Saints Academy Scores. Skate Looks to Heavens
As we are officially one of the big clubs now, we don't have
to play in round two of the League Cup but around three is here and now we have
a home game against Crystal Palace. The usual guessing games have been going on
as to how seriously each manager is it going to take the competition so on the
face of it, based on the team sheets, it appears that the Palace are taking it
a lot more seriously than we are. They have one young player in their side and
everyone else is an experienced pro. Sure, some of them are not in their
Premier League side like Mutch and Sako but they have players like Cabaye and
Zaha so it's certainly going to be tough for a Saints side containing both of
the midfield circus midgets in Reed and Clasie and also Jake Hesketh who now
looks like he's beefed up to about eight stone from the six stone that he
weighed when he made his debut two years ago. We have our reserve fullbacks in
the team and Maya gets a chance ahead of the rested Virgil. Charlie Austin is
given a start up front with Shane Long, with Redmond and Tadic the forward
options on the bench.
The
ground looks less than half full as we kick off but we start well as José
brings it forward unchallenged a threads a pass inside the huge wardrobe that
is Sako and into Martina’s path. His low cross finds Austin but the flag
has gone up before he makes a bollocks of it and pokes it wide.
The
aftermath of the attack is that Scott Dann is on the floor and he has to go off
to be replaced with Kelly who is a full back by trade. Their defence was
looking susceptible against the pace of Long anyway and now it was only more
so. Another ball in from Martina was intercepted by Kelly but with the
proverbial first touch further than most people can kick it. His idea of
atoning for his error was to lunge after the ball only to find that Shane had got
inbetween him and the ball so he carted through Long in order to get to the
ball. Penalty. To be honest, there weren’t too many complaints from
Palace and with Dusan on the bench, Charlie Austin had no one to fight with for
the penalty. Up he stepped to roll it into the left bottom corner as
Hennessy went the other way. I don’t like penalties like this cos if he
goes the right way then he saves it easily but no matter, we are 1-0 up and
Charlie’s on the mark for the third game in a row.
There
isn’t a response from Palace and instead we go close again with Targett firing
over a ball and Hesketh getting up well to flick a header wide but Hennessy
makes a sprawling save anyway. Palace show up for the first time and it’s
created (sort of) by Zaha who takes time off from arguing with Skate Ward and
shagging the Sunderland manager’s daughter and sees his shot blocked out as far
as Cabaye who shoots wide first time.
We
are popping the ball about very nicely and the two players standing out are
Reed and Hesketh with Reed winning every tackle aside from the one where he ran
into the Wardrobe Sako and bounced off him. Hesketh slides a perfect ball
through to Austin and he tries to lift it over Hennessy but he gets a hand up
to make a really good save. Having got away with that one, Fryers and
Sako combine too give us the ball again and Martina gets played through once
more by Hesketh but when he needed to pull out the ‘outside of the boot’
finish, Cucucao Cuco lashed it across and narrowly missed the far post.
We
have yet another chance to increase the lead before half time and once again
Hesketh is the architect, playing Long in behind Kelly and he skips round
Hennessy on the edge of the box and with his left foot, rolls it towards the
open goal but even the snail paced Delaney is going to et back before that
reaches the goal and he duly does. Hlaf time and it’s hard to believe
that Palace won’t do more in the 2nd half
and maybe throw on Benteke and either Townshend or Puncheon. I look
forward to Benteke going up for a header against Reedor Clasie.
There’s
quarter of an hour of nothing at the start of the second half before Charlie
Austin is replaced with Redmond which is going to give us even more pace
against their slow defence. Targett has a shot blocked before we build
again from the back. There’s good work by Clasie and he finds JWP.
A quick exchamnge with Long and JWP puts his through behind Kelly and Skate
Ward but Hennessy is out to stop him again but the ball falls free to Hesketh
who sweeps it first time left footed into the net. Get in. It’s
fucking great when one of the youngsters scores.
Palace bring on
Benteke and Punch for the Wardrobe and Mutch who have both been complete turd
and start going long up towards the big man. If
he’s on the edge of our penalty area then José and Maya compete with him and
usually win it and if he’s further out then they let him win it unchallenged
and just take the ball off of Wickham who is shite and couldn’t be less
interested if he tried. There is one moment of almost danger
as benteke wins a header by the penalty spot and José’s header to McCarthy is a
bit short. Wickham
should get there but he sees the keeper coming and takes his eye off it and the
ball just plops into McCarthy’s lap.
Hojbjerg
is on for Hesketh who gets a standing ovation for his trouble and Redmond, who
has again played well since he’s been on, cut in from the left and brought a
good save out of Hennessy with a curled effort.
The referee put Palace out of their misery and so ended a
very satisfactory night’s work. It wasn't just the win that was good but the
manner with which it was achieved and the players who were used to achieve
it. For the first time that I have seen the style of play seemed to
really click with short snappy passing into the feet of strikers who simply
laid the ball back into midfield before spinning in behind the defenders. It
seemed to work really well and the lack of panic when playing out of defence
was also a feature. With Tadic not even on the pitch until the last couple of
minutes and Boufal waiting in the wings, there certainly could be exciting
times ahead. Right now though we need a striker other than Austin to be hitting
the net as well.
Jake Hesketh will take all the headlines because he scored
and he will probably make Garth Crooks team of the week purely because he
scored. He had a really good game in other areas as well but in my opinion, the
best player on the pitch for Saints was Harrison Reed who was absolutely
outstanding and proved in one game that he is more than capable of playing in
the Premier League. Sure he got knocked out by that big fat oaf Sako but that
guy could run into a fucking rhinoceros and knock it over. There were good
performances all over the pitch. Martina was his usual entertaining self and
Targett did very well against Wilfried Zaha on our left. The two centre backs
were commanding throughout and Yoshida manage to have a good game without his
usual catastrophe somewhere along the line. I was particularly impressed with
the way Jose and Maya handled Benteke when he came on.
Whilst the midfield was quite possibly the smallest and
lightest midfield ever, they competed well and it was nice to see Clasie
actually play 90 minutes though he did somewhat disappear for the last 20. JWP
was putting himself about strongly and it was a superbly weighted ball through
to Shane Long which resulted in the second goal. Upfront, Charlie Austin looked
dangerous though he did miss a couple of chances and Shane long did everything
but score, running the Palace defence ragged.
Palace were abysmally shit, really, really uninspired and
dull. Considering the starting 11 that they had out which contained just one
young player, they were terrible, showing both a lack of application and a lack
of ability. We saw better players at the bottom of League 1 than Jordan Mutch
who just ambled about and got beaten in every challenge he went for, even by
the midgets. Connor
Wickham was similar as well and I thought he was supposed to be this big rough
bully of a centre forward but he played like an eight-year-old getting totally
bullied out of absolutely everything. Because we had a very little height in
the team I was expecting us to get absolutely battered at set pieces and the
like but Palace never really got close enough to our goal to cause us any
problems. Pardew of course managed to deflect attention away from the
fact of the Palace were shocking by moaning about the penalty award which he
apparently didn't see and TV replays weren't conclusive for him but 'Shane has
a reputation'. What the fuck has that got to do with what you saw in
front of you today Alan? You didn’t see it but he probably dived. Ok
then. I
am reliably informed by a Palace fan who was closer to the incident that Kelly
got the ball but he trashed through the back of the player first.
"Didn't See It, TV Inconclusive, Therefore He Dived"
In the aftermath of the game, a picture
emerged which should make every Saints fan smile of Hesketh celebrating his
goal in a huddle with JWP, Target and Reed. four Academy boys playing for the
first time together in the first team. That's positive, however you look at it.
It'll be interesting to see if the national press pick up on that rather than
focusing on Manchester United actually winning a game against Northampton and
Michael Carrick being their saviour and the man to bring the best out of
Carlton Pogba because he's managed 90 minutes against a League 1 team. I also wonder what Ronald Koeman
and will think when he sees the picture as these players are part of the
academy that he unilaterally deemed not good enough to be in the first team
squad. I know that JWP and Targett played a bit but Reed and Hesketh were
nowhere near. It was also
interesting to see Koeman's Everton get knocked out of the League Cup at home
by Norwich last night. He doesn't like the cups does he? A higher
position in the Premier League will look better on his CV for when he is
looking for a better job in a year or so, so that’s all he cares about.
Young players - if you give them a chance, they might just deliver.
The final news of the night was the draw
for the next round and the only surprise was that we didn't get fucking Palace
again. However, if we don't get Palace then we get Sunderland and that's what's
happened this time but luckily it’s at home. Elsewhere in the drawer it
appears to have fallen in our favour because City have got United, Tottenham
have got Liverpool and Chelsea have got West Ham so some good teams are going
out.
So, three home games in three
competitions and three wins with three clean sheets and you can't complain
about that at all. The only caveat is that the three teams we have played have
really not been great opposition but it's cliche time and you can only beat
what's in front of you. What these wins do achieve is to put more confidence
into every single player and this can only help.
West Ham at the Taxpayer Bowl are at
next and they've been having a bit of a shocker of late, managing to scrape
through last night against Accrington courtesy of a 96th minute free kick goal.
We will certainly be more confident then they will be heading into the game and
we should really be looking for another three points and our first result away
from home this season. Rumour that Gold and Sullivan are getting rid of
some bankrupt stock and strapping a free dildo to the underside of each seat
are yet to be confirmed but it is true that many away fans have been leaving
the stadium with a big smile on their face recently.
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