Premier League Match 38 - Southampton 4 Crystal Palace 1

Right Lads! Are Your Passport's Up to Date?

One week before the FA cup final which they are participating in, we welcome Crystal Palace to St Mary's for the final league game of the season. If we win it then we finish above Liverpool and if we win and West Ham doesn’t match our result away at Stoke, we finish above them as well. West Ham have had an eventful week with the last game at Upton Park and it seemed that the media wanted to make it a full week of celebration but stopped just short of demanding a national holiday for it. Why ‘club moves ground’ was such an incredibly big story is beyond me.  /the story is in the fact they’re being virtually gifted a stadium.  I guess it shows how London centric the sports media is. West Ham fans celebrated the only way they know how by smashing the shit out of a coach which contained the Manchester United players. All the shoppers at the very nice Westfield Centre in Stratford are really going to look forward to match days next season. I am sure though that the happy taxpayer will foot the bill for any damage and not West Ham because they don't pay for anything.

Anyway a lot of focus this week has been on which players Palace would rest for the game against us. Alan Pardew has been making the right noises of course but we all know that getting through the game without losing any players is going to be his prime concern.

This week, Saints have had to deal with media shite. As expected, Roberto Martinez lost his job at Everton and an article appeared in the Liverpool Echo with the headline of that Koeman was interested in the Everton job. The rest of the article had nothing to do with Koeman and was all about Frank DeBoer, who has a brother called Ronald so that might explain it. Anyway, this tenuous reporting meant that every single sports media outlet covered the Koeman to Everton story for the next couple of days and Ronald himself was forced to just laugh at the question when it was posed as a question one in his weekly press conference.   After the Virgil deal, further great news was forthcoming in that Fraser Forster has signed a contract to take him up to 2021 and James Ward- Prowse has signed one until 2022. More senior players signing on the dotted line can only be a good thing and demonstrates the clubs determination to hang on to its better players. Come on Big Vic, you know you want to..

Saints had Jordy Clasie missing, so Oriol Romeu took his place in an otherwise unchanged side.  Harrison Reed made it onto the bench and J-Rod failed to make the cut, with Austin preferred.

We start pretty tamely with Palace having the first chance.  Adebayor teed up Gayle who hit it first time but straight at the wall who reacted well.  Following that we do start confidently popping it about.  Palace are defending deep and we’re passing it around the edge of the area until Big Vic gets bored and tries to curl one into the top corner from 25 yards with his left foot, like he’s got Messi’s left foot on the end of his left leg… but it’s high, wide and shit.  The next decent effort is on 20 minutes when Virgil pings a crossfield ball to Mané and via Martina and Romeu, the ball ends up with Tadic on the right who turns Souare inside out before whipping in a left footed effort which eludes everyone and flashes about a foot wide of the far post.  Tadic is playing well again and he slides Mané through and he gets to it first but pokes the chance wide as Speroni comes out.  Another chance goes begging as Bertrand lines up the ex-Skate Ward and beats him with ease and curls over a superb cross which Long meets and he should do better than see it slide off his head and wide.  We do eventually make Speroni do something as good play from Davis tees up Romeu but his daisy cutter from 20 yards is never gong to beat any keeper.

The Skate is having a tough time with Tadic and wrestles him down about 30 yards out and Virgil fancies it.  It’s a decent effort which beats the wall and flicks the top of the net as it goes over.

Despite these chances, it’s not been a particularly good first half and we haven’t played particularly well but just as I was settling for 0-0 at half time, we get a break out of nowhere as Tadic gets a yard on the Skate and hoists in a cross and Delaney heads it straight up in the air.  It’s coming down on the penalty spot so the last thing the keeper should be doing is trying to get over a pile of bodies to punch it but that’s what Speroni does, crashing into Delaney and managing to slap the ball about 5 yards to Mané who simply lifts it over the ruck of players and into the empty net.  Speroni is their Kelvin Davis – great servant and been there years but really not good enough any more.

Fitting in nicely with our display so far, we can’t get to half time without a scare and Puncheon is heavily involved as a chance is fashioned once more for Gayle who again tries to smash it through the wall and that isn’t happening.

Half time and time to check up on the other scores that are relevant to us.  As it stands with us winning, Liverpool are irrelevant and so it’s all about West Ham and they’re winning 1-0 at Stoke.  Balls.  Ronald has clearly enjoyed the first half about the same amount as me and Graziano is on at the start of the second half to replace the unlucky Romeu in a tactical switch.  We certainly need to be holding the ball up better up front as Shane is not having a great game in that regard today.  Palace have brought on the wonderfully named Sunny KaiKai who my Palace supporting mate at work assures me is decent.  He’s replaced Jordon Mutch who is anything but.

Virgil heads over from a very good Davis free kick delivery before Palace are causing trouble again, building down the left before Gayle’s cross is met by Kaikai who hits it into the ground but it’s heading in until Fraser takes off and turns it wide.

With us basically having sacrificed a midfielder, it’s very open now and Palace look at least as likely to score as we do.  Having obviously heard me slagging him off at half time for not being able to cross a ball, Davis slides a ball inside Souare and Martina finds himself in the corner with a bit of time and floats in a great cross for Pellè to attack and the big man does, thumping a header back across and over Speroni to make it 2-0.  It was only on the TV replay afterwards that you could see that he’s given Mariappa an almighty shove in the back before he headed it so it really should have been disallowed but we’ll take it, thanks very much.  There’s a nice touch and Graziano goes and fetches Superkelv out of the crowd the celebrate the goal.

Rather than piss and moan about it, Palace go straight up our end and win a corner.  The delivery is good and Fraser gets a punch on it but it doesn’t clear the box and goes to Puncheon who turns inside a half arsed Long challenge before smashing it left footed like a rocket into the far top corner.  That’s Townsend, Iheanacho and Punch who have all smashed a ball into that top corner in the last three home games.

Tadic if off to take pity on the Skate and JWP is on and you sense the game is put to bed a few minutes later as Pellè puts Mané away, running at Mariappa.  Souare gets back to help and Sadio attempts to go in between them and goes over, bumped to the ground by Mariappa.  The ref consults the lino who says it was inside, or more likely says he didn’t have a clue and the ref gives the penalty.  JWP has the ball and everyone assumes he’s going to take it but Pellè’s having a word and then José has a word and the ball is given to Ryan Bertrand who off a short run, top left, 3-1, get in.

Palace have had enough now and are in FA Cup Final preservation mode.  Pardew takes off the two players who’ve been booked (McArthur and Skate Ward who has probably played himself out of the Final team) and the others are not really busting a gut to get back when we break forward.

Good play again by Davis and Martina tees up Mané on the edge of the box and he curls inches wide before a minute later, pinching the ball off the lumbering Jedinak and showing extreme greed by lashing over the bar when the ball should have gone to the big beautiful moaning Italian bloke.

With five minutes to go, Martina again proves me wrong and knocks in a cross which Pellè expertly chests down and even Davo can’t miss as he smashes it past the unprotected Speroni from about 8 yards out.  Before the players are back to the middle to kick off, there are whispers going round.  I can hear ‘Stoke’, ‘West Ham’, ‘goal’ etc and then finally, ‘Stoke are winning 2-1’.  Brilliant.  European Tour?  You’d think in these days of smartphones it would be easy to keep up with the scores but the St Mary’s phone reception on a match day is shite.

Long (who has not had his best game) is off and Austin is on for a cameo and we have a few more opportunities to score before the end but the move usually ends with a butchered final ball and it peters out with neither team really trying that hard and 4-1 it finishes.  Not a great performance but good enough.

When you win 4-1, it's never anything but a good day but a good day got even better with the news that Stoke, a team who have been on the beach for the past two months, found it within themselves to overturn a 1-0 halftime deficit and beat West Ham 2-1. This is the same West Ham who the media have been cracking one off over since the season began. We've finished above them.

There was also disturbing news of a controlled explosion being carried out at Old Trafford meaning that the other relevant game between United and Bournemouth was called off.   It really didn't sound very good. I was hoping it was Artur Boruc having a party with some vodka and cigarette lighter but clearly not.  That was a joke (just about) but not as big a joke as the real reason. Turns out there was a security test during the week and someone left a fake bomb behind.  Absolute farce as surely all it would have taken is one phone call for someone to confirm that a security test took place and before long it could have been all sorted.  Absolute joke from United who with their habit of turning up late to away games, have really been taking the piss recently.  They should be punished but of course they won’t be.  Anyway, as it stands we're above them.

Today's win made Liverpool irrelevant and they could only draw anyway so suck on that..... You know who you are. Let me say it again, Liverpool are irrelevant.

The great news is that now we are confirmed in the Europa league, we don't have to give too much of a shit about the finals of the FA Cup and the Europa league. If Palace beat United in the group stages, then the worst case scenario is that we have to do the Europa Qualifiers again. It would be fantastic if Bournemouth beat United in the week which would put us straight in the Group Stages, so we don't have to support United in the FA Cup Final, feel dirty and have to have a bath afterwards. Indisputably, we can hope Sevilla smash Liverpool in the Europa League Final because as we discussed earlier, Liverpool are irrelevant.  A Bournemouth win, a Palace win and a Sevilla win would mean that both West Ham and Liverpool will miss out on Europe altogether which would be something else to celebrate.

In truth, we were bloody dreadful in the first half today and Palace were probably the better side despite having the cup final next week. It was only really once we got to the last 20 minutes and the penalty went in that Palace decided that they’d had enough for the day with Pardew sensibly substituting Macarthur and Ward who had both been booked.  Pardew had a bit of a moan about the penalty being outside the box (unclear) and Pelle's header being a blatant push (Pardew 100% correct) but thought we deserved to win.

I would have thought that there was no way at all that we would have bettered last seasons finishing position and points total as we were pretty average up until Christmas but since then, you have to say we have been outstanding and deserve to be where we are. With the three players signing long term deals, there is obviously an ambition to keep pushing on and this is obviously essential for Ronald Koeman and personally and the chances of him signing a new contract himself. Both Ronald and Jose front made it clear in the post match interview is that investment is needed in the squad with us being in the Europa league group stages and we of course need to give it a better go then we gave it this year. I'd say that the signs are pretty good and they have to be as sure as shit, every other Premier League club will be throwing money around. We need to throw money around too but as usual, we need to be smarter than them and given the recent recruitment records at the big clubs, that really shouldn't be too difficult.

It's fucking great being a Saints fan at the moment. All we need to make this an absolutely hundred percent perfect day is for the Skates to lose the play-off semi-final in the last minute.... Oh look.... that happened as well.

The lap of appreciation was a relatively sedate affair. Qualifying for Europe is not in the same league as getting promoted so it doesn't require a full pitch invasion. It has been a brilliant season overall and the players deserve every bit of adulation that comes their way.

Next up is Super Kelvin Davis testimonial on Tuesday night which should now be even more of a celebratory affair. I can't imagine any of our Euros bound players will be playing but it should be a brilliant day anyway. The United Bournemouth game is now being played on the same night so we will find out if we've finished fifth or as expected six. All we need now to make the week even better is an announcement that Ronald, Graziano, Vic and Sadio have signed new contracts. Make it happen Les... it's not too much to ask.