"I Can Get You In The Cup Final Side if You'll Play at the Back"
Last night of the transfer window and Swansea away – let’s
do this. With both the Claude Puel area
of the club and the Les Read section of the club in action, it promised to be
an interesting evening.
The first announcement of the day was that we are playing in
our white kit at Wembley which is weird as you like as that kit isn’t on
sale. Apparently the players requested
it so we can all wear red and white.
It’s all a bit odd – the cynic in me tells me this is a ploy to sell
loads of this seasons home kit before the final but surely the club would sell
more of the white one if they produced it.
No one’s going to buy a second home shirt are they and people who don’t
usually buy replica shirts would no doubt have bought one for the big day. It’s a bit strange that for our biggest games
of this season, Inter away and the League Cup Final, the shirt the team will be
wearing is not available to buy. Me,
I’ll be wearing the sash shirt from a few years back.
Next up was the signing of a goalkeeper on loan for the rest
of the season which came hot on the heels of Alex McCarthy being ruled out for
the next 2 months. Mouez Hassen has been
brought in from Nice so he of course was Claude’s back up keeper from last
season. The question this raises is –
what the fuck is Stuart Taylor there for?
Surely we have other positions that need strengthening more than
goalkeeper.
To tonight and Swansea are on their third manager of the
season in Paul Clement and last week, managed to win their first game for him
by winning at Anfield which was subsequently copied by ourselves and Wolves. They have been and probably will be near the
relegation zone all season so that immediately makes me fear for tonight given
our away results at Hull, Palace, Burnley etc.
We do at least have a first choice team out tonight after the FA Cup
shambles with Stephens and Yoshida at centre back. The one surprise is that Clasie is preferred
to Hojbjerg which is actually pretty annoying.
J-Rod and JWP are still injured so we have Shane Long leading the line.
Swansea appear to sit back from the start and let us have
the ball. I’d kind of rather that they
came on to us as we’re crap when we have to make the play away from home and
true to form we pass it around without doing much. Swansea’s first bout of possession comes on half
an hour with Stephens getting bullied by Llorente causing the ball to bobble
around on the edge of the area before Leroy Fer hits it and Fraser makes a good
save to his right. It’s a temporary reprieve
though as the corner comes in from Sigurdsson and Mawsom gets away from Romeu
and gets lucky as his header smashes into Romeu and into the top corner. Here we fucking go again.
Llorente is proving to be a right handful because neither of
our centre halves are comfortable against a big guy who puts himself
about. Llorente is one of those
physically imposing players who only has to be breathed on to make him hit the
deck. More poor defending and lack of
clear leadership at the back sees another bobbling ball which Sigurdsson picks
up, turns past Cedric and lashes one, causing Fraser to make another good save,
this time to his left.
The corner comes in and we’re defending like arseholes with
airshots and everything and we only get away with it because Llorente is not
expecting Davo to play an airshot in front of him so he can’t react when the
ball arrives. Half time and fucking
rubbish. Our front 5 players are Long,
Redmond, Tadic, Clasie and Davis and they’ve all done fuck all. The only way we’re going to get a goal is if
Boufal comes on and does something.
The first 15 of the second half sees nothing at all from us
with Swansea by far the better side.
When we get it we’re sideways and backwards and stil with no forward
runners from midfield. Boufal is on Tadic
on the hour mark and not a moment too soon.
To be fair, he could have taken any of the front 5 off and the effect is
almost instantaneous. We bring it out of
defence and Romeu feeds it into Boufal who lays it back to Davis. A lovely ball inside the full back and
Bertrand is away, first time cross, first time sidefoot finish from Shane
making a run into the box. Get in. Great goal.
Swansea now look what they are, pretty average and we pile
forward again with Redmond picking out Boufal on the left. He’s tries to take on a defender and loses it
but as he seems to be able to do, he wins it back again by the goal line and
lays it back to Redmond who has a blast from 8 yards and …. It goes for a
throw-in. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT??? One of the themes of the season there – good
approach play, easy chance, wank.
Redmond attempts to make up for it a minute later as a good
low ball in from Stephens picks him out and he turns and shoots from 20 yards
but Fabianski gets up well to tip it over.
We have forward runners now and are putting them under some serious
pressure and they are scared to death of Boufal. We win a corner and Davis takes it, headed
out and away go Swansea with Narsing who has just come on. We’ve over committed horribly and Narsing
gets to 25 yards out, accompanied only by Bertrand and he crosses to Sigurdsson
who has made ground well and he volleys it first time, into the ground and
spinning past Fraser and into the far corner.
Fucking hell again. Another theme
for the season there – opposition have one shot after a period of Saints
dominance, score.
20 minutes left and 2-1 down. Even Clasie realises that the need is such that
he might actually have to contribute at the attacking end of the pitch and he
slings in a cross and Shane is accidentally clipped by Naughton and appeals for
a penalty are never going to get us anywhere.
Claude rolls the dice and off comes the disappointing Redmond and Clasie
to be replaced with Sims and McQueen and a formation change and we go to what
we should be playing all along, 4-2-3-1 with McQueen and Sims left and right
with Boufal at 10.
Boufal has the ball on a piece of string as he brings it down
from the Welsh atmosphere and plays Sims in but his shot is blocked away. From the resultant throw, Boufal sends one
defender for a hot dog before cutting in and seeing his own shot blocked for a
corner. We are so much better than them
now it’s untrue but here we are once more, losing.
Saints are just giving it to Boufal whenever we can and he
tries to take on the whole Swansea team in the penalty area before flopping to
the ground, landing on the ball and somehow not getting booked for either diving
or deliberate handball. Five minutes
later and Boufal wins a free kick which is cleared and recycled and Romeu puts
in a great cross to the back post and up goes Maya and heads down and across
and skidding wide of the far post. It’s
not happening.
The extra four minutes are taken up with Llorente getting
blown over by the wind and one nearish thing as Cedric played Sims in on the
right but his low cross was swallowed up by Fabianski as Long closed in. Shit.
Yet another self-inflicted defeat against a poor to average
side. We showed in the last half an hour
that we are miles better than them when we play positively and with a sense of
purpose. We played like complete wankers
for the first hour though with no intent.
Again you can look at the two midfielders in front of Romeu to see how
committed we are to scoring a goal and Davis and Clasie did not get forward at
all. We were just treading water and
hoping to score instead of actually making it happen. This side of things has to be down to the
manager. JWP and Hojbjerg both got
forward against Leicester and it made a huge difference but today, nothing of
the sort. Clasie just does not suit the
position he’s being asked to play and he has no attacking instinct at all which
when added to his inability to last a game physically and his inability to win
tackles and be in the right place at the right time, makes him pretty
ineffective. Playing this way just
places all the onus with the three forwards and Tadic and Redmond were
somewhere between shit and average.
Ironically, the winning goal was caused by us
over-committing at a corner which is dangerous when you knock in a shite corner
and it gets easily cleared and the opposition breaks on you. Swansea didn’t have to work hard for their
goals with the first one being down to shite marking. In general play, Yoshida and Stephens are not
dominant and we’re going to struggle with those two. Elsewhere we were a pretty blunt instrument
up front which you kind of expect these days.
Boufal was a genius when he came on for the completely
hopeless Tadic and he gave them nightmares and was let down by the others. The key moment of the game was at 1-1 when
Boufal won the ball in their penalty area and teed up a chance for Redmond on a
plate and he smashed it for a throw-in – a fucking throw-in. If it goes in the goal like it should have
done instead of off for a fucking throw-in, we’re 2-1 up and we win the game. The other good news is that Shane Long scored
again so let’s hope that that run of goals and the upturn in his general play
continues.
In the aftermath of the game, the Southampton FC PR machine
was in full swing – they obviously had two press releases ready, one saying ‘a
great night just gets better with…..’ and the other with ‘a disappointing
result but some great news….’. We of
course needed the latter to go with the signing of Manolo Gabbiadini from
Napoli. He’s a winger/striker type who’s
fallen out of favour at Napoli and to be honest, I don’t know much about him aside
from a decent but not outstanding goal record in Serie A and one goal and six
caps for the Azzurri. Let’s hope he hits
the ground running and is more Graziano than Osvaldo. It has be remembered that Graziano had done
nothing in Italian football before he arrived here.
Tick, tock, tick, tock – 11pm. Nothing.
Not a thing. No centre back to
replace José Fonte, a need made even greater by Virgil’s injury. Oh dear.
You could quite easily argue that we needed two permanent signings in
this position and maybe one on loan depending on Virgil’s injury but we got
none. One can only hope that Virgil’s
injury is not too bad and we’re going to see images of him in full training on
the website in the next couple of days. Serdar
Tasci didn’t happen because he’s apparently injured and nor did Mamodou Sakho
who joined Palace on loan. My boss at
work is an ITK Palace fan and apparently, Sakho wanted to match or better his
£105k a week wages and Liverpool wanted a £2m loan fee. Five months at £105k a week plus £2m is about
£4.5 million for a player who isn’t going to be fit. To be honest I’d be a bit alarmed if we went
for that and I’m quite happy that we didn’t.
There is no question that we’ve fucked up here. We left it to the last minute of the window
as usual and guess what usually happens when you have no contingency. It goes wrong. Tasci’s injury apparently only came to light
yesterday and then in what looks like panic, we apparently tried to loan Amat
from Swansea and they said, thanks for the 3 points, now fuck off back down the
M4. Who knows, it does appear though that Les has dropped the ball.
It does make me wonder what we are up to in the whole
scheme of things. We seem to have a lack
of senior pros compared to last year. We’ve
lost Pellé, Wanyama, Mané and Fonte which is a lot of experience, not to
mention ability and we’ve promoted the Academy boys and signed 21 year olds in
the main. Last year, if Big Vic got
suspended, we had Romeu to bring in and if Pellé was injured, we had Austin on
the bench. As it stands right now we
have one defensive midfielder in Romeu, one fit senior centre back in Yoshida,
one capable right back in Cédric and one suitable goalkeeper in Fraser. I know you can’t buy a player every time you
have an injury but we are at serious ‘bare bones’ at the moment. If Oriol goes then Harrison Reed comes in, if
Yoshida is out then we are down to Stephens, a kid who couldn’t get a game in
the Championship 6 months ago and Gardos who has been out for 2 years. Cedric out would bring in Cuco the Clown and
Fraser down would bring in either a French kid in Hassen or Harry Lewis. It’s fucking scary and none of those options
are particularly appealing and it shouldn’t be like that.
Like I said – we have to assume that Virgil is not far away
but if we go into the Cup Final and the next month of League games without him
then someone has seriously not been doing their job properly as opposed to
partially not doing their job properly.
Today, despite us punting millions on a striker, has not been a great
day. A bit odd really but until this all
plays out, I can’t help but feel that we’ve taken the gun and shot ourselves in
the foot.
Next up is West Ham and Fonte and Andy Carroll. Personally I’d pick Florin Gardos as he’s
tall. That’s what we appear to be
reduced to at the moment.
UPDATE: Virgil is not near a comeback, misses the final and whatever
league games are coming in the next two months.
Great.
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