EFL Cup 4th Round - Southampton 1 Sunderland 0

This is Going In!

EFL Cup Round 4 and Sunderland at home, a team who we’ve failed to beat at home in our last two home matches with them.  The one before that was the 8-0 game of course.  Where is Mr Poyet and Mr Vergini today?  Davis Moyes is here and if I was him, bottom of the league and Allardyce without a job, I’d be putting my strongest team out today.  They’ve been desperately poor at the start of the last 4 or 5 seasons but this year has topped the lot with just two points so far, one of which was of course against us.  They’re in trouble this year as Newcastle have been relegated so that’s six extra points they have to find from somewhere.

We knew that Claude was going to rotate and it was just a question of how much.  They answer was ‘a lot’.  No Fraser, Virgil, Oriol, Charlie, Dusan, Nathan, Davo from the regular first team and Cuco was also rested so in came McCarthy, Maya, JWP, Hojbjerg and J-Rod as expected.  Others included were Sofiane Boufal making his first start and the kids – Harrison Reed, Jack Stephens at right back, Sam McQueen and Lloyd Isgrove.  There was a place on the bench for Olofela Olomola as well.  So; five academy players – nice one Claude.

Saints start well and pass it about nicely but mainly in front of Sunderland with the first real threat being a ball fired into the box by McQueen which resulted in J-Rod and Billy Jones clashing heads. Initially, J-Rod seemed to have come off the better of the two and got back up and got on with it but was obviously bothered by it and had to go off to be replaced by Olomola.  J-Rod’s run of luck is ridiculous.  He could fall in a bucket full of tits and come up sucking his thumb.  You get the impression that no one wants to play more than him and things just keep going wrong.

Sunderland are making some inroads, mainly behind Jack Stephens who is looking a bit ‘Bambi on Ice’ at right back.  Doing a job but not entirely comfortably. On we go and Sunderland have Wabhi Khazri who was 10 out of 10 for being a prick last season and yep, he still is so it’s amusing when he tries a shot and plays a big air shot and falls on his arse.  Olomola is trying to make his presence felt by running around like a lunatic and Claude is quite clearly trying to calm him down from the technical area.

As you can tell, there is precious little going on.  Boufal lights up proceedings with some ridiculous skill, nutmegging a Sunderland defender with a move straight out of a football freestyle video before winning a corner.  Lloyd Isgrove, who must be in the last chance saloon as a Saints player being 23 and not made it yet, has a chance to run at Djilibodji and bottles it.  Instead of taking him on he kind of runs away from the ball and lets him have it.  What the fuck is that all about?

Sunderland have half a shout for a penalty as Watmore breaks forward and passes it before crashing into McQueen and then Khazri ups his ‘prick’ rating even more by losing the ball and then hammering back to cynically hack Boufal over from behind and about 5 yards from the ball.  Up steps JWP and he should shoot but he doesn’t and it gets headed up in the air and Olomola smashes it at the roof.  0-0 at half time and all a bit crap.  It’s understandable from us as we have so many kids out there but Sunderland are just shocking really.

The second half starts with a Yoshida mistake as he clears a cross straight to Watmore who fires well over.  On the hour mark JWP puts in a  poor cross which is cleared back towards half way and José get in ahead of Anichebe and sends it back, miles up in the air.  Down it comes on the left edge of penalty area where Boufal brings it down with the outside of his right foot, before one touch inside and curling it right footed over Pickford and into the far top corner.  It’s a fantastic goal and totally at odds with the rest of the game.  What a goal and what have we got here and standby for a load of ‘Welcome to Liverpool’ jokes – fuck off!

We defend the lead by giving McNair a free header from a corner which he heads onto the outside of the post and both managers roll the dice with the bench.  Moyes brings on Defoe, the one player who he rested and Isgrove is done in what is probably his last appearance in a Saints shirt and is replaced by Redmond.

Redmond’s first contribution is to fuck up and give the ball to N’Dong who passes through to Defoe and the clearly limping McCarthy gets down well to block the left footed effort.  As well as the injured keeper, Boufal is clearly knackered but Reed is unable to run so he has to be replaced with Clasie and the club record signing just has to get on with it as there are no subs left

Nothing happens at all for the rest of the match until the 93^rd minute when a ball is played into Anichebe and before it gets to him, over he goes like the big sack of shit that he is.  Moyes goes nuts as no penalty is given and ends up getting sent to the stand.  It wasn’t til I saw the replay that I realised that Yoshida has needlessly and clumsily tripped him.  It should have been a penalty all day long.  What the fuck was Maya doing? – there is no need to foul Anichebe ever because he is complete wank.

We play out the remaining few minutes with some nice ‘take the piss’ possession triangles in the left hand corner between Boufal, McQueen and Hojbjerg and we’re through to the quarter finals again.  Get in!

So somehow, we had managed to beat another Premier League side who had a virtually their full team out whilst we had a team of kids, some of whom were wearing nappies. We got lucky with the blind referee at the end but apart from the one shot from Defoe I can't remember them getting near our goal.

The only memorable thing about this pretty shite game is the goal. The goal was a complete thing of beauty, from the moment Boufal's ridiculous first touch brought the ball down out of the sky. Not bad for a debut goal and right up there with the rock 'n' roll pirate nutter Dani Osvaldo's goal against Manchester City.

Of the youngsters, I thought Reed was excellent again before he had to go off. If given an opportunity more often then he certainly wouldn't be any worse than Clasie. these two players sum up what was wrong with The Lying Dutchman’s mindset over the past two years. We sign a relatively expensive foreign player when we had just as good a player in the Academy who has basically stagnated for the last two years. Considering he was playing out of position, Jack Stevens had a solid enough game at right back. His wing play was pretty shocking to be honest but he got in a few good tackles and blocks and didn't look out of place. Lloyd Isgrove had a decent loan spell at League 1 Barnsley last season so I was expecting a decent performance out of him today but he was crap.  In the first half he had a couple of chances one on one with a big slow defender and it just seemed to be scared to take him on. If you are a small pacy winger and you are not going to take on a big slow defender for pace or trickery then what the fuck are you doing out there?  He lost the ball in every challenge that he was involved in and at 23 the time has come to say that he's never going to be good enough to play in the Premier League. Also, bear in mind that this was virtually a Championship side we were playing against today. Olafela Olomola looked enthusiastic but it was far too difficult for him. He's only 18 so has loads of time to learn but it did prove that he is not ready to have any significant impact yet.

As for Sunderland well they were fucking dreadful. It amused me hugely to read the Sunderland press after the game and they were saying that this was one of their better performances. You are playing against a team of kids for fuck's sake and you still only created a chance when you brought on the one player who you have rested from your regular starting 11. They were so much bigger than us all over the pitch that you felt we could just get overpowered eventually but they made up for being bigger by being fucking useless.  Boufal could hardly run for the last 10 minutes and McQueen was struggling as well and then that was McCarthy in goal who couldn't move. I know they should've had a penalty but come on, that was a shocking display. I hope that all the fans in there and were local and haven't travelled down from the other end of the country to watch that shit.

On a personal note, tonight I sat in the Northam as opposed to my usual seat in the Family Stand in the Chapel.  Usually I have two year olds kicking the back of my seat and general non-football blather going on all around me as youngsters don’t have the attention span to sit through 90 minutes.  They are infinitely preferable though to the teenage twats who were all around me tonight.  There was a row of 5 of them right in front of me and all 5 of them were looking at their phones all match, trying to get a picture put up on the big screen.  Watch the game you stupid fuckers!  The good news is that when the goal went in and most us all went nuts, it became apparent that three of them completely missed it because they were staring at their phones.  If you’re gonna look at your phone all game – why bother going?

Anyway, so what have we got in Sofiane Boufal? Well, he's got some ridiculous skill and he certainly has an eye for the spectacular.  I think that if we can give in the ball in the right areas when he only has one defender to beat then we are going to have a great time seeing him rip Premier League right backs to bits.  He will be coming off the bench for now but he can do a lot of damage in 20 minutes.  I hope he can withstand getting kicked up in the air because it’s going to happen a lot.

As we went home in the car, the radio reported the draw, part picked by Francis Benali.  Arsenal versus Southampton, an interesting draw because they certainly won’t play a full side and we won’t either, given that the quarter final is going to part of 9 games in 30 days that we have.  We knocked them out at The Emirates a couple of years ago and we should have got something in the league game this year (Thanks Bobby Madley) so why not.  Last time we were in the quarter final of the League Cup we got humped 6-1 so we’ve gotta do better than that.  Before that though we have a shedload of other games, starting with Chelsea at home in the league.  They’ve won their last three and are looking decent again.  Any team that has David Luiz in it will give you a chance though so bring it on.