Premier League Match 21 - Manchester United 0 Southampton 0

Jose Searches out the Referee Whilst Maya Tells Shaw How Fat He Is.

So after the diabolical game against Spurs, we now have a trip to Manchester United.  At the start of the season they looked like they'd be the business this year but as Lukaku has faded, they're resorted to being like all the post-Ferguson United sides - too many draws against weaker opposition, too defensive, not enough inspiration etc.  It is amusing to me that they are also suffering by comparison to other sides as well, especially as the main negative comparison is against the other team in the same city.

In the aftermath of the Spurs game, as if almost to deflect attention away from how shit we were and what a mess everything is, the club issued a very short statement to the effect that Virgil van Dijk was going to Liverpool for £75 million. They were very keen to point out that this is a world record deal for a defender. They weren’t so quick to point out the 10% will go to Celtic and probably another percentage will go to Virgil himself because of the model professional way that he has acted.

Firstly, I’d like to say good fucking riddance and secondly, I’ve sort of surprised myself by actually not giving a shit too much that he is going to Liverpool. Of course I would’ve preferred it if he’d gone elsewhere because of the scummy way that Liverpool went about things in the summer, their ex-player media campaign and the more special element of their fanbase that flooded social media with endless shite.  Though he’s doubtlessly a world-class player when he wants to be, there is a part of me that thinks that he is such a complete shithouse that they are welcome to him and the two parties deserve each other.  Liverpool fans tries to troll me on Twitter but despite frothing at the mouth all last summer, I really can’t be arsed with them.  I’m guessing the Saints board thought that it might have turned out this way, hence why they didn’t push on with their complaint as they knew that they might want to sell to Liverpool one day if Virgil was a big enough dickhead.  They also probably knew that the FA wouldn’t have been tough enough to give Liverpool a transfer ban which is what they would have deserved.

Jose: I'm the Biggest Twat

Virgil: Hold My Beer

Shithousery has won the day though because let us not forget that this all started with Liverpool’s illegal approach and illegal meetings in the summer. I’d hazard a guess that they’ve been in touch just telling Virgil to be a twat all this season and he’s been happy to go along with that.  He must have been acting up this season because let’s face it, there is no way in this world that Saints would have sold him now unless he was being a complete wanker. After the summer and the non-bid from Liverpool and all the antics and hissy fits from the player, Saints would not have gone through all that and made a stand just to keep him a few months.  They would have been hoping that he would get his head down, be professional and play properly and be sold in the summer.  The fact that we are rushing through a sale, before the transfer window even opens tells us that they can’t wait to get rid.  Yes it’s undeniable that we need to strengthen elsewhere but nothing would be different in that regard even if we had a few more points on the board.

So, he’s clearly been acting up, regardless of his protestations to the contrary and though this will be overlooked by the media, it really shouldn’t be. Liverpool have been scummy fuckers and Virgil has been scummy fucker as well. What we have achieved by selling in January rather than last summer is to make Liverpool pay probably about £25 million more than they wanted to when they started the whole head-turning campaign. 

If Liverpool fans think that he is going to solve all their defensive issues then they are sadly mistaken.  Yes he’s better than all of their existing centre backs but whilst Klopp plays with no holding midfield players then they are always going to let in goals and I will laugh when Virgil coughs up a goal in the same way that I do when Lovren does.

So, we bought Virgil for £15 million two years and three months ago. For a year of that he's either been injured or acting like a prick so we’ve only had him fully functioning for about 15 months and in that time his price has gone up five fold. The fact that we got so much money for him is down to the fact that the club put a six year contract in front of him which he signed.  The club knew the day would come when one of the stupid rich clubs would come calling so they tied him down.  Now it’s over to the recruitment side of things to not only sign the attacking players we should’ve signed in the summer but also to sign at least one decent centre back. The excuses from last January when we failed to replace Jose Fonte will not wash this time.

Whilst we’re on the subject of Jose Fonte, he thought it was a good idea to post on social media specifically to Ryan Bertrand about Virgil leaving. The clear inference was the Bertrand would be next. Even if that wasn’t the intention (which I’m sure it was) then Fonte is a smart enough guy to know that that is how it’s going to be interpreted by the Southampton fan base.  He really is a bitter prick isn’t he?  My stance on him was beginning to soften a little bit but now I’m really back to hoping that Alan Pardew really was throwing one in Fonte’s wife whilst he was our manager and the reason that she wanted to move back to London also that she has a closer to where Pardew lives for some easy action when Jose’s out of town.

Pardew when Fonte's Wife Moved to London

Of course, attention will now turn to where we are going to spend the money but my first thought about that is that it won’t matter who we sign if Pellegrino is still in charge. I still standby the statement that we could sign Messi and Ronaldo and Pellegrino would first and foremost make sure but they were aware of their defensive responsibility. So, job number one has to get rid of this idiot we have as a manager. Job number two is to appoint a new manager which can run concurrently with job number three which is to get at least three new players in at the start of the transfer window. Theo Walcott’s name keeps coming up and if that happens (I remain to be convinced) then as he only has 6 months left on his contract, we should have plenty of change from the Virgil money to add another couple of good players, a centre back and a target man striker.  For me, the target man is absolutely vital.

The whole Virgil business makes no difference to today’s game against Man United where it appears that we will have the same shit manager, with his same shit ideas about selection and tactics.  I wonder what the difference will be?

Before the game came the news that Kelvin Davis has been made first team coach to replace Eric Black and so we make a goalkeeper a first team coach and then wow!  Fraser Forster has been dropped and Alex McCarthy has been thrown in for his first League game for anyone for a couple of years.  Total coincidence I’m sure.  McQueen is in for Targett and Pellegrino seems to have finally realised that Hojbjerg is one of our better players and he starts in midfield ahead of Lemina.  The forward four to hopefully cause some problems for United are JWP, Tadic, Boufal and bloody Shane Long.  It’s unreal how he’s been picked again.

It doesn’t matter where United are in the league, you look at their 11 players and you see very good players like Pogba, Lukaku, Mata, Matic, de Gea but these days you also see some average players like Lingard, Shaw, Jones, Mkhitaryan and Young and some shit ones like Lindelof.  He might be shit but he cost £30 million.  Jose Mourinho’s classic deflection tactiucs have come to the fore recently.  He complained after a 2-2 draw with Burnley that United have only spent £300 million so how can they compete.  Lunatic.  Hopefully he’ll be making more idiotic comments after today.

Pogba is obviously going to be the main man for them and everything is going through him as he finds Mata on the right who works himself a yard on McQueen and digs over a good cross towards the massive 6 foot plus centre forward who Yoshida has somehow lost and Lukaku rises unchallenged to head over the bar.  Lucky.  After that initial scare, Saints start getting into the game and there are gaps all over the place with Tadic sliding a ball through to Boufal on the right and he pulls it back from the by-line and JWP meets it on the penalty spot but there’s always going to be a problem with de Gea in goal because he’s so ridiculously good and he superbly gets a hand to it down low and keeps it out.

United, as they are prone to do under Mourinho, go long towards Lukaku and there’s a clash of heads between Lukaku and Hoedt in which the united player comes off worse and he’s on the ground and out of it for five minutes until they can stretcher him off and bring on Rashford.  There are no United fans singing songs about Lukaku’s cock.  If they’d sung that it may have made him feel better.  Back to the game and United are not the only ones playing long ball.  We go long, Shane Long, as Hojbjerg clears a ball miles out of defence and Long scurries off after Lindelof, gets in front of him and collapses, winning us a free kick on the edge of the penalty area.  JWP curls it in but instead of going for the far post, goes for the near and doesn’t get enough height on it so de Gea saves comfortably.  From the corner, United break on us and it’s 3v3 but the ball is with Mkhitaryan and his cross is fucking dreadful.  I’m watching on BT Sport and it’s described by co-commentator and former United player Owen Hargreaves as ‘slightly innacurate’.

Saints are the better side and we do actually look dangerous, due to the main to us actually getting players near the striker.  We have another great chance from a JWP corner which Hoedt reaches unchallenged but it slides off his head and keeps going.  Again the long ball from United is their best option because it takes out the need for Mkhitaryan to cross the ball.  We don’t clear it and Mata gets a shot away which McCarthy claims well.  Shock of shocks then when United actually build down our right and Mkhitaryan does put a cross near a United player and it’s Lingard, who has been lost again by Yoshida but he doesn’t get anything on the header and it drifts harmlessly wide.

United are building pressure as Young gets in a cross from the right and Rashford heads over, no doubt put off by the flying McCarthy who doesnl;t get anywhere near the cross.  The next United attack sees a bit of pinball and the ball ping into Maya Yoshida’s arm as he tries to get back into position.  Loads of appeals, nothing from the referee.  In my book, that’s handball but in the book that matters, it has to be deliberate so it’s not a pen.

As we approach half time, Juan Mata, who I always thought was a decent guy, seems to be completely losing his rag.  Firstly he tries to pick a fight with Hojbjerg after the Saints man had been fouled and then he loses his rag with McQueen who was about to take a throw in.  Anywhere else you get booked for that but United at Old Trafford, nope.

Half time and we’ve played pretty well to be fair though there is much shitting on, on BT Sport about the handball incident.  Rightly or wrongly (wrongly in my book) the rule states that it has to be deliberate and there is no way that Maya meant to do that.  There’s no way he meant to lose the player he was marking twice either but that’s the way it goes.

The second half starts in much the same vein as the first ended. United are only dangerous from a long ball or a break away after we’ve had a corner so when Rashford gets free on our right it’s looking a bit scary until McQueen hammers back and puts in a great tackle.  The biased commentary is incredible.  If that had been Boufal getting tackled then it would have been ‘should have released it, no end product’ etc but because it was Rashford there is silence.  No criticism of Rashford and no praise for McQueen.

There is more silence from Hargreaves when some footage is shown of Ashley Young clearly elbowing Tadic in the stomach from the corner that preceded the break away.  No words from Owen, even though it’s clear as day.  You could have talked about how it was completely deliberate and how Saints should have had a penalty but no.  Let’s pretend it didn’t happen and that the pictures lie.  I’m sure the FA will do the same like they did with Dele Alli’s dive.

Saints are playing the more controlled football and Tadic plays a ball to JWP on the right and he curls over a low first time cross.  Lindelof is favourite but he dawdles and Long shows great movement to dart in front of him and hit it goalwards first time and de Gea, going the wrong the way, sticks out a foot and the ball hits it and somehow arches up and over the bar.  It’s a good effort by Shane and it’s brilliant and lucky in equal measure from de Gea.

United summon another £30 million player from the bench as Martial replaces Mkhitaryan who has been dreadful.  Sure he’s playing on the left whereas he usually is on the other side but his distribution has been terrible – mind you, so has Rashford’s and Lingard’s but they get away with the stick from the United crowd for some reason.  Martial’s first involvement is to run at the defence and launch himself after the slightest touch by Romeu.  From the free kick, Young’s effort hits the wall and goes wide.

Gabbi is on for Long who has done well to be fair, without of course looking like much of a goal threat and as we go into the last ten minutes it’s looking pretty comfortable until Boufal brings down the little shit Ashley Young and it’s a United free kick on the right.  In it comes and it all gets a bit untidy and Matic pokes it goalwards, McCarthy can’t get a touch and Pogba knocks it in from about a yard out.  Fuck it… haaaaaaaaaaa… offside!  It’s amusing because it was going in anyway so if Pogba had left it then no worries for United.

Tadic and Boufal are off to be replaced by Lemina and Redmond and we see it out quite comfortably.  There are a couple of hairy moment but the defence stood firm with Stephens pulling a out a very good clearance to deny Lingard in the last minute, spooning the ball up in the air to allow McCarthy to claim.  A very good point which was ultimately, earned quite comfortably.

Following Mourinho’s rant about not spending enough money last week, I wonder he really cares too much about dropping two points today. He knows that they are not going to win the league this year so as long as he finishes in the top four then his job is safe. He obviously wants the United hierarchy to sanction some ridiculous spending in January. He went shitting on about the penalty they maybe should’ve had in the first half which is classic Mourinho to deflect away from the fact that they didn’t have a fucking shot in the second half with their team that cost just shy of £400 million. You would think that a £400 million team playing at home could muster more than a couple of efforts against a team that’s been playing absolute bollocks since the start the season. Anyway, I don’t give a flying fuck about United and their problems or the negligible tosser that is Mourinho.

Saints were excellent today and thoroughly deserve that point, in fact it was quite an easy point as we protected Alex McCarthy to such a degree that he didn’t have to make a save in the second half. We got away with a couple of trademark lapses in concentration by Yoshida in the first half when he twice lost the player he was supposed to be marking and allowed free headers that Lukaku and Linguard should’ve done better with and We got a bit fortunate when Pogba decided to get a touch on that ball that was rolling into the net anyway but other than that we were worthy of a point

And if we have a striker worthy of the name, we would have won it. I have to say that today Pellegrino got it right. I was expecting five at the back but the four defenders chosen did a good job. There was little need for Jack Stephens to attack so he was okay at right back but we really can’t be playing him there in a home game. Further forward, Shane Long did exactly what you know he’s going to do in that he ran around, put loads of pressure on their defenders and didn’t score but he was unfortunate with the shot that de Gea turned over the bar with his foot. Another key difference today was the fact that the attacking midfielders got closer to the striker. There were times when we genuinely had a front four when you had JWP crossing, Long in attack, Boufal in the box and Tadic in close proximity is well. If we keep playing like that and concentrate on getting forwards in the box and the goals will start to come. Ironically, Shane Long play pretty well today in his limited way but I Gabbiadini would also have done well today because of the midfielders support.

The two standout players were Hojbjerg and Wesley Hoedt who were both absolutely magnificent from start to finish, strongly backed up by Sofiane Boufal, JWP, Sam McQueen and McCarthy who did everything that he could’ve done and come away with a deserved clean sheet. With the Virgil circus leaving town, we needed Wesley had to stand up and be counted and he did completely do that, stepping into his fellow Dutchman’s shoes with no problem at all. We have been needing existing players to step into the shoes of those that have departed and Wesley really looks like he’s ready to do that.

For the next game against Crystal Palace at home, there are a couple of tweaks that Pellegrino can make but he has to leave the core of the side in place. I’ve maybe look at Pied playing instead of Stephens and Gabbiadini for Long but other than that, stick to the same side and let’s try and get a bit of cohesion and most importantly, a win.  Todays point is only good point if we can back it up on Tuesday.

Premier League Match 20 - Tottenham 5 Southampton 2

Let's Hope We Pick a Better One This Time

Boxing Day and a trip to Wembley Stadium to play against Tottenham Hotspur. I’m looking forward to this about as much as I look forward to my mother-in-law being around all day on Christmas Day.

Contrary to what I thought was possible when Pochettino went to Spurs, he has taken them up a level and now they are a genuine big hitter club. They’ve won their Champions League group, finishing about Real Madrid and if it wasn’t for the ridiculous form of Manchester City, they would have a really good shout of winning the league this year. It’s amusing in some respects that Pochettino appears to have come under a bit of pressure this year because of perceived underachievement. Try being a fan of Southampton lads!  Spurs have some fabulous players, lead of course by Harry Kane who is one goal short of breaking the record for most goals in a calendar year since football began in 1992. Dele Alli is having a difficult season and he is combatting this by being a nasty cheating diving fucker.  He really shouldn’t be playing today after his horrific dive to win a penalty last week against Burnley but because he plays for Spurs and probably because he’s English, no one at the FA looked at whether he dived or not. They looked at Charlie Austin‘s case quick enough and he was banned quicker than it took him to down his first pint after the game against Huddersfield. Who else do Spurs have? Christian Eriksen, yeah he’s not bad and nor is Son Heung Min.  It may well be a long afternoon.

Our line up doesn’t look too bad on paper but there is one glaring issue and that is that Shane Long has been picked to play as a lone striker. What the actual fuck does Pellegrino think that it’s going to achieve? I wouldn’t mind so much if Shane had played a few games for the under 23’s and scored a few goals for them to get his confidence back but you know that he’s going to do absolutely fuck all. At the other end of the pitch, you also know that Jack Stephens is going to look like a fish up a tree at right back. It’s a slight surprise that we are not going with the five at the back formation but I guess that is because neither Cedric or Ryan Bertrand are available.

The first 20 minutes are actually fairly even as we camp strongly in our own half and challenge Spurs to break us down.  It’s all well and good so far but there’s no way we can play for 90 minutes like this and not let a goal in.  Just as you’re thinking that we had things under control, Rose takes on Hojbjerg down the left and gets in front with Pierre snapping at his heels.  No other player helps out and eventually Hojbjerg brings him down just to the side of the penalty area and earns himself a booking for I don’t really know what.  Eriksen is standing over the ball with everyone else in the middle and over it comes with pace, goal.  Harry Kane has headed in from two yards with keeper nowhere, defenders nowhere.  He’s not marked and that’s incredible.  Romeu is stood behind him looking at the number on his shirt and at no point is goal side.  Kane doesn’t even have to move.  He just bends stoops a bit and heads it two yards.  Why the fuck do we bother lads?

We respond well in that we have an attack and Long breaks down the left and feeds it in to Boufal who skips past one and hits a shot which Lloris makes a mess off and Rose tries to head it back to him but it’s over the scrabbling keeper and going goalwards but the luck is with Spurs and a combination of Lloris and the post keep it out.

The way we often play at home is to pass and pass and pass without going anywhere.  What’s supposed to happen is that you play controlled possession football and then you see an opening and speed up and go for it.  We never of course do the second bit but Spurs show us how it’s done as all four of their front four combine.  The ball goes from Eriksen into Alli, a flick through to Son who has made a great run on the left and he rolls it across for Kane to score from 5 yards out.  They’ve scored and we have all our defenders and goalkeeper on their arses.  Brilliant goal it has to be said.

Half time and you feel that there will be loads of people up and down the country looking at their in-play betting apps, lobbing money on 5, 6 and 7 for the number of goals Spurs and/or Harry Kane might score.  Gutless and pathetic in huge measure from ourselves but at least we go into the changing room knowing that there’s a thunderous Churchillian speech coming from our manager that will send the troops out for the second half in the right frame of mind.  Five minutes later we are 4-0 down but that’s not the whole story.

We start the second half on the front foot and Dier makes a mess of a pass to one of his centre backs and Long is clean through with just Lloris to beat.  Those of you who can remember Bradley Wright-Phillips playing for us will remember the lack of excitement every time he got clean through where you basically just slumped back in your seat and waited for him to miss.  So anyway, Shane is through but his touch is unsurprisingly bad and he knocks it too far and when he tries to wrap his right foot around it to shoot, he slips and just spoons it up to the goalkeeper.  Utter, utter shit.  This is the guy that Pellegrino has picked to lead the line in place of Italy’s first choice centre forward at the moment.

Unperturbed by their strikers shiteness, Saints go again and Lemina weaves his way across the top of the penalty area, finds space for a shot and cracks it past Lloris and off the bar.  Fuck.  Spurs next attack – 3-0 as they attack through Son and he picks out Alli on the left hand side of the area.  Romeu stands off him as he cuts infield and Yoshida turns his back as he passes it along the ground into the far corner of the net.  Embarrassing.

From the kick off we go forward and are popping the ball about and Redmond tries to knock it back to someone and it’s unclear who but it goes straight to a Spurs player and one shite pass has taken out 6 of our players and it’s 3 against 3 with Spurs changing places and this time Alli picks out Son on the right and he drives it past Forster and into the net for 4-0.  There’s something about this that I find quite funny in that Saints remind me of the Under 14’s I coach.  When we let in a goal we tent to fall to bits.  The difference is that my lads are kids whereas Saints are professional top level footballers.

To make a bad day even worse, our fans start booing Nathan Redmond when he touches the ball.  I would rather fans like this just stay away from matches as you’re a disgrace.  I don’t care what the frustration, booing individual players during a game is disgraceful.  Surely you want Redmond in this case, to smack a 30 yarder into the top corner the next time he gets the ball, rather than wonder why he fucking bothers as the cascade of boos ring down.  He made a genuine mistake – it’s not like he’s refused to play or thrown his dummy out or not played like he doesn’t give a toss now is it?

Anyway, Pellegrino decides to take him off along with the still clearly injured Lemina and puts on Gabbiadini and Tadic with Gabbi going up top, Shane going to the right and Dusan at 10.  Immediately we go on the attack and Long heads a ball across into Boufal’s path and he gets it down and hits a left footed shot near post which Lloris very obligingly dives over to make it 4-1.

Tottenham have been pissing about since it went to 4-0 and most of their attacks have fallen down with Alli trying to be too clever but as we’ve scored they decide to go and score again.  It starts with some bollocks out on our left with Targett losing the ball and Alli picks up the ball and lays it across to Kane with none of our defenders getting near anyone.  Yoshida looks totally lost as he appears to tackle a tuft of grass and Kane simply lifts it over Forster with his left foot as the keeper comes out and makes himself small.

We decide at this point to at least make it entertaining and flood forward.  Gabbiadini gets through on the left from Targett’s pass and pulls it across the goal and Shane must score.  He’s in front of Vertonghen and two yards out but somehow the Spurs player is more committed and gets there first, clearing the danger whilst Shane hits the net without the ball.  It’s an improvement I guess.

Most of the good stuff from Saints is through Boufal and he tees up Hojbjerg for a decent hit that Lloris makes a good save from.  From Boufal’s corner, Lloris flaps it out to Tadic who lobs it back over the keeper and though Kane was on the line and could easily clear, Lloris flaps at it and pushes it in the net for 5-2.

Pellegrino has had JWP warming up for 5 minutes so of course he sends on McQueen for Targett and the game ends with Spurs trying to tee up Lamela for a goal and he lashes a decent chance over the bar.  We have one more shot as Gabbiadini throws of the cloak of inivisibility which means that his team mates can’t see him and takes a pass from Tadic and crunches it just wide.  The End…. Of Pellegrino hopefully.

Well I guess for the neutral, sat on their arse full of food and hung over on Boxing day, that was a great entertaining game.  For me it was a complete sack of shit.  Firstly, there is no way that 5-2 was a fair reflection of the game. If you for one second think Spurs were only three goals better than us then you are living in cloud cuckoo land along with Mauricio Pellegrino.  At 4-0 on 50 minutes, they packed in and their goalkeeper very obligingly threw two goals in for us to make it look a lot closer than it was. Spurs were different class. So much better than us that it was embarrassing. 

When I saw the team today I didn’t actually think it was that bad bearing in mind what we had available.  Hoewever, the defence totally killed us.  Again, Wesley Hoedt did okay but all around him was fucking carnage. Jack Stephens is never a right back and he’s like a fish up a fucking tree out there.  We have Jeremy Pied, a ‘Pathway Blocker’ journey man right back who we keep in the squad but our manager prefers to play a centre back out of position.  Targett actually did okay when he ventured into the opposition half but defensively he was a nightmare and then there was Maya who was simply all over the place.   The midfield three of Romeu, Lemina and Hojbjerg looked good on paper but with Lemina being easily the most creative out of the three, he chose to play Hojbjerg at 10 where he is completely unsuited to playing.  Up front, I’d have gone with Redmond on the right and Boufal the left but for some reason they swapped wings in the first half and picking Shane Long was of course a complete fucking waste of time.  Apparently, Harry Kane has scored 50 goals since Shane Long last scored.  He’ll score 50 more before Shane gets his next one as well.

The tone was set with the first goal went to normally reliable Romeu just let Kane score. There is no other description that I can put other than that.  He let him stand 3 yards out and then he stood behind him and let him nod it into the net from 2 yards out.  However, we have a 6 foot seven goalkeeper so where the fuck was he? Could he have not at least got a touch on the cross?

The second goal was brilliant football by Spurs with Stephens is getting caught out because, y’know, he’s not a right back and the third goal was because we decided not to close down yet again on the edge of the box and Dele Alli, who was otherwise completely shit, just passed into the corner of the net.  Then we have goal number 4 which was a good assist by Redmond who took out about six of our players with one pass straight to a Spurs player and they eventually worked it for Son to score easily. The 5th goal featured some garbage over on our left where we lost the ball and two passes later the ball is at Harry Kane’s feet and Yoshida appears to tackle a tuft of grass and fall on his arse and Kane scores as simply as you like.

What got me this game what’s the lack of fight in the first half. We went out on the pitch knowing that we were going to get beat. We went out on the pitch with no plan other than containment and hope that Shane Long would break the habit of a fucking life time and actually do something that wasn’t shit. Surprise surprise, he didn’t, but he did have a glorious chance straight after half time when he was clean through and you thought that running into space would be the one thing he’s good at but no, he managed to lose his footing and totally fuck it up. We were a bit unfortunate straight after that Lemina, proving why he should be playing further forward instead of Hojbjerg, cracked a shot against the bar and 30 seconds later it was 3-0 when Alli scored. We did actually show a little bit more invention in attack in this game which was almost all down to strong running from midfield by Lemina and Hojbjerg and the unpredictability that Boufal brings to the table. Like I said though, this improvement has to be put into context. Spurs had already won the game and were coasting towards the finish line bearing in mind they have another game in a few days.

After the game, Pellegrino spoke the usual bollocks he always speaks.  The command of English gives him a bit of a shield to hide behind but he revealed that Austin is out for a long time.  No surprise there – he doesn’t do two week injuries.  It’s nothing or five months.  He said that he needs to get players in, in January – no shit Sherlock.  Would you want to join this fucking clown show at the moment?  Do I want Pellegrino to manage any new players we get in?  Not in the slightest.

Saints look like strangers out on the pitch.  There is no chemistry between the players and no one illustrates this more than Gabbiadini.  He makes intelligent runs and it’s like he’s fucking invisible.  It would help if the same midfield played two games in a row and then they might actually work out some understanding, same with  defence, same with the front three.  Pellegrino just tries to be too fucking clever and the rotation / tombola method he employs is never going to work.  What does any manager (like Sam Allardyce for example) say when they come into a new job half way through the season – Back to basics, settled team, build understanding.  It’s not rocket science.

The question of whether Pellegrino should be sacked or not it’s not even a question any more. The guy is actually fucking clueless and things are not going to get better with him in charge and we are going to get relegated if he stays.  It’s as simple as that. Les Reed and Ross Wilson and whoever else has any say on football matters have to also look at themselves and think about what the fuck they are doing.  Sacking Puel wasn’t the problem but replacing him with this guy was, so the decision on a new manager has to be a correct one.  We need a manager with a bit of bollocks and personality about them who is going to kick this lot into shape. We have some good players but we also have shit players who are not only block the pathway for any promising youngsters but they drag the team down as well. We have Pied who is not even deemed worthy to be a back up right back but we let Jason McCarthy leave and he’s now playing well in the Championship.  We have Shane Long when Olomola is scoring goals in League 1.  We have no target man when Sam Gallagher is out on loan.  I’m not saying any of those players I’ve mentioned would be the answer but they couldn’t really be worse right now.

We desperately need a target man striker, and a winger / Number 10 who is a goal threat and assuming van Shithouse goes, we need at least one centre back, probably two.  Do not try and tell me that Jan Bednarek is Virgil’s replacement as I’d rather Florin Gardos played.  We need another goalkeeper to at least challenge for a place and a new right back wouldn’t go amiss for the same reason.

If the Board at Southampton FC have got anything about them, they will be looking at themselves and the decisions that have been made since Ronald Koeman left and wonder why there is an absolute chasm between Spurs (and others) and Saints now, when the gap 18 months ago, the gap wasn’t really wasn’t that big.  Yes if we had a decent manager, we could probably be getting more out of the squad that we have but the bottom line is, the squad is just not good enough. We now have Maya Yoshida as a starting centre back when he was never good enough when we were decent under Pochettino and Koeman so logic dictates that he isn’t good enough now.  We have no backup for the goalkeeper, we have no backup for the right back and we have no backup for our one striker who can hit the net and he is injury prone.

We also have precious few big character players like those we used to have who raised the game of some of the others. When Pellé and Mané were here, Shane Long knew that if he didn’t perform he wouldn’t be anywhere near the side and when he was on the pitch he used to the pace and power of those two to buy some space and have decent games himself. He’s a back up player whether he’s on the pitch or not and not good enough to be the main man.  Similarly, Dusan Tadic was great when he had the departed two in the side but he’s not good enough to be the main man either, same as Yoshida who is no leader like José Fonte.  We’ve replaced Pellé, Mané, Wanyama and Fonte with Austin, Redmond, Romeu and Yoshida.  It’s downgrade central.

Next up – Manchester United and we’re going to lose.  Pellegrino will spin the tombola, probably coming up with another new combination with at least two players out of position and we’ll be fucking crap again and get beat by at least two goals.  He has to go, or we are getting relegated and the sooner it happens, the better the chance of staying up.  It’s as simple as that.

Premier League Match 19 - Southampton 1 Huddersfield 1

With Any Luck This Is A Wave Goodbye

When the fixtures were announced and we saw the list of games we had for December, one stood out as ‘3 points’ and that was this one, Huddersfield at home – and the Leictester at home one which we’ll gloss over here,.  Huddersfield had a very good start to the season and then tailed off as newly promoted sides are prone to do and for the last few weeks they’ve been picking up the odd result including a thumping 4-1 win at Watford last week. 

Saints have generally been utter turd this season but I’m sure that all will be well now because Les Reed has risen from the dead and done something.  Public enemy number one apart from the obvious candidates like the manager and Les Reed himself has been Eric Black. Eric was brought in by Claude Puel, mainly because he worked with him before and because he spoke French. When Claude left, I assumed Eric would be following him out the door but he’s stayed on and joined Pellegrino’s staff. There must’ve been a reason for this but I don’t know what it is. Maybe, just maybe, the people that matter, as in the players and the board, think that he was good at his job.

Because he was a caretaker manager Aston Villa when he inherited a job that would’ve been beyond Jesus Christ himself, it appears that he has been tarred as being useless and one of the main reasons why we’ve not been so great for the last season and a half. I must have missed the announcement that said that Eric Black had decided to sell Sadie Mane, Graziano Pelle and Victor Wanyama in the same summer. I also missed the announcement that he was picking the team and deciding on the tactics and substitutions. I also missed the announcement that the reason that both Jose Fonte and Virgil Van Dijk have thrown the toys out of the pram was because of Eric Black. Eric Black is actually an anagram of antichrist if you take a few letters out and had a few more in. The only thing Eric Black did wrong really was get caught up in that gambling sting which turned out to be a complete load of bollocks anyway.

There is a slight question left unanswered as usual because he is apparently leaving because he’s got a bad back. In any other line of work, if you have a bad back then you go off sick for a period of time and get it sorted but it appears that he is no longer going to be employed by Southampton FC so I wish him well with whatever he chooses to do next.

I’m not looking forward to today.  I have a distinct mood of pessimism about the whole thing.   Our Itchen Bridge game of predicting the scores has wild Optimism from my son and my Dad and brutal 1-1 realism from me. Before the game and before I saw what team Pellegrino had picked for today I had decided to write down the League 1 Minus 10 rules for picking a starting 11.  This was by no means an exhaustive list and was thrown together in approximately three minutes and listed things I just think are obvious.

1) Only ever pick a Tadic or Davis, never both. If you pick both of them then it’s too one-paced and not enough pace or power in the side.  We are not Barcelona.

2) Never pick Steve Davis as a defensive midfielder because he is fucking useless there. He doesn’t track runners and can’t tackle and doesn’t win headers because he’s 5 foot 8.

3) If Nathan Redmond is going to play it has to be on the right and never the left. It just doesn’t work on the left.

4) If Tadic plays, it can never be as a right winger. Virtually all of the decent games he played for Saints in the dim and distant past were as a left winger.

5) Shane Long upfront on his own. No nay never, no nay never no more.

6) Only pick players who are hundred percent committed to Southampton football club. A can’t be arsed, sloppy attitude from one player spreads.  One bad apple and all that.

7) Sofiane Boufal always starts.  He’s not the finished article but in the context of this squad, he has to start every game as he’s the only attacking player we have who is not relatively easy to defend against.

I am sure that Pellegrino will pull something else completely fucking random out of the hat to make me add to this list later on….. and so we are walking past the Chapel Arms when I see the team on my phone.

A quick tot up reveals that 4 out of the 7 rules will have definitely been broken and maybe a 5th depending on where Tadic plays. What the fuck is he doing? It might be slightly different when the game actually starts but on the face of it, we are playing 4-2-3-1 and on paper, the team looks fucking dreadful. The attacking midfield three will be Redmond, Tadic and JWP – how completely uninspired and one dimensional is that?  A defensive midfield of an injured Lemina and fucking Davis. Jack Stephens at right back and even at left back, it’s Matt Targett instead of Sam McQueen. Matt Targett hardly ever gets forward so who is going to put crosses into the box?  Probably the wingers who will also be tasked with defending when they are attacking. It just looks like a fucking disaster waiting to happen. I haven’t even got to the ground yet and I’m already depressed. Is the pub open?

No Romeu, no Hojbjerg, no Boufal… but the story will be no van Dijk who isn’t even in the squad so we can assume that that’s the last we’ve seen of him in a Saints shirt and a deal has been struck with hopefully, anyone apart from Liverpool though anyone who is watched Liverpool‘s defence this season knows that they still need him.

Away we go and I just can’t get excited about this.  There is always that thing that as a supporter, you of course don’t see what goes on at training and just maybe the manager has hit upon a winning formula during the week.  That’s what stops you not bothering about going – it’s the hope that we’ll get it right even though every instinct that you have is telling you that you are about to watch a complete pile of shite.

Huddersfield look the more composed side and our makeshift defence looks all over the place as Ince, the perennial ‘good Championship, Shite Premier League player’ gets down our left easily and picks out Mooy with a low cross who no one has tracked.  He should score but he delays his shot long enough for Hoedt to make a block.  We have not got to grips with anything and we have another huge let off when our left hand side is exposed again and Unpronouneablename at right back stands up a cross to the unmarked Schindler and his header is superbly tipped onto the bar by Fraser.

We have a foray up the other end with a roaming run by Stephens from right back and win a corner, JWP’s kick is cleared out to the left and Targett whips in a good ball which the keeper Lossl punches away and Redmond wins another corner.  This time, JWP’s kick finds Hoedt who wins it easily and heads down and we have a goal hanger two yards out and he stoops to head into the net.  Charlie Austin of course and he’s off to have a celebration in front of the Huddersfield fans.  Not sure what all that’s about but there seems to be some history there.  Anyway, 1-0 up, undeserved but we’ll take it.

Inspired by our tactically astute manager, we know that a clean sheet wins the game but before that, a cross comes into our box and Stephens and Yoshida ball watch and Schindler is in between them but luckily he has a 50p head moment and heads it down and wide.  I don’t care what anyone says – until these two defenders start dominating in the air, they are never going to be good enough to play regularly in a team that doesn’t want to be near the bottom of the Premier League.

Going forward, Stephens is a different matter though and another mazy out of defence sees him try to put Austin through but he’s mistaken Austin for someone with pace and overhits it.  The keeper claims easily and about three minutes pass before Austin arrives, obviously too tired to jump over him so he kicks him in the face.  Do you want Christmas off then Charlie?  Anyhow, the ref doesn’t give anything and the Huddersfield players don’t kick off too much so Austin has completely got away with that one.

We have our best spell just before half time.  In a half that has been so shit, this is not saying much but Austin and Lemina combine for Redmond to cross and Tadic to have a shot blocked by Lossl.  The keeper is having a fun time and he takes ages over a clearance and it gets charged down by Tadic and comes out to Austin who had to hit it first time really but he takes his time and then tries to chip the keeper who is comfortably back in his goal by that time.

                                                                                           

Half time and 1-0 to us but it’s been shocking.  We’re winning due to a set piece goal which was against the run of play.  It’s two desperately poor teams and it’s like being in a time machine when we had players like Neal Trotman and Paul Wotton, such is the level of ineptitude out there. 

The second half starts in much the same way but Huddersfield appear to have upped their game in midfield and are closing us down much quicker.  It takes quarter of an hour but we create the chance to go 2-0 up and kill the game off as Redmond breaks down the left and for once, with the insane cackling laughter of Pep Guardiola ringing in his ears, he bursts pat Unpronounceablename and squares it to Austin who just has the keeper to beat.  It’s a sitter and the ball is with the only player you’d want it to be with.  Shank – wide.  Fuck.

And in that instant, the game changed.  Davis gets bustled off the ball on our left and another cross comes in and falls to Mooy who once again, see his shot blocked but it doesn’t take much Huddersfield pressure to get a goal as substitute Smith takes a pass from Ince and puts over a cross and Depoitre, who is a massive lump with Shredded Wheat on top of his head, has sensibly decided to attack the gaping fucking space between Yoshida and Stephens, knowing that neither will challenge him and he can’t miss and he doesn’t.  Pathetic beyond words.

Maya Looking for The Man He Lost Again.

So, having watched us take a shit in midfield for the past 20 minutes, Pellegrino decides to wait another 10 before changing anything and he hooks Davis and Tadic who have bother been garbage and puts on Hojbjerg and Boufal.  The effect is instant.  Hojbjerg wrestles back the midfield and Boufal commits defenders.

We come close when a JWP corner from the left flicks off Yoshida and goes wide before Lossl gives us another shout with a shite clearance which Austin chests down and hits and Lossl gets lucky as it hits his wrists and stays out.  Austin is down in that all too familiar pose of arm-up, signalling to the bench.  That’s a hamstring and he’s gone for a while.  The Huddersfield fans are loving it as he limps off and Gabbiadini is on.

Though we’re the better side now, it’s too little too late but we get the predictable last minute chance.  This time, a foul by Smith on Boufal gives us a free kick out on the left about 35 yards out.  In it comes from JWP and time and the defence stands still and Yoshida meets it with a superb down wards header and it beats the keeper, hits the base of the post and hits the keeper in the face and bounces clear.  The we get the spectacle of a grown man claiming that he’s injured because the ball has hit him.  Yoshida – not the most irritable of players – gestures to him to get up and it all kicks off with handbags and a mental over-reaction from Huddersfield.

A suitably pathetic moment to finish the game on.

Three more rules for Pellegrino.

8) Never leave both Oriel Romeu and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg out, ever.  It never even occurred to me before the game that any manager could be that fuckwitted as to do this.

9) Don’t start Maya Yoshida. He has never been good enough to be a starting centre back in the Premier League and he never will be. Goal a game, every game.

10) Don’t play out of position players at full-back. If ever a player is going to get found out then that is the position where they will get found out because they can’t cross the ball.

#PellegrinoOut

Fucking hell. What a tedious bag of shite that was. A dreadful game between two dreadful teams. We were probably unlucky not to win it as Huddersfield scored with their only shot in the second half but let’s not forget but they could’ve been in front before our goal which came from a set piece and totally against the run of play. If Austin scores that sitter then it’s 2-0 and game over but Huddersfield slung a ball into the box and there were Maya and Jack were doing what Maya and Jack do and ball-watching and allowing a free header from 6 yards. Absolute fucking crap.

This is the end of the line to me as far as Pellegrino is concerned. The team looked fucking dreadful on paper and it was predictably fucking dreadful out on the pitch as well. The substitutions that he made, which was far too fucking late made us instantly better once he got Davis and Tadic off the pitch and got Hojbjerg and Boufal on.   The improvement was absolutely instantaneous.  Up to that point, Hudderfield had bossed the midfield in the second half and Pellegrino just stood in the technical area and watched it happen whilst Romeu and Hojbjerg sat on the bench.  Fucking madness. Sadly, there wasn’t enough time for us to make it count. We nearly did with Yoshida’s header but even if that had gone in it would’ve just been papering over the cracks. We are getting no better as a team and Pellegrino has now had 19 matches and won the grand total of four with seven draws and eight defeats. That is bollocks.

After the game, Pellegrino was asked about van Dijk but who fucking cares at the end of the day? We know he’s going and that isn’t news. The more interesting question would’ve been why the fuck were Romeu, Hojbjerg and Boufal all left out for a game that we had to win. Next up we have Tottenham away and Manchester United away. In both games, no doubt we will resort to the 9-0-1 formation which has carried us to narrow defeats at Manchester City and Chelsea. Charlie Austin won’t be fit for those games but it looks like he’s probably going to pick up a suspension anyway for kicking the Huddersfield goalkeeper in the head. (UPDATE: He got  three game ban).  He wouldn’t of been picked for those games anyway as they are the sort of games where Pellegrino picks Shane Long to run around and do fuck all or he picks Gabbiadini to make run after run after run and never get the ball.

What a fucking strange goalkeeper Lossl is. There was always a chance for us every time the ball went near him as he fucked up kicks and showed bad ball control. I have never seen a player get an injury break for getting hit with the ball which is what happened when Maya’s header bounced off the post in the last minute.  I know he’d had a kick in the face earlier but that’s embarrassing.

Huddersfield were pretty shite but what they did do was contest every second ball and not give us any time on the ball at all. In the second half in particular they swarmed all over us and Steve Davis just disappeared in the midfield. Pellegrino should’ve taken him off at half time and put Romeu or Hojbjerg on as we were winning but no, he left it too late to do anything about it so instead of being proactive he was reactive and we didn’t have enough time to bring the game back. He is fucking useless as a manager and he has to go. I would rather put ready Radhi Jaidi in charge for the two games we’ve got coming up and have a new manager in as soon as possible. I just hope that the board have been proactive themselves and have someone lined up.

Nathan Redmond is as usual, getting slaughtered after the game and he didn’t have a great game though he did set up the sitter of a chance for Austin that he missed. I feel that Redmond does exactly what the manager asks him to do and as a result, he doesn’t take risks and he plays safety first if there’s a chance that he might lose the ball. This is probably why he got picked today. It’s more ingrained in Boufal to be a maverick and play off the cuff which is why Pellegrino has a mistrust of him and that’s why he’s a substitute. Though I do think Guardiola is insane, his comments on Redmond to carry a lot of weight, let’s face it and the boy would do much better for us if he was allowed and encouraged to take people on.

The modern game is all about pace and power. We appear to be stuck in 10 years ago mode with having midfield players like Davis, Tadic and JWP who are neat and tidy pretty passing footballers. You can have one of those in your team in the Premier League in my opinion but any more than that and the team becomes slow paced and easy to play against.  You rarely hear the term ‘water carrier’ any more and there’s a reason for that and it’s because the modern game doesn’t need players like that.  Pellegrino should know this by now but even if he doesn’t, he knows that 4 wins in 19 it’s not good enough and playing in exactly the same way is going to continue to fail. There are absolutely no signs of improvement and it is actually worse than the tail end of last season.  Bye – don’t let the door hit your ass.

Spurs away

United Away

Merry Christmas

Happy New Year

Premier League Match 18 - Chelsea 1 Southampton 0

After the complete fiasco against Leicester, we really need is to be playing away at Stamford Bridge next but here we are facing a Chelsea side have not set the world alight this season but are still in very good form and a very difficult team to play against.

For once, the build up to the game has had some interesting content with Pellegrino basically saying that he only wanted players who were 100% committed to the club. He also went on about connection and there not being enough of it. Most reaction from fans that I read focused on how they can be any connection between the players when he keeps changing the fucking team every week. What I think Pellegrino means about connection is the connection between the fans and the team. He spoke about this connection during his initial interview when he got the job as manager. What I think he is getting at is about players cheating the fans by not putting in 100 percent effort because they basically don’t want to be playing for Saints any more. He is right of course but would he prove it with his team selection today.

Now, unless you have been living under a rock for the last six months, you know exactly who he was talking about but it was still a surprise to see Virgil van Dijk on the bench. I have to give plaudits to Pellegrino for doing this and he obviously read my blog last week which is why he’s decided to do it. Oh yes. Looking at the players selected, it’s obvious that we’re going for the back five approach which we had against Manchester City with Stephens, Yoshida and Hoedt as the centre backs, Cedric and Bertrand as full backs and a midfield four of JWP, Romeu, Hojbjerg and Redmond with Gabbiadini having the whole Chelsea half of the pitch to himself. It shows our mindset though because our two best attacking players, Boufal and Austin are on the bench.

We start ooff well and create a chance of sorts in the first minute as a big launch forward from Stephens is cocked up by Chelsea and Gabbi puts Redmond away and he plays in Bertrand.  The ex-Chelsea man’s cross is good and Cahill pulls off an unintentional spin turn and just about gets it clear.  Fucking donkey could have put that anywhere and got very very lucky.

Chelsea are not quite the force of last year when Willian hardly played but what a player he is, playing a 1-2 with Marcos Alonso and cutting in from the left but having done all the hard work he puts it wide.  Alonso is an interesting player – he’s not thought of as being particularly fantastic defensively but he plays so far forward because he’s given the freedom to play that way.   

Saints are doing ok in the main and then something comes along to cock that up and it’s Gary Donkey Cahill again.  Cedric takes him on and gets the cross in and Cahill slides in late and puts him into the boards.  Whether it was the late tackle or the collision with the boards that caused the problem I don’t know but Cedric limps around for a bit and then has to go off.  Mario Lemina is on and JWP gets moved to right wing back.

Cahill who is the new target for my irrational hatred, tries to make it even worse in that regard by lumbering forward and trying a pot shot from 30 yards which Fraser makes an unnecessary meal off by punching it straight back out into the middle of the penalty area.  The big man does better with the next effort as Kante takes time off from fouling people and has a shot which is deflected and this time, Fraser pushes it wide.  Another Chelsea chance comes as Stephens presents the ball to Hazard on the half way line and it’s eventually worked across to Willian on the right but Bertrand appears and puts him off but Willian is involved again minutes later, combining with Alonso down our left and the full back smashes a shot at the near post and Fraser blocks well.  Another chance, again created down our right as Lemina appears to allow a Chelsea player to walk through his tackle and Pedro fires against the base of the post.

We are surviving just about but bearing in mind you are always going to come under some pressure here, it’s not too bad and then on 45+2 (the +2 being for the Cedric injury) an old issue re-emerges as the ball gets played up to Hazard and Yoshida is right up his arse and by that I mean far too close.  Hazard spins and is away and Maya hauls him down.  Amateur hour defending and a yellow card.  The free kick is about 35 years out and left footed Alonso and right footed Willian are over it.  It looks like Willian is going to hit it but Alonso does and it zips round the wall and in at the near post as someone shouts ‘timberrrrrrrrrr’ and Fraser dives.  1-0 fuck.  We kick off, half time.

So, I’m sure that Pellegrino will be hatching a Plan B as we speak as keeping a clean sheet is off the menu.

Well Plan B produced fuck all for the first 15 minutes of the second half and then we get a straight away with Gabbiadini removed again after another fruitless 60 minutes of waiting for a pass and on comes Austin.  Austin’s first touch is to latch onto a lovely ball from Hojbjerg and his shot is decent but Courtois gets down to make a good save.  The ball goes loose and then Courtois clearly pulls the ball back into the penalty area so it should be a free kick to us but we’re away at a big club so not today.

Chelsea are still here though and Hazard has the ball in the net after a 1-2 with Willian but the Brazilian is offside.  He’s continuing to be a pain in the arse though, teeing up Alonso for a superb right footed effort which causes Fraser to take off and save well.

Boufal is on for Hojbjerg with 20 to go which is daft because Hojbjerg has been excellent.  Boufal is needed of course and again, like with Austin, he creates a chance straight away, playing it through to Austin and his poked effort is again well saved by Courtois.  We aren’t going to get many more chances.

Chelsea have sent Fabregas on and he’s now running the show.  Lemina hauls down Willian and whilst we all stand and argue with the referee. A quick tap sees Fabregas cutting in from the goal line and rolling the ball past Fraser and right across the goal about 6 inches out and wide of the far post.

We have one more half chance as Pellegrino finally appears to change the formation a bit with Boufal running at them on the left and the ball being worked to Stephens on the right and he put over a decent ball and Austin gets in front of his marker but is unable to turn it goalwards.

Joy of joys, then Bertrand pulls a hamstring and is limping about, appearing to be appealing to the Chelsea players not to run at him.  They ignore than and Morata chips a ball to Fabregas who smashes in a left footed volley which Fraser again blocks well.  Bertrand hobbles off and the game is done.  Not an unexpected defeat and the manner of it wasn’t unexpected either.  That’s part of the problem.

It looks like this is going to be the blueprint for any game that we play against the big guns of the division especially away from home. We are basically going to set up with nine defenders, a goalkeeper and a striker and hope for 0-0. Occasionally we will get a goal like we did against Manchester City but ultimately, we will get a load of narrow defeats because our defence as a team does not have the concentration levels to keep these teams out for 90 minutes. It's another game that doesn't look particularly great for Pellegrino because we put so little pressure on Chelsea in the 45 minutes we had to find an equaliser. The only times we looked remotely dangerous was when the ball was anywhere near Gary Cahill, who was absolutely shocking even in the side as dominant as Chelsea were.  John Terry thinks Virgil would get in any side in the Prem aside from Chelsea’s… fuck off John.  If you don’t think he’d better than Cahill then you’re not a very good judge.

Talking of Cahill, his piss poor clumsy challenge on Cedric which put him out of the game and probably the next few weeks, should have got him a yellow card. Losing Cedric disrupted us a bit but bringing Mario Lemina on and moving JWP to right back looks like a sound move until you realise that Lemina is still suffering massively from the ankle injury he had a few weeks back. The reason we know this now is because he posted about it on social media after the game, apologising to the fans for his performances. How cool is that by the way? Possibly by design or possibly accidentally, he has questioned whether Pellegrino should have had him on the bench at all, let alone put him on halfway through the first half.  I assume he was sub because the club know he is carrying an injury so why then put him on after less than 20 minutes?  There was one incident where Chelsea hit the post after one of their players had basically walked through Lemina who looked like he had completely bottled the tackle.  Bearing in mind the injury and the need for an early substitution, the sub that should have been made was Steve Davis coming on. He was the closest like for like swap for JWP who was the player we were effectively replacing in midfield because he had been moved to Cedric's position at right wing back.

We worked hard as we could but with zero inspiration, aside from about 5 minutes when Austin and Boufal came on. For the record, if those two are not playing then we are really going to struggle to score in any game. Gabbiadini makes run after run after run after run but he never gets the ball, either because he's too isolated but mostly because the midfielders don't look up and look to play forward early enough. Redmond is deployed as a defensive player. He's not the attacking genius that Guardiola goes on about but he's being restricted horribly by Pellegrino – Redmond needs to be told to do his work further up the pitch like wingers usually do.  Even Chelsea’s full backs play further forward than our wingers.

So, in midfield we had three defensive players in Romeu, Hojbjerg and Lemina and Redmond being told to play like one and none of the other three have been given any license to go forward. It was only on 75 minutes that he changed it and even then it was hardly any different. I've seen some say we went 4-4-2 but I didn't really see that until the last few minutes. I saw Boufal go wide left, Austin up top and that was it really. Too little, too late. So fucking what if we lose 2-0, go for it man. He should have gone 4 at the back at half time or at least let the shackles off the wing backs and the midfielders.

No one ever got sacked for losing 1-0 to Chelsea but Nigel Adkins got sacked after a 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge so there’s hope I guess. This is shaping up to be so much like last season but without the results. The manner of performances like this is so disappointing. No one expects Saints to go away from home to the Champions League clubs and attempt to play them off the park but you do have to have some sort of ambition to score a goal and you do have to have some sort of plan B if plan A is to defend and then you let a goal in.

Fraser Forster today showed up the perils of being a goalkeeper. He had a decent game overall but the game will be remembered for the goal we let in which he will know he should’ve done better with. However, you also have to look at the reason the free kick was conceded in the first place which was Yoshida doing his usual thing and getting too close to the striker, getting spun and then pulling him back.

Jack Stephens looked a little bit rusty on the face of it and made some mistakes around the halfway line that could’ve been very costly but Wesley Hoedt looked decent throughout. Today defeat of course has come at a cost with both of our full-backs going off injured. On the face of it, the Cedric injury doesn’t look too bad but Ryan Bertrand going off clutching his hamstring in the last few minutes does not look good. Hopefully it’s a couple of weeks as opposed to a couple of months.

Having moaned about Pellegrino, I also have to balance this out by saying that he was absolutely spot-on to leave Van Dyke out of the starting line-up. He deserves praise for that but little else.  It wasn’t because of a lack of effort or application that we lost today.

When we played Everton a few weeks ago I did wonder if Pellegrino could survive if we lost that game. Thinking like that was probably a little bit premature but next week we have Huddersfield at home. If we don’t win that then we are certainly going to be very close to the bottom three after we played Manchester United just before the New Year.  I’m at the point with Pellegrino where I would not care in the slightest if he was sacked but then we have a number of players who I would not miss in the slightest if they weren’t here any more.  We have some who are not good enough, some who are not effective enough and we have one in particular who doesn’t give a shit.  January is going to be huge for us.  If we carry on with the same squad, we should stay up but with the way Pellegrino is going, you wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t.  Something Better Change.

Premier League Match 17 - Southampton 1 Leicester City 4

Claude is The Man

Leicester at home and one of the games that was marked as winnable in our nightmare run of fixtures in December.  As unbelievable as it may sound though, Leicester have had a ‘new manager bounce’ under Claude Puel of all people.  He who was not inspiring in the slightest but he’s undoubtedly a decent guy so fair play to him.  I winder why he’s doing better with Leicester… Jamie Vardy or Shane Long… Riyad Mahrez or Dusan Tadic… Demerai Gray or Nathan Redmond…. Charlie Austin or Leanardo Ulloa…. We win that one but Ulloa is about 8^th choice for them.

So, Claude is in the house and the wider footballing world wants us to get beat because Claude finished 8^th and got us to a cup final and ‘who do they think they are’ Southampton sacked him, in what was Ralph Krueger’s last public act before he disappeared along with Les Reed to their Magic Bunker where all the evil deeds are plotted and they stick pins in very little voodoo dolls of Nicola Cortese.

The only thing of note sine the last game was what appeared to be a social media tantrum by Wesley Hoedt.  I can guess what’s happened – he was not picked against Arsenal and the three centre backs that were all played ok in the main.  We’re going to two centre backs tonight and Pellegrino now has him 4^th in the pecking order and he’s not on the bench.  Sure enough, when the team is revealed it’s a back 4 with Cedric returning for JWP, Jack Stephens has been left out in the change of formation but most ridiculously of all, there is no place for Pierre Hojbjerg.  Boufal is in for Redmond, Lemina for Hojbjerg and Steve Davis starts as well.  So, it looks like Tadic on the right where he is shite and both he and Davis in the same starting Xi means ‘one paced’ central.  So, overall it’s a formation change and 4 changes from a team that played well, including the two best players from the last game.

Claude Puel has rotated a few as well with Gray left out and Okazaki coming in.  Also Albrighton isn’t playing which I feel is a good thing.  Both Vardy and Mahrez are there though and so is Harry Maguire whose name caused much horror when he was touted for Saints in the summer but has joined Leicester, looked worth every penny of the £17m they paid for him and now has a good chance of going to the World Cup.  In hindsight, would have been a good replacement for Virgil and we’d have had about £50 million left over.

Away we go and we immediately put Leicester under pressure with quick counter attacking and win a corner.  Davis’ kick causes confusion, Yoshida takes a swing at it and it squirts wide.  We have started well and Lemina has a shot which is blocked before it goes anywhere.  When Leicester break on us however, the ball goes to Okazaki who has a 50-50 with Virgil but Virgil decides, with the January window approaching , not to go for it and stands off allowing the ball to move to Mahrez who falls over and with no challenge is allowed to get up and carry on.  He heads across the pitch and towards goal as Lemina falls over and Tadic jogs beside him and he gets to about 25 yards out, Yoshida doesn’t close him down and he just hits it, no chance for Fraser, 1-0 and what the fuck was that?

Having started well, we are now deflating like a punctured tyre and Leicester sense a chance to put the game to bed.  Okazaki again finds himself running at goal as defenders back off.  When he shoots, Virgil can eventually be arsed to stick out a foot and it deflects and Fraser makes a decent save by the post.  We’ve completely gone.  Vardy gets away, on it goes to Chilwell and Okazaki and his shot is cleared off the line by Lemina who has at least shown the desire to get back.  Out of nowhere we string together a bit of one touch and Austin has a dig from 20 yards which is a decent effort but straight at the keeper.

The next Leicester attack is set up by Kasper Schmeichel as he drills a long ball forward straight to Vardy and on it goes to Mahrez and we manage to get a foot in and hoof it for a corner.  From the corner, Mahrez has spotted Fuchs creeping up from left back on the edge of the penalty area.  I’ve spotted it too because Mahrez is clearly looking at him but none of our players get to the unmarked Fuchs as Mahrez drills the corner straight to him.  A volley into the box, it hits someone and goes loose and unsurprisingly, Leicester players react and we don’t, Okazaki, 2-0.

The reaction from Saints and the manager is non-existent and on the next foray it’s 3-0.  Maguire refuses to give up on a loose ball in our box and reacts whilst Bertrand and Virgil watch on and he fizzes it across the goal to where King is unmarked 3 yards out.  Lemina and Cedric are in the vicinity it you coult being 10 yards away as in the vicinity.  Fucking useless.

We try and keep a bit of possession which at laest means that despite us knocking it around in our own half, Leicester haven’t got the ball so they can’t score again.  We end the half with a semi-decent move with Cedric crossing, Bertrand heading down and Virgil volleying over the bar.  All defenders you notice.   That’s because the front half of the team have been wank.  That decent move doesn’t stop the players being booed off.  Totally deserved the gutless sacks of shite,

Our resident managerial genius takes off Romeu and puts on Gabbiadini at the start of the second half which basically says to me that he’s given up and saving players for Saturday.  We now appear to be lining up in a 4-4-2 with Davis in a midfield two.  Jesus wept.  The half starts fairly evenly but Leicester have done the hard work so you can tell they’re just sat in a holding pattern and playing the game out.  We geta  free kick in a decent area when Tadic feels a touch in the air from Simpson and flings himself.  Bertrand gets the free kick up and over the wall and under the bar but it’s staright at Schmeichel who shovels it over.  Bertrand swings over the corner and Yoshida rises highest to head down and it bounces down through a ruck of players and bounces in with Schmeichel being distracted by Tadic swinging a big airshot at it.  Maya’s goal, 3-1 and plenty of time to go.

Redmond is on for Boufal who hasn’t done much at all and out of nowhere, the team in red and white remembers how to play football and the ball goes from Lemina to Tadic, across to Redmond who finds the overlapping Bertrand and his perfect low first time cross is right into the path of Austin and we all shout ‘Goaaaaaa-fuckofffffff’ as he slides in but can only direct it into Schmeichel and wide.  Has to score – absolutely has to score.  What happens in this game if you don’t take your chances?

Well in this game, Leicester wake up and realise that they are having a go at fucking up a game that they’ve already won once and they start playing again, given a helping hand by Saints of course.  Cedric is trying to get an attack going out to Bertrand but he shanks his pass horribly straight to Okazaki, leaving Bertrand stranded upfield, on it goes to Vardy on our left and Virgil is over there but he doesn’t lift a leg to stop him and the ball is knocked back to Okazaki who gets in front of Yoshida and smashes it in.

A mass exodus of people with 15 minutes to go and that’s it really.  The second half has been shit and a non-event apart from the two goals and Austin’s miss.  I reckon there are about 10% of the Saints fans left in the ground when the final whistle goes.  What a load of shit.  They could have won by more if they needed to and the final whistle goes and Virgil has the ball so he lashes it into the crowd – it looks like the only time he’s done anything with intent all game and the only thing he’s really meant.

Apart from a couple of exceptions, that was as stinking a shithouse of a performance that you could ever hope to imagine from top to bottom from the manager down. Credit where it’s due, Leicester City and Claude Puel were absolutely excellent from the first minute to the last with the slight exception of the five minutes from when we scored to when we should’ve made it 3-2. Other than those five minutes they were absolutely superb and totally deserve to win and you can see that they are a really good team. They didn’t even have to be a really good team to beat us, they just had to be organised like Watford were  and like Burnley were. Most importantly, they played like a team that was carrying out instructions and they all worked for each other and for their manager who had been playing in a shape and in a style that suited them.

Needless to say, our manager Mauricio Pellegrino didn’t do any of that and he looks like he hasn’t got a fucking clue what sort of team we are, hasn’t got a clue about how to set the team up, is tactically inept and has no fucking idea what is best team is. Other than that, he is fantastic. Our little three-game bubble of optimism where fans (me included) were thinking “oh maybe we are not that shit after all and maybe this manager does know what he’s doing”, was all completely shot away within about 15 minutes of the start of today’s game. We didn’t have a fucking clue and deserved what we got. No ability on display, no guts and no effort.

The team he packed was questionable but on paper at least you can see that it was supposed to be a 4-2-3-1 with Steve ‘Lampard’ Davis as an attacking midfielder. On paper it looked like Tadic would be on the right (where he’s proven shit) and Boufal the left.  In reality, Steve Davis played far too far forward on the shoulder of Austin and Tadic seem to want to play in the middle and only occasionally found himself out on the right hand side. The net result of this was that Mahrez on the right and Chilwell on the left had the freedom of the fucking park to do whatever they wanted. One thing you don’t do is give Mahrez the freedom of the park.   There’s a reason he was the Premier League Player of the Season two seasons ago.  The first goal is fucking criminal – there is so much space for Okazaki because Van Dijk decides not to go and close him down and Mahrez can afford to fall on his arse, have a bath and put new kit on still no one gets anywhere near him.  He is a brilliant player but then anyone would be with no one closing them down, he is not going to miss, he scores goals like that every fucking week.  Pathetic.

Having conceded that goal, Pellegrino makes absolutely no tweaks tactically and five minutes later the game is dead. We had absolutely no belief once the first goal went in.  I think we have a set of players crying out for a leadership and they know they are going to get absolutely none from Pellegrino and the bench and we have no one on the pitch to do that either. So, we get to half-time 3-0 down and he takes off the one midfielder who is running around putting tackles in (yes Romeu was shit but at least he was trying) and drops Steve Davis back to position where he is consistently been proven to be useless.   So Pellegrino’s best tactic for approaching the second half is to go for the 4-4-2 approach which he admitted, we don’t have the players to play after the Burnley defeat when we tried it then.  OK, we have a little rally and get a goal back, due to Leicester just trying to see the game out but all it takes is for us to have a sniff of 3-2 and then they up a gear and score again easily.

The fourth goal sums us up and sadly, it sums up certain individual players. I didn’t realise the full horror of it until I saw it on TV later.  Firstly, Cedric plays a horrific ball across the park which gets intercepted. Steve Davis is marking Okazaki but he just lets him run like he always does. The ball goes wide to Vardy and Virgil is the nearest defender but he just can’t be fucking bothered to get close to him or to put in a tackle so Vardy rolls it into the middle we’re Okazaki is now being picked up by Yoshida, only he isn’t because Yoshida is stationary and Okazaki darts in front of him and smashes it in the net.  Crap from all four players but in the case of the last three, typical.  Davis never tracks runners which is the primary role of the defensive midfielder, Virgil can’t be arsed and Yoshida isn’t very good.  There is clearly an issue at the moment with Wesley Hoedt who seems to have been made a scapegoat for the goal he gave away against Bournemouth. Yoshida coughed up a goal against Arsenal which he does virtually every game so I can understand Hoedt getting the right arse over double standards.  I repeat that I have no time for pathetic social media statements from players.

As for the players who did play, well fucking hell. I’ll start with Virgil van Dijk because he is the easiest one to deal with. He is playing at roughly 70% and he’s good enough to still stand out at 70% when compared to the rest of our team. However, his attitude is fucking disgusting and poisonous and if Pellegrino was to show any sign of being a leader he needs to drop the fucker from this point onwards.   It looks like Manchester City are interested so that’s good news – we get rid of the fucker, get a load of money for him and he doesn’t go to Liverpool.  He couldn’t be arsed today because it was Leicester so comparatively few will be watching.  He’ll be great next week against Chelsea.

Cedric did not look fit to me and Yoshida was just like he always is, decent at times but can’t go 90 minutes without chucking a goal in.  In midfield, Mario Lemina was absolute dog shit in the first half. What the fuck has happened to him? He actually improved in the second half mainly because he couldn’t get any fucking worse. Romeu I thought was doing a manful job on his own in midfield in the first half but here course got substituted by the twat of a manager who basically gave up on this game at half time to save ourselves for the much more winnable trip away at Chelsea at the weekend.  I assume that’s what he’s saving Pierre Hojbjerg for as he has been the best player on the pitch in the last three games that he’s played so of course he gets dropped. Then we have Steve Davis who cannot have played that badly in any single game in his entire life.  He was absolutely useless but it’s nothing that we should be surprised too much about. Whenever he plays against athletic physical midfielders on the opposition, like Ndidi was for Leicester, he just disappears and might as well not be out there. I could not believe that he was still on the pitch after half-time.

On the wings, Tadic after his brief holiday from Bollocksville against Arsenal was right back there today, pathetically throwing himself to the ground or giving the ball away. Boufal hardly got the ball in the right areas but when he did invariably dribbled into the nearest player and lost it. Boufal is a good player but when you compare him to someone like Mahrez, you realise how much of an unpolished diamond he is. Mahrez is on a different level altogether.  Pellegrino stuck Redmond on the left where he is proved to be not very good and that he tried his best, he was unable to make a difference.

Austin tried his best with absolutely fuck all service and had to take a booking from the team when Lemina fucked up and lost the ball in midfield.  He has to score that chance at 3-1 though.

That leaves, Ryan Bertrand who was decent and has put away is obvious disappointment at not moving in the summer and is turning into a consistently high level of performance. The obvious stand out again today was Fraser. Who was in no way at fault with any of the four goals and made some good saves to keep the score down.

How ironic that Claude’s team scored four goals at St Mary’s which would’ve taken him about 10 games to do when he was Saints manager. Fair play to him and hopefully he can keep his good players in the transfer window and continue to do well for Leicester, unless he fancies selling a few of them to us.

There’s not much more to say really. Absolutely everything was wrong, the selection, the performance of the manager tactically, the performance of the players and even the weather was shite.  I’m sure it has happened in the past but I can’t recall ever seeing as many empty seats at the final whistle as I saw last night. For once it’s hard to blame people for leaving early.  Lots of players don’t seem to give a fuck so why should the supporters. After a little three game break, reality is back and we are struggling this season with an average manager, some average players and some piss poor attitudes.

I guess  the Claude thing will bite us today.  Hindsight is wonderful of course but I still stand by the decision to replace him at the end of last season.  The Pellegrino appointment is brought into sharp focus by today's result though and you can hardly say that he's an upgrade on any level.  Good luck to Claude, a decent guy.

Chelsea away next.  We’ll play better because the players will care.  We’ll park the bus and it’ll be like the City game.  We may get a point but I doubt it.