Virgil Secures Player of the Season
Sunderland are in town hoping to not get beaten 8-0 again
like they were last time. In truth, much
water has flowed under bridges since then as since that day, Sunderland have
sacked Gus Poyet, hired Dick Advocaat, stayed up, seen Dick resign, seen Dick change
his mind, seen Dick leave by mutual consent, appointed Sam Allardyce, sign a
load of new players and harbour a paedophile.
Usually at this point I talk about what’s been going on with
Saints since the last game but there’s not been much. Shane Long is out for one match and Charlie
Austin for about a month. Sunderland on
the other hand have had the Adam Johnson situation. On the face of it, the club had been aware of
his guilt in kissing a 15 year old since the start of this season but they have
continued to play him and hid the fact that they knew. It also appears that the PFA knew all about
it as well but now it’s all gone very quiet with the only sound being people
desperately covering their arse which ironically, is probably what Adam Johnson
will be doing in prison. I would be very
very uncomfortable if my club had hidden the fact that we were playing a player
who had done that and admitted to it. I
wonder if Fat Sam knew – I’d like to think that he didn’t as whilst I don’t
like the way his teams play football, he doesn’t seem the type of bloke who’d
play Johnson if he had known. He seems
like the type who would have kicked seven bells of shit out of him. Moving on…
UPDATE: The
Sunderland CEO has thrown herself under a bus and said she acted alone and no
one else at the club knew. OK then….
I assumed we’d have three at the back but it’s a back 4 with
Martina at right back and Cédric on the bench.
Ok then. Clasie is back in
midfield with Romeu and Steve Davis and we have last seasons front three in
Tadic, Mané and Pellè. On the bench is a
new name and what a name in Olofela Olomolo who’s an Under 18s striker and is
destined to be the scourge of stadium announcers everywhere. He’s on the bench due to the injuries to
Austin, Long, J-Rod and Ryan Seager. We
do have another striker on the bench but it’s Juanmi. Sunderland have a few different players to
last year and Jermain Defoe is on the bench.
In goal they have Mannone who gave us one of the worst performances by a
keeper at St Mary’s ever in his last appearance here.
The game has a strange start as we
attack down the right, lose the ball and it get cleared as far as Khazri on the
left wing about 40 yards out and he seems to have a fit of temper and lashes it
straight out for a corner for us. Very
odd. The corner is cleared and then the
same player trashes through the back of Mané, gets a yellow card and gives us a
free kick. It’s in exactly the same
position as Ritchie’s was for Bournemouth on Tuesday and Bertrand tries to whip
in the same style of free kick (hammering it at the goal) but puts too much
height on it.
Graziano hasn’t scored since Rome was built and you can see
why when he gets the ball in a lot of space on the edge of the box but instead
of taking it on and shooting he just balloons a first time effort closer to the
corner flag than the goal. Our next
chance is a very good one and it’s promising for later as Mané gets down the
left and chips it in to Pellè who heads down perfectly for Tadic to shoot but
he bounces it into the ground and it flips up at a nice height for Mannone to
push over the bar. Bertrand’s corner is
straight to the keeper who we are making look good when he really isn’t.
To be fair to Sunderland, they are having their moments and
to be fair to Fat Sam, they’re not just wellying the ball up to N’Doye. He picks it up on the Saints right and Virgil
is across and takes him out. It’s not
that bad and there’s no injury but there’s an audible blood curdling girlie
scream and so Virgil goes in the book.
Khazri is on the free kick and he’s obviously been watching the second
Bournemouth goal as he curls it towards the back past from miles out and Fraser
again seems rooted too the spot before flailing his arms about at the last
minute and he gets lucky as he flaps it onto the post and Kirchoff hits the
rebound miles over.
The game is pretty dull and so is the chanting from the
Sunderland end. I can’t hear all the
words but it’s the latest trendy chant with “….I just don’t think you
understand” in it. Boring as fuck and
van Aanholt gets down the left and puts over a decent ball which Rodwell meets
and skews his volley into the crowd.
Rodwell was of course a good player once when he was at Everton but he
followed the money to Man City and his career died before he moved on to
Sunderland… a bit like Adam Johnson really but without being a nonce.
Playing well for Saints is Oriol Romeu and he starts a
flowing move which goes through Pellè and Bertrand whose low cross is met by
the sliding Spaniard but he can’t get enough on it to beat Mannone. The last action of the first half is the 6
foot 4 Kirchoff having a massive dive when challenged by the giant that is
Jordy Clasie. It’s too pathetic for
words. The lino has given it from 5
yards away and the ref almost seems to apologise to Clasie as he comes over.
If anything we’ve been the better side without looking
fluent and the front three look woefully out of form. Pellè is at least bringing others into play
but Tadic and Mané are way off the pace.
So, when your front three are not on it, you need to get your set pieces
right so winning three corners at the start of the second half and seeing Davis
hit the first man twice and then Bertrand clear everyone and out for a goal
kick… is very frustrating.
Borini has a couple of chances for Sunderland, firstly
dropping out to pick up a van Dijk clearing header and volleying just over and
then trying to score from a tight angle which Fraser blocked well. There’s then a spate of substitutions which
brings Defoe on for them, whilst we take off Clasie and Davis and throw on JWP
and make the curious decision to play with ten as fucking Juanmi comes on.
Khazri is one of the more annoying players I’ve ever seen
and then he goes ‘full pathetic’. After
a nothing clash with Graziano, he goes down when there’s nothing wrong. Pellè clearly thinks he’s being ridiculous
and tries to pull him to his feet but he wrestles himself away and throws
himself to the floor again like a three year old having a massive tantrum in a
supermarket aisle whilst his mother sighs and everyone else looks away, glad
that it’s not their child. What a
wanker.
On we go with nothing much happening aside from Juanmi
getting brushed off the ball with ease before Fat Sam decides to remove Khazri
as it’s embarrassing and on comes one of my favourite players, Seb Larsson, he
with the face of someone chewing a wasp which was licking piss off a stinging
nettle. Straight after that…. disaster
as a ball forward finds Borini and he’s suddenly away from Fonte who has the
choice of ‘let him shoot’ or ‘dive in’.
He opts for the latter and it’s kind of a wrestling throw tackle which
he tries to make look like an untidy challenge but the ref has blown and he’s
off. Bollocks.
The free kick from van Aanholt is well saved by Fraser and
we eventually bring on Yoshida for Mané and within a minute he’s allowed Kone
to beat him with ease in the box and feed it across to where Defoe is and he
isn’t going to miss and 1-0, ten men and 10 to go. The Northam respond to our plight with a
chant of ‘paedo, paedo, paedo’ at the Sunderland fans which is rather simple
and rather disgracefully, there’s a rush for the exits in all four of our
stands which doesn’t improve my mood.
So what are these twats going to miss? Well, quite a lot as we start playing with a
bit of intensity going forward. Martina
bursts forward and slides a ball too far in front of Pellè before getting
involved again and getting on the end of a short pass in the box and side
footing straight at Mannone when he really should have laced it. Virgil is playing up front and we have a kind
of 2-3-3 formation going on. I know
that’s one player less than ten but we have Juanmi on the pitch. Fat Sam takes off Kirchoff and brings on
O’Shea as he’s panicking but too late as Tadic picks it up on the left and
pulls it back low and Virgil has pulled away from his defender and whips a
first time shot inside the near post to make it 1-1. What a finish that it. Deserved.
The Sunderland players are shattered and another 2 minutes and I think
we could have won it but there’s only another 30 seconds. It’s a great goal and a great moment and one
of the best things about it is that all the Saints fans who in a show of true
support, fucked off when the Sunderland goal went it will have missed it.
It’s odd how this game has been reported in the media in
that it appears we somehow robbed them of two points by equalising in the last
minute when we had ten players. If you
look at the game overall there was only one side that deserved to win it and
that was us. Their keeper kept them in
it and they never really looked like scoring until Fonte got sent off. They’ll see it as a perfect away performance
until the last minute. Keep it tight,
nick a goal and hold on… whoops. Fat Sam
was bemoaning the fact that they sat back but hang on... he took off a
midfielder and put on a centre back so by definition he was inviting it.
I have no complaints about the red card and José had to
go. I thought at that point though that Ronald
took the wrong player off as Mané was beginning to show signs of life and we
could have done with his pace as an outlet.
He should have been brutal about it and taken Juanmi straight off again. That bloke is absolute bollocks though that’s
not really fair as ‘bollocks’ do at least have a purpose. There is nothing about him that suggests
there’s a Premier League footballer in there – nothing at all. I’ve downgraded him to ‘worse than Mayuka’
which takes some doing. At least Mayuka
had pace – this guy has nothing. It was
good to see Olomola on the bench but I knew that Juanmi would get on first but
there’s no point in putting him on, ever.
He’s shit and I hope we fuck him off back to Spain as soon as possible
as we don’t want him hanging around picking up wages for three years. Not a season long loan, not a try before you
buy, just get shot of him.
We weren’t great today of course but we still did enough to
win. The final third was generally poor
with Mané still playing at Salford level and Tadic not putting in a decent ball
all game until the last minute. I
thought Pellè did ok in the main but he’s devoid of confidence in front of
goal. When we are struggling to score
and our strikers aren’t really on it, we need to have JWP on the pitch. When he’s not the set pieces are fucking
awful. That little spate of corners
hitting the first man or clearing everyone just makes me angry. It’s such a waste when you have a flappy
goalkeeper like Mannone against you and an ideal chance to put him under
pressure.
Talking of flappy goalkeepers, Fraser did ok aside from that
free kick in the first half which was horrible again as he froze (a la
Bournemouth) but he just about got away with it…. And then there was Virgil van
Dijk – Player of the Season. I’ll be
amazed if anyone else even gets a vote for them aside from their immediate
family. He was magnificent throughout
yet again and of course he scored and what a great finish. The other stand out player was Oriol Romeu
who did all his usual work in winning the ball back but also drove the team
forwards and he’s a good passer of the ball as well. The defence in the main coped well but why on
earth was Martina playing. There are two
different Martina’s – pre and post Arsenal Wondergoal. Pre-Arsenal, I thought he was dogshit, then
post-Arsenal you think that there might be something worth persevering with but
there really isn’t. Today he broke well
and got in good positions but his ball into the box was uniformly
terrible. Cédric wasn’t great against
Bournemouth but then, no one was so why leave him out today when we needed some
quality coming in from the flanks. There
is no hiding that Yoshida was weak as you like on the goal as well and it’s an
area we need to address and soon, Maybe Florin Gardos is the answer to maybe
Jack Stephens or Jason McCarthy but it needs sorting.
We’ve slid down the table a bit and currently sit in 9th
but still in touch with the top 6.
Chelsea are lurking ominously behind us though so it’s going to be tough
and we need to go on another run again or else (stating the obvious) we’re
going to end up 13th and falling behind teams like Stoke and West
Brom. It was a bit odd today that it was
only when we went down to 10 that we played with anything like the urgency we
played with when he humped this lot 8-0 last season. It just shows how much you can achieve by
being positive and playing with energy, regardless of how many players you have
on the pitch.
Next up is the big question – can we do it at Stoke?
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