Sideways, Backwards, Sideways, Backwards
A trip to Prague to play Sparta who evidently
are much improved from when we played them the first time round when they were
pretty dreadful. It looks like they've appointed the youth team coach as
manager and he's had a positive effect. Since they played us, they've won every
game in the group which includes both of their home games so far. There is some
stat that says Sparta haven't beaten an English club since 1982. Here we go
then.
I strongly suspect that this game would be taken lightly by the management and that we were not going to put our best team out because even if we lose tonight, we have another chance in the final home game and so it proved with Cedric and Bertrand making way for Martina and McQueen, Maya instead of Jose in defence and even Romeu was rested with Hojbjerg playing defensive midfield. The weakest of our wide midfielders in JWP and Clasie were in the starting line up and the forwards looked full of running but not much else with Long, J-Rod and Redmond picked. I kind of understand the weakened side but at the same time I kind of don't. I would say the better policy is to get it done tonight and rest players for the home game against Be’er Sheva.
Off the pitch since the Liverpool game, fans have had to deal with at the Alex Crook bullshit machine saying that Liverpool are going to sign both Virgil and Sam McQueen from us with Daniel Sturridge coming in the other direction. Hold it right there for fuck's sake. Now, even though I spent the whole of the last blog slagging off Daniel Sturridge, He would be an absolutely dream signing for Saints which is exactly why it will not happen because he's probably on at least twice as much as our highest paid player. Virgil to Liverpool in January really isn't happening either and any time there's a swap deal mentioned, it never happens. If you forget money for a second, maybe it’s possible that Sturridge wouldn't say no to a move down here if he looked at how our other big club rejects like Bertrand, Romeu and Hojbjerg have improved in the time down here. I do however strongly suspect though that he is Billy Big Bollocks so wouldn't even contemplate moving to a team that's not a big club.
Anyway, regarding the outgoing rumours, if only in the club could block Alex Crook from writing about them in the same way that he blocks most of us from following him on Twitter. It’s not just what he writes but it’s the fact that he writes it and a million fan pages and Twitter accounts flood the market with it.
Away we go and almost immediately, McQueen threads a ball down the line to Long who bundles past the full back and squares it to Clasie who could shoot but presents an easy chance to J-Rod who takes the shittiest of shithouse first touches and instead of tapping in, tries to dribble round a defender and loses it. JUST FUCKING HIT IT MAN FOR FUCKS’
I strongly suspect that this game would be taken lightly by the management and that we were not going to put our best team out because even if we lose tonight, we have another chance in the final home game and so it proved with Cedric and Bertrand making way for Martina and McQueen, Maya instead of Jose in defence and even Romeu was rested with Hojbjerg playing defensive midfield. The weakest of our wide midfielders in JWP and Clasie were in the starting line up and the forwards looked full of running but not much else with Long, J-Rod and Redmond picked. I kind of understand the weakened side but at the same time I kind of don't. I would say the better policy is to get it done tonight and rest players for the home game against Be’er Sheva.
Off the pitch since the Liverpool game, fans have had to deal with at the Alex Crook bullshit machine saying that Liverpool are going to sign both Virgil and Sam McQueen from us with Daniel Sturridge coming in the other direction. Hold it right there for fuck's sake. Now, even though I spent the whole of the last blog slagging off Daniel Sturridge, He would be an absolutely dream signing for Saints which is exactly why it will not happen because he's probably on at least twice as much as our highest paid player. Virgil to Liverpool in January really isn't happening either and any time there's a swap deal mentioned, it never happens. If you forget money for a second, maybe it’s possible that Sturridge wouldn't say no to a move down here if he looked at how our other big club rejects like Bertrand, Romeu and Hojbjerg have improved in the time down here. I do however strongly suspect though that he is Billy Big Bollocks so wouldn't even contemplate moving to a team that's not a big club.
Anyway, regarding the outgoing rumours, if only in the club could block Alex Crook from writing about them in the same way that he blocks most of us from following him on Twitter. It’s not just what he writes but it’s the fact that he writes it and a million fan pages and Twitter accounts flood the market with it.
Away we go and almost immediately, McQueen threads a ball down the line to Long who bundles past the full back and squares it to Clasie who could shoot but presents an easy chance to J-Rod who takes the shittiest of shithouse first touches and instead of tapping in, tries to dribble round a defender and loses it. JUST FUCKING HIT IT MAN FOR FUCKS’
SAKE!!!
Sparta’s first attack ends with Virgil waving a
lazy leg at it and whacking it straight up in the air. Down it comes, hed tennis carnage and then
Pierre tries to sort it out by heading it back to Fraser and it just gets there
as Lafata swings a boot at it. Virgil
has another dodgy moment a few minutes later when he doesn’t seem to be
concentrating and takes out Julis in the air to give Sparta a free kick about
30 yards out. Dockal chips it in and
Costa has ambled into the box with the freedom of fucking Prague and volleys it
past Fraser at the near post. Martina
and Clasie have just watched him go. Oh
fucking terrific.
Straight away we respond with a great ball from
Redmond which puts McQueen in and he hits it first time but straight at the
keeper who blocks well. We create a
coupld of chances as the half goes on but nothing much. Long gets his head on a JWP frr kick and the
keeper easily pushes it wide and then Redmond puts McQueen away again and he
squares for J-Rod whose shot is blocked before rebounding to McQueen’s right
foot and he shanks it wide with the swinger.
Half time and it’s already shaping up to be one of those games. Basically, we are not going to score all the
time Austin is not on the pitch so we may as well hook J-Rod and get him on now
but no, we start the second half with the same side, playing the same sideways
and backwards way. Claude appears to
have told them to shoot more and so Maya does, from 45 yards and what a surprise,
it was shit.
Hojbjerg goes down with what looks like a dead
leg and on comes Romeu in his place, with Boufal coming on to put Rusty
Rodriguez out of his misery. It makes no
difference though and Sparta enjoy a bit of possession and work a neat 1-2 on
our left and the shot is straight at Fraser but he decides to palm it straight
back out into the middle to make sure that the defenders are on their toes. They win a free kcik when Costa gets
challenged by Boufal and just stands still and then does a forward roll and
rolls around until the ref gives a free kick.
It’s bizarre and so is our defending as it’s chappied in, no one goes
with Lafata and he just misses it… oh hang on it’s going in but Fraser sticks
out a hand to paw it away. More pressure
and this time Clasie gives it away and Dockal gets in alow shot which Fraser
does well to get down to.
Sparts have had their ten minutes so now it’s
business as usual, sideways and backwards, sideways and backwards, 11 behind
the ball, no forward runs. Garbage. I gave up 10 minutes ago on us scoring and
every opportunity that we fuck up is just a shrug of the shoulders from
me. Boufal chips in a good ball to JWP
who has made a decent run but he misses the ball. Shrug!
Austin is on for Clasie but we are shit with
overhit passes from Redmond and diabolical crossing from Martina. Straight to the keeper, straight behind the
goal, wank. Long comes short and picks
up a ball, turns in midfield and runs with purpose to the edge of the box and
wildly slashes miles wide. Shrug! Long
again as JWP put him in on the right, crosses instead of shooting and cleared
for a corner. Shrug! Corner comes over and Virgil smacks a free
header over from 6 yards. Shrug! Shrug!
Fucking Shrug!
The final ten minutes which should be like the
bastard Alamo is ten minutes of nothing.
We do nothing except sideways and backwards. It’s fucking painful. The last chance isn’t really a chance because
Maya is offside as JWP’s free kick comes in but it hits his face and bounces
down to the keeper anyway. Shrug!,
Bollocks! Shit!
Well that was fucking dreadful from the moment
that J-Rod decided to fuck about in the first few minutes until the end of the
94th minute. We were absolutely fucking shit – nat as bad as Midtjylland but
not far off. I've completely given up on the fanciful idea of scoring or even working
the goalkeeper from about 55 minutes onwards. We were so clueless in the way we
were playing and so many individual players were having shocking games. Like I
said at the start I understand Claude picking a weaker side for this game and
in his defence, that side should have been strong enough to beat this Sparta
side who let's face it, are pretty fucking average at best. He chose a side of
that he thought would do the job and they completely and utterly didn't.
Where do you fucking start with individual players. I know, I'll start with the worst of the lot, Cuco Martina. We would have been better off taking him off when we had already used all three subs and played with 10. If he wasn't on the pitch then we wouldn't have been giving him the ball and expecting him to do what a full back is supposed to do and actually cross the fucking ball into an area somewhere near our strikers in the middle. If we do substitute him without putting anybody on we possibly would have been given an extra 30 seconds of extra time at the end to try and get a goal. As we all know though, that would've been just another 30 seconds of complete fucking shit. Martina was the worst closely followed by J-Rod. Rusty Rodriguez as he's known now was absolutely diabolical again like he has been in every single game he's played this season. There comes a point when the excuse of being rusty just doesn't cut it anymore. This is top level sport and you can't carry people. We need him to contribute as he is one of the main strikers in the squad and at the moment he just isn't contributing at all. That miss or rather, that lack of shot in the first couple of minutes is as bad as it gets. He shoots he scores we are 1-0 up. Instead, five minutes later we are 1-0 down. Game changer.
Where do you fucking start with individual players. I know, I'll start with the worst of the lot, Cuco Martina. We would have been better off taking him off when we had already used all three subs and played with 10. If he wasn't on the pitch then we wouldn't have been giving him the ball and expecting him to do what a full back is supposed to do and actually cross the fucking ball into an area somewhere near our strikers in the middle. If we do substitute him without putting anybody on we possibly would have been given an extra 30 seconds of extra time at the end to try and get a goal. As we all know though, that would've been just another 30 seconds of complete fucking shit. Martina was the worst closely followed by J-Rod. Rusty Rodriguez as he's known now was absolutely diabolical again like he has been in every single game he's played this season. There comes a point when the excuse of being rusty just doesn't cut it anymore. This is top level sport and you can't carry people. We need him to contribute as he is one of the main strikers in the squad and at the moment he just isn't contributing at all. That miss or rather, that lack of shot in the first couple of minutes is as bad as it gets. He shoots he scores we are 1-0 up. Instead, five minutes later we are 1-0 down. Game changer.
Then we have Shane Long who at the moment is
just running about. All season he's just run about with absolutely no quality
in his play whatsoever. I understand that he had a bit of a go at some fans who
are booing at the end of the game. That's really fucking dodgy ground to be on
when you are a striker who hasn't scored for 8 months including all of this
fucking season and it's nearly December. Redmond...? Stationed wide left
and pretty average though did link up with McQueen quite well. He's never a
goal scorer though. Never.
Apparently we are going to start seeing the best of Boufal according to Claude. Well we fucking didn't see it tonight as he barely touched the ball when he came on and added absolutely no spark to a team that was completely and actually flat anyway. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on him as trying to put life into that performance was like trying to jump start a car with no fucking engine or battery in it. Dusan Tadic is becoming a better and better player with each game he misses.
Now the midfield and JWP had a completely anonymous game contributing the square root of fuck all. Another game where he had the chance to step up and completely failed to do so. Clasie was okay for the first 30 minutes and then he did what he always does and fade completely out of the game before we have to take him off. Maya was a fucking nightmare waiting to happen at the back and his shot from 45 yards was awesome and Virgil had quite possibly the worst game I've ever seen him have the Saints shirt. He really looked like he didn't want to be out there and played in a really half arsed lethargic way.
The players that leaves who had relatively decent performances (and a couple of these are 'at a stretch') are Hojbjerg, Romeu (who was sorely missed from the start), Forster who was looking unconvincing but at least made a couple of saves and Sam McQueen who was easily our man of the match.
With Hapoel beating Inter 3-2, we are now dead level with the Israeli's going into the last game against them at St Mary's. This game is the most important game that Claude will have as Saints manager. If we fail to get out of this group then the crowd will turn. Some are turning already but in my opinion if we fail to get out of what is a really easy group with Inter being crap, then people will have the right to ask serious questions of the manager. Part of the reason he was brought in was because of his experience of European competition. Three away trips and no fucking goals? Sideways and bastard backwards and no forward runs from midfielders and strikers playing miles apart. Tactically – something is severely wrong at the moment.
So, I get that we have to rotate players and the weaker players only seem to play in the European games and the League Cup games. When do performances become so bad that players get left out of the rotation? I would personally rather see Harrison Reed playing ahead of Jordy Clasie. I would also prefer to see Sam Gallagher playing ahead of J-Rod and to be honest I think I'd even rather see the incredibly raw Olomola. There has got to be an alternative to playing Martina at right back. Why not play Yoshida there and play Jack Stephens alongside Virgil? Promote the England U21 player instead of playing the journeyman donkey. It was kind of okay when Martina was a novelty player who played occasionally but this season he is playing far too much and he just isn't good enough to string three decent games together. At the moment is not good enough to string 10 minutes together. If the fullbacks don't deliver any quality from the wings then we severely struggle. Claude knows this as it’s his system so why is he picking a player who just isn’t capable of playing this way.
Lots of interviews afterwards with the manager and players saying I'm ever so sorry, we let the fans down. Yes you fucking did. It's not just tonight though, we have let a painfully average team win the group so even if we managed to scrape our arses through in a couple of weeks, we are heading for a last 32 tie against a team who has dropped out of the Champions League and the way we are playing at the moment, that will definitely be the end of that.
Next up and back to the league and we have the visit of the Lying Dutchman and his Everton side. They have Stekelenburg in goal and we all know he has a weakness with shots at the goal. Right now I'm wondering if we will actually fucking have any.
Apparently we are going to start seeing the best of Boufal according to Claude. Well we fucking didn't see it tonight as he barely touched the ball when he came on and added absolutely no spark to a team that was completely and actually flat anyway. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on him as trying to put life into that performance was like trying to jump start a car with no fucking engine or battery in it. Dusan Tadic is becoming a better and better player with each game he misses.
Now the midfield and JWP had a completely anonymous game contributing the square root of fuck all. Another game where he had the chance to step up and completely failed to do so. Clasie was okay for the first 30 minutes and then he did what he always does and fade completely out of the game before we have to take him off. Maya was a fucking nightmare waiting to happen at the back and his shot from 45 yards was awesome and Virgil had quite possibly the worst game I've ever seen him have the Saints shirt. He really looked like he didn't want to be out there and played in a really half arsed lethargic way.
The players that leaves who had relatively decent performances (and a couple of these are 'at a stretch') are Hojbjerg, Romeu (who was sorely missed from the start), Forster who was looking unconvincing but at least made a couple of saves and Sam McQueen who was easily our man of the match.
With Hapoel beating Inter 3-2, we are now dead level with the Israeli's going into the last game against them at St Mary's. This game is the most important game that Claude will have as Saints manager. If we fail to get out of this group then the crowd will turn. Some are turning already but in my opinion if we fail to get out of what is a really easy group with Inter being crap, then people will have the right to ask serious questions of the manager. Part of the reason he was brought in was because of his experience of European competition. Three away trips and no fucking goals? Sideways and bastard backwards and no forward runs from midfielders and strikers playing miles apart. Tactically – something is severely wrong at the moment.
So, I get that we have to rotate players and the weaker players only seem to play in the European games and the League Cup games. When do performances become so bad that players get left out of the rotation? I would personally rather see Harrison Reed playing ahead of Jordy Clasie. I would also prefer to see Sam Gallagher playing ahead of J-Rod and to be honest I think I'd even rather see the incredibly raw Olomola. There has got to be an alternative to playing Martina at right back. Why not play Yoshida there and play Jack Stephens alongside Virgil? Promote the England U21 player instead of playing the journeyman donkey. It was kind of okay when Martina was a novelty player who played occasionally but this season he is playing far too much and he just isn't good enough to string three decent games together. At the moment is not good enough to string 10 minutes together. If the fullbacks don't deliver any quality from the wings then we severely struggle. Claude knows this as it’s his system so why is he picking a player who just isn’t capable of playing this way.
Lots of interviews afterwards with the manager and players saying I'm ever so sorry, we let the fans down. Yes you fucking did. It's not just tonight though, we have let a painfully average team win the group so even if we managed to scrape our arses through in a couple of weeks, we are heading for a last 32 tie against a team who has dropped out of the Champions League and the way we are playing at the moment, that will definitely be the end of that.
Next up and back to the league and we have the visit of the Lying Dutchman and his Everton side. They have Stekelenburg in goal and we all know he has a weakness with shots at the goal. Right now I'm wondering if we will actually fucking have any.
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