EFL Cup 2nd Round - Southampton 0 Wolves 2

We Couldn't Believe It Either 

Wesley Hoedt was announced as a Saints player after the West Ham game.  Al the signs are that this is one of the missing pieces of the jigsaw with him being huge and a great header of the ball.  When talking about the move, Sir Les came out with a classic about him forming a new defence with our other Dutch international, Weapons Grade Shithouse.  Great news, it sounds like we might have a decent central defence against Wolves in the League Cup then?

The League Cup… what memories of last year and our run to the final.  I fully expected to turn up and there not be many there but the crowd was decent for this competition, forcing all four sides of the ground to be open. I do wonder how local people can justify going to Wembley and then not going to the game tonight when it only cost a tenner at most.  Anyway – each to their own.

Wolves have had a decent start n the Championship so this was not going to be easy even if they rested a few players.  Championship sides I think can be forgiven for resting players as the untold millions of the Premier League is always going to be more important.  For 2nd tier Premier League clubs like Saints however, it’s the best opportunity of making it into Europe so why not pick a decent side. 

OK then – the Hoedt and WGS partnership isn’t happening today.  Judging by the 11 names I have in front of me, it looks like Jack Stephens is playing in midfield which would have been good to see, only it’s not true as we line up with 3 at the back with Bednarek being slotted in between Stephens and Yoshida.  The reserve full backs are in with Pied and McQueen.  Romeu and JWP in midfield with Austin, Boufal and Tadic up front.  So – 6 changes and a new formation and only McQueen and Boufal with anything remotely resembling pace.

I use these cup games to sit in different parts of the ground and today I’m in the Itchen stand, right behind the Saints bench.  From the kick off, Pellegrino is up and shouting instructions and showing very obvious annoyance when play is slow or when players are blatantly in the wrong position, usually sitting too deep.

Wolves look well organized and we, quite frankly, look awful.  The midfield is tsrethced all over the place and Pied, in particular is shocking.  He gets skinned about 3 times in 5 minutes and has to be bailed out by either Stephens playing behind him, or by Dicko, the Wolves striker, fucking it up.  On the other wing, McQueen is playing like a proper wing back and getting free up the pitch but his crosses are uniformly straight to a Wolves player, usually Batth who heads everything away.

Up front there is nothing going on.  Austin just ambling about like he can’t go any faster, Tadic slowing everything to funeral pace and Boufal – let’s not even go there.  Anyway, we have 3 centre backs playing and none of them are arsed to pick up the one Wolves striker as a hopeful long ball finds Dicko in all sorts of space but luckily he’s got the first touch and subtlety of Virgil’s agent so it runs through to Fraser.

It takes about 35 minutes for us to do anything when JWP whips in a free kick from 40 yards out and Bednarek gets up first and gets his head to it but Wolves keeper Norris saves well, if a little but over-spectacularly.  We work another chance as Boufal twists and turns before standing up a cross which eventually finds Pied who lashes it wide though again the keeper got a touch.  Boufal and JWP work the corner short and JWP’s blocked shot comes to Tadic, on his good foot about 8 yards out under no challenge and he shits it side footed high and wide.  Utter wank. Half time.

It's been fucking shit so far and we change nothing so the performance doesn’t change. Actually, it does a bit as we’ve got worse and you can tell that Wolves feel that they can actually win this.  Nothing much happens for 20 minutes and then they win a corner.  Over it comes and Batth is standing on the 6 yard line, a standing jump above Stephens and it’s down and in as Fraser and everyone else just watches it.  Fucking shit awful marking and defending.  It actually goes in off of Tadic who registers his first assist in fucking ages, the useless twat.

After the goal we pile on the pressure.  No we don’t – we’re still shit.  Redmond is on for Bednarek but nothing’s happened really.  Wolves look more likely to score than we do. We’ve got Gabbiadini and Long on now for a last desperate throw of the dice but Wolves break and the ball gets fed to Wilson who is through – Fraser gets his angles all wrong and he just rolls it into the net.  Fucking garbage.  The last 8 minutes goes by with just a shit effort from Redmond going wide and that’s it.  Wembley was great – not this year.

That was fucking dreadful and we totally 100% deserved to lose. I have to say that Wolves put in a perfect away performance. They soaked up what we had, which wasn't very much, scored with a set piece, defended it and then scored on the break at the end of the game to kill it off. Perfect from them but absolutely shit from us. 

Pellegrino got this game completely wrong. Any formation that relies on wingbacks, need you to have good wingbacks and whilst McQueen had his moments in the first Half and got some crosses over, Pied was completely and utterly lost from the first minute to the last. I know he's been injured but he was fucking useless. We might have got away with that formation if Cedric and Bertrend were playing but with the reserve fullbacks it was obviously not going to work from about the second minute onwards. Because Pied in particular was always in the wrong place the midfield two of Romeu and JWP had too much to do to cover the ground. JWP had a real chance to step up and show why he should be in the Premier League side and he totally and utterly failed. 

I sat in the Itchin stand tonight, directly behind our bench and it was interesting to see how animated Pellegrino was on the sideline. In the first half in particular he was literally doing a Basil Fawlty and jumping up and down and tearing at his hair at the way Pied in particular was playing. It wasn't just Pied though as he was constantly shouting to the players that their positioning was completely wrong. There were some points where he actually reminded me of myself on the sidelines running my under 13's team, trying desperately hard to bite your lip rather than give someone an almighty bollocking. The moments of complete despair usually came when one of our centre backs failed to get off the ground to win an aerial challenge against a much smaller striker.

Usually we have two centre backs who can't head ball but today we had three. As I've said before, I'm not writing Bednarek off yet but he has massive flaws in his game and he needs to play a full season with the under 23s. When the ball is in the air, he simply does not win it and when it's on the ground he's always on his arse or off-balance. In his defence, he needed to be helped through the game by Stephens and Yoshida but they were dreadful as well. The killer Wolves goal which was the first one totally sums up our centre backs and goalkeeper. We have a 6 foot seven goalkeeper who is nailed to his line so the defenders have to head the ball and they just can't. They are not physical enough and they are not determined enough. The corner landed about 6 yards out, Fraser didn't come and puncher as per usual and Stephens didn't get off the ground leaving Batth to head one of the simplest goals you will ever see. It was absolutely pathetic. 

Elsewhere on the pitch, I was kind of hoping that the likes of Austin and Boufal would put their hands up to be selected on Saturday but both put in performances that would leave them lucky to even make the bench. 

Charlie Austin is not fit. He can only play for about 60 minutes and that's a disgrace bearing in mind he doesn't actually do much running anyway. My analogy of him lurching around like a bloke has just spilled out of the pub at midnight was entirely accurate tonight. I guess all that cheating at monopoly has left him too worn out to run much.  He is not suited to playing as a lone striker so unless we are going to play with two up front then he is really not the answer we are looking for. 

Tonight was also the night when I finally lost it with Dusan Tadic. His attitude was absolutely pathetic in the second half last night. It wasn't going well for him so every time he got the ball, he was just looking to go to ground. There was one tackle in about the 80th minute where the Wolves player won the ball and he just rolled around on the ground like he'd been shot. The linesman was about 6 yards away and the referee was about 10 yards away and neither of them saw a foul. The referee had him completely sussed because he was always looking to hit the deck and therefore was never going to be given the freekick he wanted. Tadic couldn't be arsed to do the hard work and shield the ball use his body strength to hold off the player, it as easier to just abdicate responsibility and collapse.  After his little strop last season when he was deservedly being substituted every game, Tadic has enjoyed an uninterrupted run in the first team which he has exclusively failed to use. He's in a comfort zone now and the only way to get anything out of it of him is to drop him and make him work for it. He was absolutely fucking pathetic today. We need some pace in those wide areas which is why Redmond always plays.

The sad thing is that with a decent performance last night I feel that Boufal could have made a real case to be included ahead of Tadic on Saturday. As it was he was lucky not to be substituted after the first 20 minutes when he was nothing short of pathetic. He showed a few signs of life at the end of the first half but if you think 20 minutes of looking vaguely decent against a championship sides reserves is enough then you've got a serious problem.

Hopefully Pellegrino and Les Reed learned tonight that our squad players are not of the required standard.  Put one or two in our best side and we get away with it but play 5 or 6 of them and we are awful.  They were so lacking in invention and spirit it was painful.  This was as bad as the Augsburg friendly when we last put the reserves out.

And breathe. It was garbage but it has gone. Move on as the proper first team will be in action in Saturday at Huddersfield.