Europa League Match 2 - Hapoel Be'er Sheva 0 Southampton 0

Eric Black Meets Undercover Reporter

SPOILER ALERT: The game was complete boring shite. This blog is mainly about other stuff.

Away from the mighty Southampton FC… Fat Sam has been sacked as England manager, just 67 days after getting the job.  Great effort all round that.  He’s undoubtedly an idiot for falling for a newspaper sting operation and for being a greedy arrogant bastard.  The FA have mutually consented him, thus taking the moral high ground which is a bit rich because of the past and also because, they knew he wasn’t a whiter than white character when they appointed him and guess what, he proved it.  Then there’s the press and their role in it.  Making and shaping the news instead of just reporting it – like they do when they leave bottles of whiskey outside Gazza’s house in the hope that he gives them a photo opportunity of him looking hung over.  They set him up Fat Sam and he walked right into it.  Don’t get me wrong, he had to go and the FA had no choice but I’m uncomfortable with the methods used to get rid of him.

The Telegraph will claim they’re on some moral crusade the clean up the game and it will have an effect I guess because it’s brought down the England manager but is that their job and do they really care?  They want to sell more papers generate more web traffic and this is a marvellous way to do that.  Apparently there are 8 more names in the frame for being ‘outed’ for taking bungs which of course, the Telegraph are going to drip feed over the next week or so to maximise sales / traffic.  If you’re on a moral crusade just get it all out there and be done with it.  If the press are the moral guardians of the game then we’re all screwed.

There’s no news like bad news is there?  If they’d set up this meeting to frame Fat Sam and he’d turned it down and not turned up, or even if he’d turned up and said “f**k off I’m not having anything to do with that”… would they have reported it?  Would The Telegragh have published a front page boasting that they’d tried to stitch up the England manager but he didn’t fall for it?  I think we all know the answer to that one as they’d probably be on very thin ice with the law.  The only reason they’re not being completely slaughtered is because at the end of the day they’ve got a result and so the end justifies the means somehow.  I can’t imagine that these ‘stings’ have a 100% success rate and I don’t recall ever seeing an article which read “… (insert manager name) is a good egg cos we tried to bribe him and he didn’t take the bait”.

Once Fat Sam became England manager then he as fair game as far as the press were concerned and he fell for it like an idiot and for what?  He believed it was all real and he stood to gain £400k for amongst other things, providing information on how to flout his employers’ rules on 3^rd Party Ownership.   Not smart.  I guess the £3 million a year he earned for his dream job that he’s coveted for 30 years wasn’t enough.  Idiot.  I’m disappointed because from a football point of view, I actually felt that we had a chance of doing well with him in charge but there you go – it’ll be back to the Southgate’s of this world now and that’s what’s happening in the meantime whilst the FA wait for Wenger to finish his Arsenal contract in the summer, before he undoubtedly turns England down and stays with The Gunners.

The England National Team – The Gift that Keeps on Giving.

Meanwhile, the Saints European adventure begins with a trip to Israel to play Hapoel Be'er Sheva. On the one hand they lost 5-2 to Celtic but on the other they beat them 2-0 at home and then most notably, won away at Inter.  They are supposed to be the weakest team in the group but I can't see them being worse than Sparta Prague were.

Claude's team selection is obviously made with Leicester on Sunday in mind. The early announcement that Jose, Davo, Ryan Bertrand and Goal Machine Austin had been left at home got under the skin of a few but what's he supposed the do? He's left behind our two oldest players and the two who've had relatively recent fitness issues. Also, Leicester played their Champions League match on Tuesday and it was at home. We're playing two days later and 2000 miles away. I guess that TV schedules are more important than having a level playing field.  

The starting XI picked itself.  Oh, hang on, Dusan on the bench and Jake Hesketh is starting... Didn't see that one coming.  Hapoel have apparently never lost at the Turner Stadium which is something to aim for. Their manager is resplendent in a suit and T-shirt and looks like a right Cockney wide boy.  They have a bloke in midfield called Ogu who looks like he should be a Bond villain. He's fucking huge. If Big Vic was still with us they could just have an arm wrestle for supremacy.  Anyway, game started and we win a free kick as Bond Villain treads on Long about 40 yards out. Up steps JWP and curls it perfectly over the defence and away from the keeper and right onto Captain Virgil's head. GOAAAAAAAFUCKKKK! How's he done that??? 50p head moment from the big man. All he has to do is get his forehead on it but it's hit the corner of his head and made a beeline for the corner flag.  I watch the replay still expecting the net to bulge and prove I was in some sort of false reality the first time round but no...50p head, corner flag.

The game settles into a pattern and its Hapoel passing it about and us sitting off and letting them get to 40 yards out before we get in their faces. On the one hand it's inviting pressure but they've not got the quality up front to do anything.  They have a couple of shots but nothgin to worry about as they bobble through to Fraser.

Despite having some joy down there when they created a chance that Virgil had to clear up, I'm glad that Hapoel haven't got the foresight to attack down our right where Cuco is having a mare, not being helped by Clasie in front of him who may as well not be there. We are getting nothing going up front where Long can't make any ball stick, Redmond is trying but ineffective and Hesketh is dieing on his arse and not touching the ball.

Claude's had enough after half an hour and it's time for a change with Tadic coming on for Hesketh. Though there's the expected blather on the TV about it being harsh, I like the fact that Claude has made the call.  Tadic stations himself on the right wing and we instantly look better.

Christ this is shite.  Cuco is doing my fucking head in. How can you be offside twice when you can see right across the pitch you twat? It's like watching an Under 13 player who's never played in a game with the offside rule before. 

It gets a bit fiery just before half time. Targett goes down and Hapoel have the ball. They make no attempt to kick the ball out and Ogu dawdles on it and gets it taken off him and Redmond shoots wide and it all kicks off. At least it's something to wake everyone up.  Half time, rubbish.

The second half starts in a bit more of a positive vein for Saints with JWP combining well with Targett before slipping a challenge and bringing a good save out of the keeper with a low shot.  Be’er Sheva go close when Redmond gives the ball away and then Romeu misses a header, allowing a break.  Luckily they overhit the pass to the free man and a shot was drilled across the goal and just wide of the far post and we were dead lucky that the bloke on the back post missed it.

They’ve brought on a guy with a stupid haircut called Buzaglo and he’s a diving fucker.  Howver, he puts in a decent cross which Maya decides to backheel straight to a striker who shoots wide.  It’s Maya’s “what the fuck” moment for the game and the reason he will never be a Premier League regular.

There are no more incidents at either end aside from Fraser pulling off a ‘one for the cameras’ save.  All there is, is shite from us up front with Shane Long continuing his current form and basically falling over the ball and doing everything aside from holding the ball up and passing it to a black shirt.  There are only 2 minutes of injury time as the ref can’t be arsed and the whistle goes after Shane tries to take on two men and treads on the ball again.

What a complete chore of a game that was and thank Christ it's over. We settled for a draw with about 15 minutes to go and they were never good enough to score against us. I just feel that with even a little bit more intent we could have one tonight quite comfortably. Whenever we did actually press the ball, their players just gave it away but we set off for such a long periods that it gave the impression that Hapoel were actually quite decent, which they weren't. We kept a clean sheet for the fifth match in a row but on the flip side of that, that's a minimum requirement against teams like this who were never going to score.

Lack of intensity aside, we weren't help by Virgil's 50p head effort in the first minute, nor by Martina getting caught offside about four times when he could see right across the whole fucking pitch. We were also not helped by a performance from Shane Long that can only be described as abysmal.  I can understand a striker having a bit of a confidence crisis in front of goal but he was repeatedly failing to control the simplest of passes.

The more positive performance has came from Romeu in the midfield and for once I actually thought Clasie had a fairly decent second half though he was piss poor in the first. Martina meanwhile was voted in UEFA's Team of the Night.  Well Corruption is all the rage these days.

Jake Hesketh was a little bit unlucky to be taken off but he was looking completely out of his depth and I back Claude 100% on this call though many will dig him out for it.  Claude was happy with a point and so he should be.  We’ll dick these at home and the Inter games are going to shape how well we do in the group.  They lost again tonight at Sparta by 3-1.  Apparently they have a load of Financial Fair Play implications if they play their full squad so all their big money players are not in the Europa league squad and they obviously can’t afford to not give a shit and pay the fine like Manchester City do.  Our next game is of course in the San Siro so we have to go there looking for a win to keep ourselves at the top of the group.  I imagine that the players are as keen to play in the San Siro as the fans are to watch the game so I expect us to play a stronger side there than we did tonight.

When I said at the start of this that all the news, the Daily Telegraph and all the corruption was about England and is nothing to do with Saints, I didn't know that Claude’s assistant, Eric Black was going to become the next person to be implicated. Southampton FC have asked for a full article from the Telegraph but of course they haven't given it to us because otherwise they wouldn't sell as many papers. It sounds as though that he has been filmed advising fictitious businessman on how best to bribe lower league footballers. Hopefully this is nothing but on first reading, it does sound like he is completely fucked as far as keeping his job is concerned so Claude is going to have to find another French speaking Brit.

Apparently the team is not leaving Israel until Friday morning which is going to make for a very entertaining Thursday night for Eric Black. Imagine being the poor bastard who has to share a room with him or sit next to him on a coach or on a plane.  Morning Eric, how are you? Sleep well? The Friday morning training session they have planned could be interesting. I wonder if anyone will try and bribe him to put the cones out in a certain way or whatever.

Anyway, in the current climate I couldn't see him being around for the Leicester game on Sunday though as I write, Saints have once again asked the Telegraph for unedited video and a full transcript which they are refusing to give.  Now it appears that the agent at the centre of it all who has spoken of 8 managers being on the take, has made it all up.  Stranger and stranger.

Back to the footy and Leicester.  Well, we know four of the starting 11 for that game and I expect the other 7 will mean that the team is unchanged from the West Ham game. Another clean sheet on Sunday against Vardy and Mahrez and Slimani and we'll be laughing all the way into the international break.