Long in the same channel in between Mbemba and Janmaat and
his header gave Krul no chance as it nestled in the top corner. Get in there.
It’s all us now and Newcastle
look out on their feet. Davis plays a
lovely ball inside Janmaat to put Mané away and he snakes into the box and
pulls the trigger only for Colback to throw himself int he way and pull off an
excellent block. The five minutes of
injury time are almost all spent in Newcastle’s half and Mané again picks up
the ball and jinks past Colback and Coloccini and the whole goal opens up....
and he puts it wide. Balls. Full time.
What a strange game.
We were so open in midfield and dodgy at the back that you have to say
that a point was decent, however, at 2-2 we had all the play and with 15
minutes to go, we really should have gone on to win it through Sadio Mané. Erwin Koeman agreed with that and seems to be
even more blunt than his brother but he didn’t say ‘shit happens’ in the Match
of the Day interview which was a bit disappointing. Overall, you have to say that 2-2 is a fair
result as they were the better side for the first half and most of the
second. The referee shouts seemed to be
quite even as well with the Geordies wanting the penalty off the Yoshida
(alleged!) handball and they’ll think that Cédric could have been sent off
whilst on another day, both Colback and certainly Mitrovic, could have walked. Yoshida’s missed header is still killing
me...
I heard Adam Blackmore on Radio Solent afterwards saying
that it looks like Saints will score lots and let in lots this season. We sure will let in lots if we set up with 4
strikers and Steve Davis as a defensive midfielder. To be fair to Davis, he was excellent today
but playing him there and picking J-Rod showed either that we thought we could
blow Newcastle away or that the management don’t trust Harrison Reed to play in
the midfield yet. If it is the case that
Reed isn’t ready then I think we need another defensive midfielder to go with
the centre back we are obviously chasing.
Ronald did say he wanted two signings...
Newcastle were better than usual but then again, teams
always play like they give a shit on the opening week of the season. McClaren
will always be a cock and I trust him to ensure that they under perform for the
season ahead. The new signings do look
decent though, particularly Wijnaldum who looked formidable in midfield along
with Sissoko. Bearing in mind what I
mentioned earlier about us needing a midfield player, maybe Wijnaldum is a
Dutch player who we missed out on. As
said earlier, Mitrovic, who was built up by McClaren as a nutter before the
game, proved him right and should have been sent off and then you have Mbemba
who seems to have got a favourable review from everyone because he rocked up to
the game in a tuxedo. When he got
changed out of the tuxedo he totally lost Graziano for the first goal and was
nowhere for Shane’s goal but I guess that rocking up in a tux is enough to get
you an 8 out of 10.
Now we have a rare week off before the opening Premier
League game at SMS against an Everton side who were just minutes away from
losing at home to Watford on Saturday.
They were pretty poor last season and maybe Chelsea can do us a favour
and sign Stones before we play them.
Leighton Baines got injured in the Watford game so we won’t face him
which in my opinion is a bad thing as he can’t defend which is a hallmark of
all Roberto Martinez sides. Bring it on.
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