Premier League Match 7 - Southampton 3 Swansea 1

'Bollocks", says Garry

Swansea at home and a visit from the club we are most frequently compared to when the preview shows on Sky Sports are talking about the ‘also rans’. They have an hour to talk about everyone so after 50 minutes of talking about the big boys and Spurs, Saints and Swansea get a mention.  There is merit in the comparison though as both clubs strike me as clubs who actually think about things and don’t in the main, just throw money at things.  Both accept that the best players are going to leave occasionally and that they have to pick up cheaper players with clever scouting and develop them.  A quick scan on Swansea’s team sees Sigurdsson who was a Spurs reject and Gomis and Ayew who were both in France, relatively under the radar but have been good performers in England (or Wales).  Also, they have Jack Cork as well who they signed from us when he was in the last year of his contract.  He’s done well for them which is pleasing and has kept a regular place in their starting XI which he was failing to do here.  Another interesting comparison with Saints is that when players leave Swansea to go to supposedly better things, they struggle when not part of a well organized, well thought out structure and maybe that’s part of why they were decent in the first place.  That’s you Wilfried Bony.

It’s hard to remember that Garry Monk used to play for Saints as it was about 10 games at the turn of the century.  He left to go and play for the then 4^th tier Swansea and forged a decent playing career and now is making a decent fist of being a manager in a well organized club.  I like the way he carries himself and seems to be a decent guy.  They were the team that we always beat until the last time they visited St.Mary’s when they left with a 1-0 win.  Everyone knows that Shelvey can shoot from 25 yards but we let him anyway and guess what happened.

With so little time between the Fake Dons match and this one, not much has happened but today’s team news told us that Ryan Bertrand had come through it ok and was fit to take over from Matt Targett at left back.  Matt had done ok I feel and let’s face it – he was better than the other option which is Cuco Martina.  Whilst not blessed with pace and at times looking like a boy in a mans world, Targett has in the main been solid.  Mercifully, Cédric was in to complete a first choice back four.  Big Vic was preferred to Oriol Romeu with JWP and Davis making up the rest of the midfield.  Goalscoring heroics for J-Rod and Long in midweek were not enough for them to replace Tadic, Pellè or Mané up front.  Martina had made the bench again which was disappointing, as had Juanmi, I assume at the expense of Gaston Ramirez who really should have been preferred as he contributed more in 20 minutes against the Fake Dons that Juanmi has all season.  There are rumours around town that the police are launching a ‘Find Steven Caulker’ appeal.  Maybe I should look through all the pictures that the official website publishes of the training sessions to see if he’s been turning up for those.

One of the things I look for now when the game kicks off is the opposition goalkeeper and how quickly he gets on with the game when he gets a first goal kick to take. Fabianski gets one to take more or less straight away as Mané gets a curler all wrong and it flies into the crowd.  Oh look, the bastard is timewasting already and getting the hurry up from the ref in the 2^nd minute.

Swansea have the first real attempt on goal as we prove we haven’t learnt the lessons of last year at all as a half-clearance finds Shelvey all on his own on the edge of the box and his shot is parried away by Stekelenburg and Ki can’t get his feet in the right place as the ball pings to him and he balloons it over the bar in a finish that Jack Cork would have been proud of.

Our first real effort on goal comes when Big Vic dispossesses Ayew by basically running over him like a train.  The big man steams up the left wing before feeding it in to Pellè who plays a superb reverse pass to give Mané a shooting chance which he swings at, gets it past the keeper and it bobbles about a foot wide of the post.  Should really have scored.

Tadic, who has again started the game well, wins a corner off of Naughton on the left and JWP steps up to curl it in towards the near post and up goes Virgil van Dijk to beat Gomis in the air and easily flick it past Fabianski for 1-0.  The big man is certainly going to win the fans over very quickly.  It’s my guess that Fabianski will stop time wasting now.

Swansea show signs of life and Shelvey lashes another effort over the bar as we again give him the freedom of the edge of the penalty area.  Ki then tries from similar range and Stekelenburg gets down to his right to shovel it out in none too convincing fashion.  Still, in my book, any save where the ball doesn’t end up in our net is a good save.

Big Vic seems too be targeting Ayew or maybe Ayew dallies on the ball.  Either way he trashes him twice in quick succession and it’s amazing that he doesn’t get booked for the second one which is horribly late.  There isn’t a lot happening to be honest.  Bertrand has settled in well though looks a bit off the pace and José and Virgil are handling Gomis well.  In fact, he’s hardly had a kick.  If Tadic’ form at the start of the game could be likened to a man walking along a cliff edge, he’s just decided to dive off said cliff and plummet to the rocks below.  He passes straight to Swansea players three times and then attempts a chip down the line which skews off his left boot and into the crowd and it’s positively Benaliesque.

The last 15 minutes is dominated by the referee who is shite.  Any challenge that is not 100% clean is a free kick.  He’s not bent, just incompetent though it seems that he’s against us as Saints are putting a lot more effort into closing down than Swansea are so all the free kicks are going against us including a very innocuous one against Big Vic which sees him booked.  Vic is not happy as it was an innocuous challenge but to be fair he should have been booked earlier for his second steamrollering of Ayew.

Half time brings changes for Swansea as we’ve been pretty comfortable.  Gomis is off despite not having received any service and Cork is gone too which must be a bit embarrassing for him.  Jefferson Montero is on to play on the left wing and his battle with Cédric will be interesting.  Also on is a facsimile of Gomis called Eder and hopefully he’s not like the Eder who played for Brazil in the 1982 World Cup.  He isn’t because if he was then the shot he had after a bout of head tennis would have arrowed into the top corner instead of into the top of the Northam End.

Swansea’s changes just seem to have opened the game out for Saints even more as we build up on the left, Pellè tries to scoop the ball over the defender to Mané but it bounces back to him and he then scoops it over another defender to Tadic on the left.  As he gets to the line it looks like he tries to cross it but it flicks off of Ki and loops over Fabianski and in for 2-0.

The game feels like it’s over to be honest and a few minutes later it definitely is as Bertrand gets forward and slides a ball across to Pellè.  His sidefoot effort is going the wrong direction but it hits a defender and bounces back to Mané who fires past Fabianski and into the corner.  Get in lads…

Romeu comes on for Davis who has been excellent and we keep coming forward with Pellè being cynically bodychecked by Fernandez who gets a deserved card.  It gives us a chance to see a Virgil free kick even though it’s exactly where you would think that JWP would want to take one from and he beats the wall only for Fabianski to hold on at the second attempt.  Virgil is in the news again when he brings the ball out of defence only for Shelvey to launch a scissor tackle from behind him to bring him down.  To me, this is a red card tackle as there’s no attempt to do anything other than recklessly bring down the player but it’s only a yellow.

We take a collective step back and allow Swansea lots of possession which they don’t do much with until the 85^th minute when Taylor bursts into the box and José lunges in horribly, missing the ball and taking out Taylor as he slid past.  No complaints at all as Sigurdsson hammers it down the middle to make it 3-1.  We continue sitting back for the rest of the game and allow Swansea to ping the ball about but there’s not a lot on the end of it and time ticks down on a comfortable win with one last attack from us with Graziano showing wonderful chest control to bring down a punt forward, play a 1-2 with Juanmi and lash the return pass into the crowd.

Overall, that was a pretty easy, despite us packing up and going home for the last 20 minutes. When Steve Davis, who was quite possibly our best player, went off and Romeu came on, he and Big Vic seemed to get deeper and deeper like they did in the Manchester United game. All it does is invite the other team to have control. Until that point though, I was amazed at how ineffective Swansea were. I couldn't believe how bad Gomis was and when they hooked him at half time they replaced him with someone who was even worse. Jack Cork also departed at half time having done absolutely nothing in the first half. Jonjo Shelvey has done well for England recently but all he contributed today was some wayward shooting and a nasty cynical tackle on Virgil van Dijk. Sigurdsson and Ayew at least tried to make things happen but Swansea, despite all their possession were all fart and no shit.

Like I said earlier, I thought Steve Davis was excellent but the highlight for me was how well Cédric played defensively. In the second half he was up against Jefferson Montero who was the winger who tore Calum Chambers a new arsehole when Arsenal played Swansea last year. Chambers eventually got sent off. I think Montero managed one Cross today which was in the 90th minute. The back four looked really good today with Virgil improving massively on the United game and of course we had Ryan Bertrand back. He understandably looked a bit rusty but he got through it well and will only get better from here on in. Tadic got his goal which had a touch of fortune about it but from about the 15th minute until he got substituted, he had a bit of a shocker giving the ball away constantly. Graziano knitted everything together today without looking like scoring and it was good for Sadio Mané to keep his goal streak going even though he was not at his absolute best today.

I like the fact that after a relatively comfortable 3-1 win, Ronald was not happy with how well we played as it shows he’s not going to let the lads piss about and drop off for the last half an hour of games.  If we drop off in the last half hour of our next match (Chelsea away) then you can be sure that we’re coming back with nothing but a defeat.  I always see games like Chelsea away as a free hit but at the moment, with them being a bit dodgy, we should be looking at nicking something and sending the personality disorder that is Mourinho into some sort of meltdown.  Last year up there we left Graziano out and played Shane Long and Sadio up front to give John Terry nightmares but with Terry out of the side and his replacement Zouma looking suspect in the air, Ronald has a decision to make regarding the make up of the attack.  Bring it on.