Premier League Match 10 - Brighton 1 Southampton 1

Won't Get Fooled Again

A trip to the Amex or The Falmer Stadium or whatever it’s called, for a game against newly promoted Brighton who in truth, have done pretty well this season so far.  Thankfully, all the manufactured ‘Derby’ style needle, manufactured by Gus Poyet, seems to have died down and we can just get on with the game.  Brighton are a decent club now with a decent stadium and impressive manager and owner.  I’ve witnessed their improvement through the eyes of my workmates, seeing as I work in Brighton and fair play to them.  Chris Hughton is one of football’s good guys and you can’t help but wish him well – it direct contrast to Poyet who was a complete shitbag.  Gus left Brighton, went to Sunderland, lost 0-8 to Saints and got fired, Where is he now?  Who cares.

This week saw Saints release another amusing video casting Staplewood as a clone farm and Stuart Taylor as a tea boy.  All good harmless stuff but the ‘serious’ message of the video was about Southampton turning potential into excellence.  I watched the England Under 17s win the U17 World Cup on Saturday morning – guess how many Saints players were in the team? – none.  How many in the squad? – none.  How many in the Under 20s squad that won the World Cup? – none.  Maybe we’re not as good as we think we are.  How many academy graduates are in our first team now? – yep, you guessed it.  We have a few around the squad like JWP, McQueen, Stephens and Targett but none playing regularly.  Recruitment we are good at in the main.

The irony is that if we did have a player in the international squads, he would be a lot closer to our first team than any of the boys who play for the big clubs.  Most of our goals in the U17 tournament were scored by Rhian Brewster who plays for Liverpool.  He would be behind Mané, Coutinho, Firmino, Sturridge, Solanke, Woodburn and probably some others who I don’t know about, when you talk about getting first team games.  The depressing thing is that England can win World Cups at age group levels but these boys will stagnate unless they have the guts to get out of the big clubs and play. 

Elsewhere, Leicester have sacked Craig Shakespeare and have appointed Claude Puel.  Now this is going to be interesting because it will answer the question of whether it was the manager or the players last season.  At Leicester, I think he has better attackers but not-so-good defenders and defensive midfield.  Will he play to their strengths or will he do what he did with Saints when the defence was weakened by Jose and Virgil respectively and just sit everybody deep?  Good luck to him.

The news out of St.Marys’ this week is that Mario Lemina is injured – shit.  Also shit is that there is no ‘1 week’ style timeframe on it which makes me think that he’s properly fucked and we’re not going to see him for a while.  He’s one player we will really struggle to replace as he’s the most (possibly only) dynamic player we have at the moment.

So – another stupid Sky o’clock kick off time as the team sees three changes with Boufal getting a start ahead of Long, JWP coming in for Lemina and Wesley Hoedt preferred to Yoshida, I assume to counter the aerial threat of Glenn Murray.

As the game kicks off it’s plain as day that we’re playing 4-3-3 which is I guess, a tribute to Claude Puel.  It’s the formation that didn’t work with wingers and full backs chucking crosses in and no one being in the box. 

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around.

Saints start well as it happens as Brighton sit back.  We look quicker to the ball and they don’t appear to have anything at all much.  After 5 minutes of virtual keepball, Boufal runs at the midfield and Dale Stephens, who we had for a bit in League 1, brings him down.  Saints have been busy posting videos of free kick training but this is for real and fair play, up steps JWP, curls it over the wall and it thuds off the top of the near post and bounces out straight to Steven Davis who reacts well to stoop and nod it into the empty net.  Can’t help but think that a defender should really have got back on the line as the keeper was on his arse but never mind, 1-0 to the good.

Now is the time to keep playing the same way and put the foot on the throat with a second goal.  Get that and there is no way on earth they’ll score two against us. No, let’s sit back and allow Brighton to play their way into the game.  They don’t create anything much but we’re now playing 4-5-40 yards-Gabbi and the ghost of Puel is very much in the room.

And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed.

We have a little five minutes spell on the half hour where we look threatening again and once again it’s Boufal who is the spark, running at people and finding space on the right and pulling a good ball back to Tadic who takes a good touch onto his left foot and his shot is heading wide anyway but deflects for a corner.  One place Brighton are strong is in central defence where Dunk and Duffy are 100% committed and get their head on everything.

Brighton have offered nothing in attack but there’s a little warning where a cross from the left finds Knockaert at the back post and he can’t turn it goalwards.  We don’t clear it though and eventually another cross comes in and Virgil heads it over the bar under pressure from Duffy and the ref does us a favour by giving a goal kick.  Half time.  Since the goal, the first half has been shite.  If we come out like that in the second half then we won’t win – it’s that simple.

We start the second half ok and once again, look the better side without producing anything interesting like a shot at goal or getting bodies in the box or anything like that.  I notice how crab like we are.  We go forward and then there’s a 10 yard ball to knock to someone.  We could play it in front of them and let them run onto it and push forward but, if we do that then it’s closer to a defender so there’s a chance we might lose it, so we play it behind our player so he has to break his run and go back and get it.  No danger of losing it as our player is between the defender and the ball.  Risk-averse, dull, slow, boring bollocks.

All this is ok if you win 1-0 but Brighton get in our half for the first time since the break, the excellent Gross finds himself wide right in loads of space and puts over a cross to the back post where Murray rises above Cedric and meets it, guiding it into the near top corner as Fraser flails, trying and failing to keep it out.  How the fuck has that gone in?  He hasn’t exactly bulleted it into the net.  How the fuck are we not beating this lot?  Oh yes, it’s because we’ve sat off and let them play under no pressure at all.

There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me

The goal gives us a bit more urgency and Bertand puts over a good ball to the near post to meet Gabbiadini’s run but unlike our defenders, theirs have tracked the runner and Duffy throws himself in the way to deflect Gabbi’s effort over the bar.  This bit of action is like finding a very very small diamond in a massive bucket of shit, only the diamond isn’t a diamond at all, it just gave you hope for a second before you go back to the rest of the bucket of shit.

Pellegrino changes things by removing one of the few risk-averse players we have as Boufal is replaced with Redmond.  Tadic has been fucking dreadful to the point of being embarrassing but of course, it’s Boufal who comes off.  We have had three moments in front of goal and Boufal created two of them so of course, off he goes.  Redmond’s first contribution is to pick up a ball on the left and spray a confident looking cross field pass straight out of play, nowhere near anyone. Tadic and JWP are eventually deservedly hauled off and Long and Hojbjerg get a token 5 minutes but these substitutions have an air of ‘running the clock down’ about them.  Full time – Shite.

What an absolutely appalling game between two shit sides.  It was like one of those rigged games at a World Cup where both teams were happy with a draw, especially the last 20 minutes.  From our point of view it was the same performance as we had at Crystal Palace earlier on in the season, we scored after five minutes and then showed no intent to go out and get a second goal to kill the game off against very limited opponents. We managed to hold on against Palace, mainly because Lemina dominated the midfield but not today. We had a totally dominated the first six minutes, scored a goal and then we decided that what was serving us so well was not the way to go forward and we just backed off and allowed Brighton to play their way into the game. They had been absolutely fucking rubbish until then and they were still pretty shit despite that but we were just as bad. Apart from their goal, they created absolutely nothing but neither did we and that's my point. We created absolutely fuck all as everyone went into sideways and backwards mode and allowed Brighton all the time in the world that they needed to put all their players back behind the ball.   When they got it, we just pulled everyone back as well.

It was a strange game because Brighton play like an away side. I've no doubt that they will accuse us of putting eleven behind the ball the whole time and we were guilty of that but we are not the home side and it's fucking bizarre to see a team playing at home against a team like us and hardly committing anybody to attack. Pellegrino said during the week that we don't have an identity yet. He's wrong. Yes we do. For virtually the whole of 2017 we have been fucking risk-averse and fucking boring. That is our identity – fucking boring.  After 10 league games, the new manager is showing absolutely no signs of getting the team to play with any purpose. When we are playing teams that we should be beating, we need to back ourselves and say we are better than you and we are going to impose our game on you and if we do that, then we will win the game as you are not good enough to beat us. We should back ourselves, not sit back and allow our opponents to think that they have a chance because sooner or fucking later they are going to score.  We’re allegedly playing high pressing, high intensity football – my arse.

What the fuck was with the substitutions today? He clearly really didn't want to play Boufal from the start but probably felt that he had to because of the goal last week. Why on earth was he substituted when Tadic and JWP had been fucking bollocks all game and in the case of Tadic being nothing short of an absolute embarrassment both in terms of his rolling around when barely touched and in terms of his lack of any product whatsoever. Quite simply, Boufal should be ahead of both Tadic and Redmond in the pecking order.  Similarly I can't believe that Hojbjerg should not be ahead of JWP in the pecking order. Okay, he has got his set pieces and he had a big hand in the goal today but all I saw JWP do was slow down attacks, usually by passing the ball behind the player that he was knocking it to.  He's not the only one who was guilty of this, Cedric and Steve Davis was frequently taking all the sting out of our attacks just by passing it behind a player who had to stop his run and go and collect it. It's just not fucking good enough.

What the fuck were our tactics exactly?  Sit deep and play on the break perhaps – how does that work with no pace in the side?  Dominate possession perhaps – sitting deep and letting them have it isn’t going to let you do that.  I think we were actually trying to bore everyone to fucking death and win that way.  Part of the problem today was the absence of Lemina.  Just when Pellegrino was getting brave enough to play just the two deep midfielders, he gets injured so of course we now absolutely have to play with three.

Too Late to Move Now

I’ve shied away from giving Fraser Forster too much criticism up to now because the bandwagon is rolling downhill very fast at the moment but he had lead boots today for the equalising goal. There is no fucking way that Glenn Murray should be able to score that header at Fraser’s near post. No fucking way, even though it did take a little deflection off of Cedric.  When the cross goes from one wing to the other and there’s a back post header, the keeper should not be diving towards his near post – he should already be there.  This is why they tell strikers to head it back towards the far post so the keeper has to change direction.  Without the deflection he would have stopped it as it would have been nearer the middle of the goal but even so, his positioning is all wrong and he’s been beaten at the near post and it’s crap.  The other thing about the goal is that Murray has simply stepped towards Cedric and created a mismatch.  Why is Virgil not there marking him?  Yes it’s good centre forward play but the big defenders should be marking the big striker.  It’s also obvious that Murray was going to be looking to do that at some point.  Maybe it’s a zonal marking argument but for me, you don’t leave a 6ft 2 striker being marked by a midget.  If your man peels off, you follow him – not hand him over to a midget.  Also, where was Bertrand when the cross came in – nowhere near it allowing Gross to pick his man out.  It’s not as simple as just blaming the keeper – I used to think every goal we let in was the keepers fault – when I was 6. 

Anyway, the keeper should still have stopped it. Forster is in the team and he will continue to be in the team because we have no other option.  People who say we should pick McCarthy, based on nothing other than him not being Forster, really crack me up. McCarthy last played with any regularity in September 2015 when he played the first seven games of the season at Crystal Palace. He was dreadful and got dropped for Wayne Hennessey who is usually held up as being the worst goalkeeper in the Premier League. Since then he hasn't played a first team game in the league and he cannot get through a game for the under 23’s when there is absolutely no pressure, without fucking something up.

I also like to mention Neil Swarbrick today who was a pretty shite referee. Nothing really game changing but he was useless.  How the fucking hell Dale Stephens didn't get booked is completely beyond me and in the one incident where he whacked Boufal at knee height and all the Brighton players were up surrounding the referee. Get your fucking card out you waste of space. Then there was the Glenn Murray/Wesley Hoedt incident where Murray fouled him, then kicked him when he's on the ground causing Wesley to get up and push him in the chest.  Yellow card apiece.  Well played you fucking twat - so Wesley got booked for basically not being very happy about getting kicked whilst he was on the ground with his back turned. Then there was the ridiculous tackle by Bong on Shane Long in the last couple of minutes. Okay he got the yellow card out because he really had no choice but what got me about it was Izzy Brown putting his hand across the referee to try and stop him going over there to book him.  Laying hands on a referee should be an automatic yellow card no matter what.

Having highlighted the Brighton incidents, it's also fair to point out that Tadic should've got a yellow card for a ridiculous dive and feigning injury. I know we have this diving thing now where you can get a retrospective ban but it doesn't work because a dive only gets looked at if you get away with it, the referee misses it and it changes the game.  The referee saw the Tadic dive so it can’t get looked at.  Look at it FA and if he dived then ban him.  Pellegrino will still find some way to pick him however so there’s probably very little point.

I saw a question asked on Twitter about where we would finish this season and that it was hard to predict.  It’s a guess of course but I reckon we’re heading for about 14^th place.  We’ll know more of course after we’ve played the rest of the big boys.  With the fixtures we have had, I reckon we should have been looking at having 21 points by now and we have 13.  Unless we can take some big scalps in the run up to Christmas, it isn’t going to look terribly pretty.  Against the big sides we just know that Pellegrino is going to just bore the shit out of every game and maybe that’s acceptable but against the likes of Brighton, with all due respect, it just isn’t.

Burnley at home next and another opponent who will sit deep and challenge us to break them down.  Once again we are going to have to play a lot quicker in order to do this and once again I expect us not to do so and it’ll be another painful affair to watch.

So, ten games in and what do we think of Mr Pellegrino? 

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

We Won’t Get Fooled Again.

“Won’t Get Fooled Again”

© Pete Townshend

Premier League Match 9 - Southampton 1 West Bromwich Albion 0

So Good That Opposition Players Tackle Each Other Rather Than Him

West Brom at home and the God of Anti-football, Tony Pulis is in the building. West Brom actually started the season well with two wins but ever since then they've been complete crap and playing the only way that Pulis knows which is to basically take a goalkeeper, eight centre backs a defensive midfielder and a battering ram of a striker and hope it works. I am of course exaggerating slightly but not too much. Jay Rodriguez joined them in the summer and I never saw how he would fit in to a Pulis side but I think he's played every game so far and has scored one goal. Bizarrely, I saw him mentioned in regard to getting called up by England again. You have to be fucking joking unless he's turned into a completely different player in the three months since he left us. The Baggies did pull off a very impressive loan signing when Grzegorz Krychowiak arrived from Paris St Germain. Robert Lewandowski takes all the acclaim when Poland play but it's Krychowiak who bosses the game. I am looking forward to seeing him play today and hoping that he is not as good as I think he is.

Apparently West Brom have a bit of a goalkeeping crisis with both their first choices, Foster and Myhill being injured. Apparently, Foster injured his knee having a kick around with his four year old in the garden. My money is on Foster time wasting and taking ages to get the ball back into play so his four-year-old got pissed off and kicked him on the knee.

Most of speculation about Southampton this week has been centred on whether Sofiane Boufal would get a start in place of either of our underperforming wide players. There was also the opportunity to go out with three at the back after a weeks training with everybody available but in the event, the formationa stayed the same and Nathan Redmond did get left out but Steve Davis came in and not the Moroccan. From the players picked it looked like Shane Long on the right, Tadic on the left with last weeks two goal hero Manolo Gabbiadini up front.

There was a bit of sunshine as we walked up to the turnstiles but there was also the threat of it absolutely pissing down at some point. A major boost when I got to my seat was that there was no plastic fucking clapper attached to it.  I guess that the club thought that with Pulis and West Brom in town, anything that could potentially be used as a missile was not a good idea.

Away we go and West Brom are set up with Livermore, Krychowiak and Barry in midfield – that’s another 3 defenders basically.  Chadli and J-Rod are wide with Rondon up front on his own.  Within a couple of minutes it’s obvious that Rondon is going to have half the pitch to himself as far as supporting Baggies players goes.  Good old Tony Pulis – ever predictable.  Gareth Barry has the first shot and it’s a pot shot as a clearance rebounds to him but it’s always going wide as Fraser had it covered.

We’re having all the possession without creating too much until we win a cheap free kick on the edge of the box as Long goes down in a heap as he kicks Livermore.  It’s just to the right of centre about 35 yards out and up steps Bertie and it flicks off a head in the wall and pings off the angle of post and bar and away.

We are the better side from that point which isn’t hard.  Bertie looks up for it today and it breaking forward well with J-Rod not tracking him very well.  From one such foray forward he feeds Tadic who stabs his shot straight at Foster.  We have a chance from a corner as Davo puts it in and it seems to catch on the wind and drops in the penalty area and Romeu spins on it six yards out and must score but he can only stab it wide.  For fuck sake. Foster takes this near miss as a chance to slow the game down and takes three minutes to take the goal kick.  Yet again the referee fails to give the early booking that would cut all this shit out straight away.

Virgil seems to be a bit more into it today and I’ve had no cause to think he wasn’t giving a shite so far, possibly because West Brom weren’t attacking at all.  The big man saunters forward and keeps going to about 35 yards out before arrowing a shot just over the bar.  Good effort to be fair.

The hightlight of West Brom’s half was to win a free kick as Gabbi brought down Krychowiak.  A free kick in the opposition half is a major thing for a Pulisball side as it gives them the opportunity to get all the huge lads lumbering forward and then they can take so long to actually take the fucking thing that the opposition defenders might have fallen asleep by the time it comes in.  Anyway, they fuck it up and we break through Davo feeding Gabbi and he’s off down the left wing showing decent pace to get to the edge of the box and play a superb ball into Long but our non-scoring stiker can’t sort his feet out and can only prod the ball at Foster.

Right on half time we have a corner which Davo takes, Yoshida meets and heads too close to Foster who pushes it wide.  Bertie swings one over from the other side and it bounces up again and Maya tries an overhead kick which lands a couple of yards wide.

Half time and West Brom are fucking shite.  I mean really fucking shite.  No attacking intent and time wasting from minute 1.  That’s all they’ve fucking got and 10 men behind the ball at all times.  I’m more annoyed with them than I am with our inability to break them down.  Last year JWP scored a free kick after five minutes and it was an easy game after that but no such luck this year.

After 10 turgid minutes at the start of the second half, Pulis gets all tactically innovative and takes off a midfielder in Barry and brings on another centre back in McAulay and switches to 3-5-2.  He’ll dress this up as an attacking move but it really isn’t when everyone sits so deep.  They do create a chance though with a huge punt forward from Foster is headed on to Krychowiak and he lifts it over the defence first time to J-Rod who is clear, coming in from the right but luckily, this is J-Rod 2017, not J-Rod 2014 and his early shot is fucking dreadful and is closer to the corner flag than the goal.

Gabbi tries to pick a spot from the edge of the box but just finds Foster again and it really is looking unlikely and Mauricio decides to bring on a sub and it’s Redmond ahead of Boufal with Romeu being the man sacrificed.  I guess it’s good that he’s going for it but it’s bizarre to take the main midfield strength off.  Redmond gets booed as he comes onto the pitch.  I really wonder about the mentality of some people who watch football matches.  Yes, paying your money does give you the right to have a voice but maybe not the right to be a complete prick.

Redmond’s first contribution is to get his head up and play a diagonal ball which gets all the way through to Tadic who just has the keeper to beat.  No chance as Foster comes out and blocks well.  As the ball goes lose, Tadic falls to the ground like he’s been shot which is beyond pathetic to be honest.  Redmond, who has made a positive impact, then runs at the defence and curls a right footed shot just over before the next round of subs with 10 minutes to go with Tadic and Long going off for Boufal and Austin.

Then it happens.  Firstly Lemina waves a tired leg at a ball and plays a big airshot.  As the ball bounces down, he collides with Rondon but neither are making an attempt to play the ball so the ref says play on.  Boufal picks it up about 10 years outside our penalty area and turns straight into Nyom before spinning the other way and setting off.  Chased by Nyom, Boufal goes past Livermore on half way who can’t be arsed to put a tackle in and then he swerves past Dawson who for good measure, is taken out by Nyom who just clatters into him.  Boufal is thirty yards out now and a drop of the shoulder and a step-over does for McAulay and he sidefoots it into the corner past Hegazi and Foster.  Pandemonium.  It’s one of the great goals,  It will be downplayed because he plays for Southampton but it’s one of the great goals.  He’s picked it up on the edge of his own box, beaten half of the opposition team and calmly passed it into the net.  It’s brilliant and you won’t see a better goal than that anywhere.  Forget goal of the month and goal of the season – no one will beat that.

We have the small matter of seeing out the game now but it’s amazingly easy.  West Brom can’t even raise some forward momentum when 1-0 down with five to go.  They really are fucking dreadful.  We play on the break and Boufal sets off again in midfield and beats a couple before sliding a good ball in for Austin but his first touch around the keeper takes him wide and he can only hit the outside of the post.  The End.  30 seconds of brilliance in amongst 94 minutes of shite but who cares.

What. A. Goal. It is actually, the definition of genius of football pitch. It's Maradona against England in ‘86, it's a goal that Messi or Ronaldo might score on the TV but it's been scored in front of my eyes, by a Southampton player, running towards the goal that I was sat behind. It really doesn't get any better than that. Boufal has been excellent in his last two substitute appearances so we knew that he was on form and confident but that was ridiculous. The funny thing was that as he got to the edge of the penalty area I just knew he was going to score. After that moment, he sent the last defender off-balance with a drop of the shoulder and just rolled into the corner. I had complete confidence in his ability to finish the job. I sometimes have confidence in Gabbiadini in that situation but no other Saints player even comes close. A truly brilliant goal which deserved to win any match.  The rest of the game was pretty shite to be honest but it really doesn’t matter because Sofiane Boufal scored one of the greatest goals I’ll ever see and we won the game.

The other big bonus of course is that Tony Pulis and West Brom lost.  I have sympathy for their fans however.  Imagine being a West Brom fan who travels to away games for a moment. You've paid for your ticket and you've travelled down from the Midlands for a 5.30pm kick off.  You could have stayed at home and watched it on the TV but you’ve decided to pay your hard-earned and support your team.  You've probably got fucking soaked and you are going to take ages to get home afterwards and your team produces that. By that I mean ‘fuck all’.  No intent to attack, no passing of the ball.  Just wasting time from the first minute and playing for 0-0 and hoping somehow that you’ll nick a goal from a set piece.  Fuck off Tony – your fans deserve better you fucking dinosaur.  Couldn’t even muster a token effort when the game plan went completely out of the window and you let a goal in.  If you’re a Baggies fan who travelled today – I salute you.

Come to think of it, it's not just today either as they do this on a regular basis. It's not solely for Tony Pulis thing either as it seems to be the same every fucking time they come to St Mary's.  They were fucking rubbish – all game. I mean we are rubbish on occasions but at least the players can pass the ball to each other – sure we go sideways and backwards but at least the players want the ball and can pass it ten yards to each other and control it. West Brom aren't even capable of that.  A lot of it is of course how Pulis set them up with a back four and three defensive midfielders in Livermore, Barry and Krychowiak.  He's an absolute fucking dinosaur and the sooner managers of his type are gone from the Premier League, the better.  I was quite envious when I saw that West Brom had signed Krychowiak but I bet he has already joined a long line of players have joined a Pulis side and wondered what the fucking hell they are doing there.

Pulis Sees One of his Midfielders go Over the Half Way Line 

I always thought that J-Rod would be on a hiding to nothing playing for Pulis.  He did manage to show that we were exactly right to sell him when we did. Apart from the horrific miss which was only horrific because of how far he missed by, there was a singlea passage of play that summed him up when a straight ball got played into his feet and he had Ryan Bertrand behind him and Bertie merely nudged him the slightest bit and just took the ball off him and strolled off with it. It was so easy and that summed up post injury J-Rod in a nutshell.

I can actually forgive us for not being great in the main part today because of the attitude of the opposition that we were playing against. We were not without our own problems though. We seemed to start with Long on the right, Tadic on the left and I think the idea was for the three forwards to rotate positions but it just ended up looking like a complete mess and when we needed an out ball to the right wing for example, we had two left wingers and a centre forward.  The bottom line was that we were causing West Brom very few problems and not testing out Ben Foster in the West Brom goal. His biggest test was wasting as much time as he possibly could over every goal kick without getting booked. I think every fan should write to Ben Foster demanding 33% off the cost of their ticket back as he wastes about 30 minutes of the 90.

Many expected Boufal to play from the start today instead of Redmond but Pellegrino still has Redmand ahead of Boufal in the pecking order which is why he was the first substitute used today. Some of our more special friends decided to boo when Redmond came onto the pitch.  I don't have words strong enough really to describe people who boo a player before he's even touched the ball. What next, booing a player in the car park before the game?  What are you actually trying to achieve you fucking idiots. For the record, Redmond did okay when he came on.

Though I’m not his biggest fan any more, I'll say that van Dijk had an excellent game with Yoshida and Bertrand also being very solid. Lemina was once again, our best player and it’s good that Boufal’s goal takes the spotlight off of just how good Lemina was.  On the downside, Fraser looked shit scared of everything again, Cedric didn't have his best of games and Romeu is still not playing as well as he did last season but they did enough today. Shane Long and Dusan Tadic are playing to exactly the same standard as they did last season which is somewhere between piss poor and average. Tadic had a truly pathetic moment when he missed a chance and then pulled out a horrific dive to try and con a penalty out of the referee.  Shane was Shane and no more needs to be said.

Pellegrino changed the side today and let Redmond out and though I wondered what the fuck he was doing when he took Romeu off, you have to say that the attacking substitutions worked.  The reason we won however was of course, down to a bit of individual brilliance and hopefully the manager will now see that he needs the element of unpredictability that Boufal brings to the party.  Boufal’s best is better than Tadic’ best or Redmond’s best so it surely is the managers job to get the best out of Boufal.  We need that and we need more movement up front.  Gabbiadini is the only one making any runs ahead of the ball.  Long will chase it once it’s been played into a space but we need more than that.

Match of the Day and the distilled highlights made the game look not too bad. All of the focus was on the goal and rightly so but they can't just talk about it being one of the best goals ever.  They have to talk about the celebration which involved Boufal running to the bench and beating his chest in front of the manager. According to that complete wanker Philip Neville, this is a huge negative but I don't think your find a single Saints fan who will complain about a player scoring a goal like that and then showing a bit of passion whilst releasing frustration at not being picked on a regular basis. Imagine being that talented and having to sit and watch week after week as we struggle to do anything remotely entertaining.  Boufal was basically saying that this is what I can do.  Nothing wrong with that.

Elsewhere the weekend was great.  Everton got hammered 5-2 at home by Arsenal which pushes Ronald Koeman closer to the exit door and Everton into the bottom three.  Can’t see Barcelona coming calling any time soon you snake.  It’s absolutely delicious watching the arrogant fucker crumble and talking of arrogant fuckers, overrated gurning cheerleader Jurgen Klopp saw his Liverpool side smashed 4-1 by Spurs and the additional icing on that cake was Dejan Lovren being complete shite, coughing up two goals and being substituted after half an hour.  I’ll repeat that I do feel a bit sorry for Lovren – he was good or Saints because he had Schneiderlin and Wanyama in front of him whilst at Liverpool he has Henderson and Can in front of him and they’re both shite.

Anyway, enough of laughing at Merseyside, 4 points out of 6 in the little four game spell that we had to pick up points in.  Now we have Brighton away and Burnley at home.  Brighton picked up a decent win at West Ham so they will be confident and Burnley are higher than us in the league with a very good away record.  Not easy but it’s time to lay down a marker and we need to do that before the fixtures start getting properly difficult.

Ronald Koeman with a Barcelona Badge:
He's Good at Photoshop

Post Script.

Honest Ron got fired.  What goes around comes around.  On the plus side, it frees him up for the Barcelona job and they won’t even have to pay compensation to anyone.  I wonder what the top brass at Barcelona will say when his CV lands on their desk the next time there is a vacancy.  It’s hard not to laugh so I’m not going to try.

Premier League Match 8 - Southampton 2 Newcastle 2

Rafa and Mauricio Dressed as Wankers

After what seems like ages, we’re back at SMS for the first of four season defining games.  Four games in which we need to put some serious points on the board – I’m talking 8-10.  Get that and there won’t be as much pressure on the December fixtures when we take on all the big boys.

A quiet week at Saints was punctuated with the news that Sir Rickie Lambert has retired at the age of 35.  Personally I was not surprised given all was quiet since he got released by Cardiff at the end of last season.

In my Saints supporting lifetime I’ve had a few favourite players who you would put in the ‘legend’ category, I started in 75/76 and the first favourite was Mick Channon, then Keegan, then le Tissier and after him came Rickie Lambert.  The post has been vacant for the past 3 years since the big man left.  A season with Liverpool, one with West Brom and one with Cardiff and he’s done, retired from football at the age of 35. 

When he left to join Liverpool I wrote this…

http://leagueoneminus10.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/rickie-lambert-southampton-legend.html

It still stands up pretty well aside from the line about ‘Brendan Rodgers knows what he’s buying’.  I was giving Rodgers some credit there but in fact, as it turned out, Rodgers used Rickie as a loss leader so he could sign Lallana and Lovren.  Yep, Brendan is a wanker and I recoil every time he gets linked with the Saints job.

I totally understand Rickie going to Liverpool and I’m sure he’s glad that he did but in football term, he would have been better off staying with us.  In a hypothetical world, If he’d stayed, we wouldn’t have had to flog Graziano Pellé to death and make him play every game in his first season and Rickie would have got more of a look in than he did at Liverpool. 

Rickie did an interview when he retired, putting us firmly at the top of his list of clubs but the most interesting bit was him talking about the mental effect of not being a regular starter any more when he joined Liverpool.  He thinks now that he was wrong to accept that.  That’s a shame but maybe it will act as a warning to others – probably not the generation of players who are making theor way in the game now.  I also think that the fact that (by his admission) he didn’t look after himself in the early part of his career has contributed to him being the kind of player who always struggled for fitness if not playing regularly.  It was never really a problem when he was with us. 

Not only did he score the goals that won us the JPT, got us promoted out of League 1, got us promoted out of the Championship and then established us in the Premier League – he also defined the way we played by being the target man and the focal point of our attack and the main man that the others play off of.  Pellé replaced him well for two years but look at how directionless we are now in attack.  How we could do with signing a 27 year old Rickie Lambert now.  Good luck with your retirement big man and hope to see you at St Mary’s soon in some capacity.

So, an international break with Saints players disappearing off all round the world and the hope that they would come back unharmed.  As is always the case, some fared better than others in terms of results as they bid to propel their countries to the World Cup Finals next year.  England, with Ryan Bertrand playing and Fraser Forster on the bench, predictably qualified with very boring wins of Slovenia and Lithuania.  It was the usual easy qualification due to our half decent individual players but we’ve done the same as always and qualified due with no prospect of anything except more disappointment in the summer.  We have the usual ticks in the usual boxes -   No coherent style of play, no bedded in system, big club reserve players who are crap etc etc.  On top of that we can add ‘manager with charisma and inspirational qualities of a lettuce’.  For every Harry Kane we have a Jordan Henderson and for every Marcus Rashford we have an Oxlade-Chamberlain. 

Spot the Difference

For other countries it was more interesting for the Saints players.  After missing a few sitters and chances to end his run of 30 odd club and country games without a goal, Shane Long missed the game with Wales with a knock.  Regardless, Ireland beat the arrogant fuckers 1-0 so one year after giving it the big one about England going out of Euro 2016, the same Welsh players are out of the World Cup, knocked out by Dusan Tadic and Serbia and Shane Long and Ireland.  Don’t let the door hit your arse.  So, Shane and Ireland have a two legged playoff to negotiate and good luck to them.  The Dutch, with Virgil van Dijk in the team and Wesley Hoedt on the bench won two matches but still went out as Sweden made the playoffs.  Virgil played both games which I guess is good for his match fitness so it should benefit us, if he can be arsed.  Cedric will be making the trip after helping Portugal beat Switzerland and enough time has passed now to wish José Fonte well on what will surely be his international swansong.  Manolo Gabbiadini will be in the playoffs with Italy which was guaranteed even before the latest games.  Mario Lemina and Gabon had an outside chance of qualifying but he’ll be watching the finals on TV as they came up short.

So, Newcastle are in town today, having been promoted last year.  This has been as close to a banker fixture for us as any over recent season as The Magpies never seem to give a fuck when they come down here and we beat them easily.  Let’s hope for some of that today but with the experienced Rafa Benitez in charge, I doubt that’ll happen.  They’ve had a decent start considering that Mike Ashley decided not to invest in the team this summer so they pretty much have their Championship side.  They will see staying up as success but I think they will be comfortable this season, around the 12^th place mark.

The assumption I had was that whilst all this international stuff was going on, Mauricio Pellegrino and the coaching staff would have been working out a way for us to score some fucking goals and be more progressive.  A change in formation to three at the back was widely touted as local journos who I respect and it does seem kind of obvious.  By Sunday at about 3pm we had the answers and as had been hinted when substitutions were made when we were chasing games before, Steven Davis was left out with Gabbiadini and Long in the starting line up.  Redmond and Tadic both kept their places despite Boufal being the man in our last outing at Stoke and all the internationals were safely back. Maya Yoshida was skipper and Wesley Hoedt who wants to be here, was again left out for a player who clearly doesn’t.

I have a new ritual every time I go to St.Mary’s now in that I find my seat, pick up the plastic clapper thing and launch it about 5 rows down into some empty seats.  I’m old school and I don’t want that shit.  The pre-match this season is not too bad with upbeat loud tunes and a mercifully shortened version of the fucking ‘My Way’ monstrosity.  The Saints are Coming… what a fucking song that is by the way.

Away we go and Gabbi and Shane are right up top and it looks like we’re 4-4-2.  Virgil pings a 70 yarder over the full back to Tadic which brings applause and then Tadic turns down the right footed cross, swaps it onto his left, then turn out and passes back to Cedric who turns and passes it back to Virgil.  For fuck sake.  What are we fucking scared of – at risk of going full Mike Bassett – get it in the fucking box.

Things liven up a bit as Tadic turns Shelvey who really can’t be arsed to go with him but he curls his shot over.  Tadic is wasteful again when Redmond does well ont eh left and stands up a great cross and Tadic has peeled away to the back stick like Sir Rickie used to do and there the comparison ends as he tries to lob a header over Elliot and instead puts it over in shit fashion.  Shit decision to try and lob a header and shit execution.  We did however, have three men in the box.

Newcastle are working hard without showing anything really up front but what do you fucking know.  An attack down the right is stopped by Virgil and then he sloppily waves a foot at it and presents it back to Newcastle.  Over it comes and Atsu’s shot is blocked by Yoshida but Haden returns it straight away and Fraser is lumbering off in the wrong direction as the ball speeds past his foot.  Fucking hell.

Saints respond quite well with Romeu chipping into the box and Gabbi swinging at it only for Lejeune to block for a corner.  Over it comes and Elliott decides to come flying out, gets nowhere near it and the ball flies off Virgil’s head and wide.  Some nice one touch passing around the area carves out an opportunity for Long but… you know the rest.

That’s more or less it for the first half.  We’ve looked pretty at times but created nothing of note and Elliott hasn’t had to make a save.  Lemina has been immense but Tadic and Redmond have been fitful at best and Long and Gabbi haven’t had a sniff.  At the back, Virgil has been part casual and part sloppy and Maya has not won a single challenge against Joselu.

At the start of the second half we are shite again as Perez walks past Virgil who isn’t arsed, crosses, it deflects up off of Joselu and onto the bar.  It’s eventually corssed back in and Fraser appear to have all his bearings wrong and flaps it for a corner.  We get away with that one and from Newcastle’s next attack we break up play and Redmond gets it out on the left.  A diagonal ball and Gabbiadini picks it up on the right hand side of the Newcastle penalty are and Manquillo allows him to turn out, make his way across the top of the penalty area and squirm a shot intot he near bottom corner.  Great finish but shite defending for 1-1.

The relief is palpable around the stadium.  Newcastle kick off and we tear into them again – Redmond wins the ball and passes to Shane who falls over it.  Off go Newcastle down our left, a ball infield and Virgil is out of position and Romeu has not tracked Perez who picks it up and from a narrow angle, blasts it at the near post.  Fraser parries it back into play and Perez smashes it past him at the near post.  60 seconds and we’re 2-1 down. Fuck off.  Still, a good team goal from us with Shane, Berty, Virgil, Oriol and Fraser all at fault in some capacity.  It’s nice to share these things around.

Newcastle right back Yedlin who earlier got booked for arguing about a decision, the launches at Redmond, catches him high and the ball is nowhere.  It’s as clear a yellow card as you’ll ever see and players have got a straight red for less this season.  Kevin Friend however, completely bottles it and does fuck all. Memories of that game at home to Liverpool a few years ago when there should have been two Saints penalties and a Liverpool red card within the first minute but he bottled it.  Wanker.

Boufal is on for Redmond on the hour mark as we set out on once again, trying to get back into the game and whilst most are expecting Austin for Long, on comes Steve Davis for Romeu who has not had his best of games by his usually high standards.

On 75 a Newcastle attack is broken up and we break forward with Long, exchanging passes with Boufal and reaching the box where in a position of no danger whatsoever, Lejeune takes him out.  I’m at the other end of the pitch and I can see that Shane had played for it but the ref buys it and we have a penalty.  The usual horrified glances around and the expectation of Tadic taking it but Manolo has the ball and having missed his last one, he laces this one left footed, three quarters of the way up and into the inside netting by the post.  Sir Rickie would have been proud.

Having given us the penalty, Kevin Friend goes back to having a nightmare as first Hayden pulls a shit tackle on Lemina – again it’s borderline red but he only gets a yellow and two minutes later, he trashes through Virgil and nothing happens.   Austin is on for Long but in truth, our efforts to win it don’t get off the ground.  Suddenly it’s all Newcastle with Davis and a knackered Lemina struggling to cover the ground in midfield.  It’s all Newcastle for the last 5 and it looks like we’ve lost as Lejeune meets a corner with a good header but Davo is there to hack it off the line.  Virgil seems to get a bit of adrenalin and professionalism about himself for the last few minutes as he’s everywhere – headers, blocks and clearances.  Full time and two points dropped or one gained?  You decide.

For me, it’s a bit of a lucky point really. You can shit on all you like about possession based statistics but when it comes down to what actually matters, shots on goal, we had two and scored twice whilst Newcastle managed to hit the bar and have one cleared off the line as well as the two goals that they did get. The penalty decision is very interesting. First of all, there’s contact so the referee kind of has to give it. Lejeune has jumped in like a twat with Long going absolutely nowhere and he’s given Long the opportunity to go over which he of course has taken. Long has actually almost toed the ball out of play before the tackle arrives so he's undoubtedly bought it and the strikers union will say well played. It is interesting though that no Newcastle players complain to the referee when the penalty was given and that is almost unheard of at Premier League level.

Once Gabbiadini dispatched the penalty, having taken Romeu off and replacing him with Davis, we were horribly open in midfield and that's what bought Newcastle on to us in the last 10 minutes. Fair play to Steven Davis for getting back and clearing that header off the line.

Lemina tired in the last 10 minutes but up to that point, for the fourth game running, he was absolutely fucking awesome.  He is a one man midfield machine getting up and down the pitch, driving the team forward, winning tackles and showing a real desire and will to win. He reminds me of a young Roy Keane without the psychopathic tendencies. We have done well to get hold of such an unbelievable player but the trouble is, as you all know, he stands out a fucking mile so we are going to have problems keeping hold of him past the end of the season. Sorry to put a massive downer on things.

Who knew that with Gabbiadini in the side, it would make it more likely that we score a goal? He is absolutely a class act and he is the only striker we have with any class whatsoever. Shane Long put in a great shift for the team but it's the same old problem now standing at 21 games without a goal. In the same way but I don't believe we can have Steve Davis offering zero goal threat from attacking midfield position. I don't believe we can have a non-scoring striker. I'm not Charlie Austin's biggest fan but he'd be more of a threat with another striker in close proximity.

We basically played with two up front today but I can't see this being an experiment that Pellegrino repeats too often. In his post match interview, you could tell that he was absolutely mortified that we didn't have control of the midfield, that we didn't control possession in the middle third of the pitch. 65% is apparently not enough for him.  It’s enough possession to win any game if you have shots on target to reflect that dominance.  In Pellegrino’s favour though, he did play two strikers today and the substitutions all made us more attacking.

The players are guilty of risk-aversion.  Maybe they’re under instruction but for the first half in particular, our first thought was always to go backwards, never more accurately illustrated than in the first minute when Virgil playing a 70 yarder across to Tadic on the right wing near the corner flag. Bearing in mind that we had two strikers today you would've thought he would've crossed it but no, he turned out and passed to Cedric who was 30 yards behind him who then turned and passed all the way back to Virgil who was stood exactly where he was when he played the 70 yard ball in the first place. Un-fucking-believable. There was another incident in the first half where we won a throw-in halfway inside the Newcastle half on the left. Bertrand went to take it and he had Redmond and Gabbiadini showing for him up the pitch but instead he turned around and throw it back to Virgil and we ended up passing it back to Forster in goal who lumped it up the middle of the pitch.

We only trying to do something progressive when we are behind and we almost have nothing to lose. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the wingers on the wrong side thing does my fucking head in.  It's a defensive move to in theory make the midfield more compact but the detrimental effect it has on our attacking is huge. You are much more likely to score if you attack at pace and there are only six or seven defenders back it only takes a wasted half a second for the winger check back onto his good foot before they cross it, for the opposition to have 10 players in the box. It's fucking crap and it's not rocket science.  Tadic is actually quite good when he plays on the left but in the main, he is a frustrating bag of shit when he plays on the right. The odd one or two bits of decent supply in amongst a mess of attack killing fucking around.  Redmond is slightly different in that he tries to inject pace into the game but it's never by going outside down the line.  On occasions he gets his head up and plays a decent ball like he did for Gabbiadini’s first goal but more often than not he just runs head long into traffic and loses the ball.  For the second time in a row, Boufal came on and made a huge difference. I really cannot see why he is not starting games now. He commits defenders and he also works hard and tracks back. Sure, he is going to lose the ball occasionally but so do the two wingers who are currently playing.

Behind the wingers, the fullbacks were both poor today with Bertrand being the less poor of the two. Maybe it was an international week hangover from the pair of them. Cedric is another example of the risk averse nature of Pellegrino's Saints.  He had chances to take on the full back on numerous occasions and on each occasion he just turned out and kept possession again.

We have to talk about Virgil I guess.  He played at approximately 50%. He is good enough at 50% to look half decent and spraying Hollywood balls out of the wings is a good way to look decent with minimal effort. The damage is done though. A ball was pumped into our penalty area from a freekick and about six players went up for it including Virgil and I swear that he ducked underneath it and just let it go. Now, he may have decided not to head it or he might not have but the problem is, I'm questioning it. To me, too often it looked like he didn't give a fuck. He lost runners at vital times and didn't cover himself in glory on either goal that we conceded or in the incident where Joselu hit the bar.  He did well in the last few minutes to be fair, getting himself in the position to make important blocks.  The Virgil-Maya centre back pairing makes no sense to me.  If as a manager you want to pick on attitude then it’s Hoedt and Yoshida.  If you want to pick on ability then it’s Hoedt and Virgil.  Hoedt is the only left footed one so there’s a balance argument as well.

I really hope that we get Virgil out of the door in January (not to Liverpool, obviously) and use the money to get in another centre back and also strengthen further forward. There are rumours (probably poor rumours) that Barcelona are interested in him and in one of the funniest things that I've read for ages, Liverpool pundits are saying this is just to piss them off because they didn't let Coutinho leave. As if Barcelona conduct their business with Liverpool in mind.

Also not covering himself in glory today was Fraser Forster.  He’s been better of late and I think that a lot of the criticism he gets is ridiculous but what the fuck was that today?  So laboured and clumsy on his feet for the first goal and rule one in the goalkeeper book is not to parry it back into dangerous areas so I’ve no idea what the hell was going on for the 2^nd goal.

There were some positives today. Two upfront was a statement of intent, as were the substitutions made during the game. Boufal for Redmond was obvious though I have to say I was a bit mystified by Davis coming on for Romeu especially bearing in mind that we were in effect one midfielder light already.  It’s an attacking move though so maybe Pellegrino is getting the message.

As said earlier, the profile of the players that we have in our squad seem to be screaming at the manager to play three at the back so maybe after a full week with all the players being around, we will see this against West Brom next Saturday in the second of our four game season shaping spell of fixtures.  I wouldn’t bank on it though.  I would expect the same formation but if that’s the case then maybe Boufal on the left, and JWP on the right would offer more.  One thing is for sure and that is that Gabbiadini has to play and hopefully the manager finds a way to get two strikers on the pitch again.  More questions than answers, again.

As we leave the ground, I pick up my coat which is under my seat and I realise that the two five year olds who have been allowed by their Dad to piss everyone off in a 10 seat radius have won.  Not only do I feel that I have tinnitus from their high pitched yelping but my coat couldn’t hold any more soft drink if it tried. 

Premier League Match 7 - Stoke 2 Southampton 1

Feel the Fume !!!

Stoke at the Britannia in one of the most unappetising games of the season but one that’s always a good yardstick as to whether your team fancies it.  Mark Hughes has come under a bit of pressure for an indifferent start and they have a few injury problems so we should be looking to capitalise and really go for the three points.  Hopefully we can take the form of the second half against Man United into this game from the start.

The build up has been quite understated for this game and you-know-who has been the centre of most of it.  Judging by Mauricio’s press conference, it appears that Virgil will make his first start of the season which I assume will mean a change in formation to three at the back.  The boss had also said that he liked that formation at previous clubs.  Ok, bring it on.  So, I was quite looking forward to this until I heard Virgil interviewed upon the launch of FIFA 18 and he got asked who would go furthest in the Champions League out of the British Clubs – “Liverpool”.  This is despite them being shit and City and United being on fire.  Then he was asked who his most difficult opponent was – “Daniel Sturridge”.  Ok, now I know you’re taking the piss.  He absolutely had Sturridge in his pocket when we played them last year so that’s complete shite.  If you’re going to carry on sucking Liverpool’s dick Virgil, then get a fucking room.

So, I was expecting something a bit different with the formation and the team but the only change was Virgil coming in for Wesley Hoedt.  Hang on a minute – what the fuck has Hoedt done to deserve getting dropped for someone who hasn’t played for 9 months?  There were rumours that Hoedt was carrying a bit of a knock coming into the united game so maybe that’s the issue.  In some ways I hope it is.  The Hoedt decision is not all that’s slightly annoying – the same personnel in the same formation in the front positions.  Davis, Redmond, Tadic, Long…. Nothing different going on there.  Maybe Redmond and Tadic are going to play on the opposite sides to usual or else it’s the same shit different day.  Completely underwhelming.  The bench includes our two players who know where the goal is as well as the X-Factor of Boufal and the best set piece taker in JWP.  I guess the logic is that we dug out a 1-0 win against Palace in our last away game so this will do.  Stoke are better than Palace though so we’ll see.

Away we go and it’s pedestrian, like we’re not really up for it.  Stoke’s Cameroonian striker, the entertainingly names Maxim Choupo-Moting picks up the ball and ambles forward, being allowed to shoot but it’s blocked by Virgil for a corner.  We appear to wake up a bit and Lemina is at the heart of it, driving forward and due to a lack of options and movement from others, decides to have an optimistic shot and curls it wide from 25 yards.

More chances are exchanged and we allow Shaqiri the freedom of the penalty area to test out Fraser and the big man is up to it.  After that, we break well up the right through Cedric and Tadic who slides a good ball in to Redmond and for a second it looks like he’s through but he doesn’t turn on the burners and when Diouf gets over to him, Redmond shows no strength at all and gets easily seen off.

With Stoke, you know you’re never too far from a shocking tackle and in it comes from Joe Allen.  There’s a loose ball bobbling about and then Lemina nearly has a couple of loose balls as Allen wellies him in the nuts.  How the fuck is that not a booking?  From the free kick, Stoke half clear it and Romeu stabs a ball through and Long is in the clear as one defender hasn’t pushed out.  He turns and in typical Long fashion, smashes it straight at Butland who to be fair, has got off his line quickly.  It’s the sort of chance that ‘has’ to hit the net.

Tadic then clips Diouf as he goes to tackle him and the ref doesn’t give a foul and Allen responds by cynically taking out Tadic as he breaks which he gets booked for – that should be his second yellow.  Stoke win a corner as Fletcher’s shot is blocked by Bertrand and over it comes from our left and Diouf simply heads it into the net from dead central from about 8 yards.  It’s pathetic defending by Lemina who has just let him go.  For fucks sake.  1-0 down to this shit.

Fromt heir next attack we attempt to make it even worse as Bertrand loses the ball and Berahino gets inside the box and tries to work his way into the middle.  He feels Virgil tugging on his arm and throws himself forwards to ensure it gets given and it does.  It stinks all round – Berahino has managed to be pulled back, yet dive forwards and Virgil looked like he just couldn’t be arsed to tackle him so he pulled him back.  Absolute shite.

There’s a chance because Berahino is taking it and he hasn’t scored since he accidentally took a load of drugs allegedly.  Up he steps and Fraser guesses correctly and keeps it out comfortably.  Well played big man but half time and 1-0 down.

We look lively initially after the break with Cedric digging out a superb cross but Shane can only head over and then he heads wide after Tadic turned a defender inside out.  Stoke are settling for 1-0 and on 60 minutes we need a bit more from somewhere and Boufal is on for Davis with the captains armband passing to Maya Yoshida and not to you know who.  Gabbiadini is soon on for the disappointing Redmond and Boufal is looking lively.

Then, praise the fucking lord, we get a corner.  Boufal’s kick ends up back with him and he takes on Diouf and beats him on the outside before crossing.  Long waves a foot at it and deflects it across the box and Yoshida takes off to execute a scissor kick volley thing perfectly and crash it into the top of the net.  Fucking hell, we did a goal.

In to the last ten and there’s only one team that looks like winning it (if you forget for a second how hard we find it to actually score).  Cedric swings over a free kick after Tadic has been fouled by Pieters and Yoshida is there again but can only divert into the side netting.  Stoke have taken off Berahino and thrown on the giraffe.  There’s a deep sense of impending doom about this and within five minutes this has proved to be prophetic.

In the under 14s side that I coach, I’ve forever telling the full backs that if they have a situation when they are facing their own goal line and they have a player up their arse – then whacking it out for a throw in or even a corner is the way to go.  I do that because it’s fucking obvious as trying to set up an attack from that position is not really playing the percentages in that scenario.  So, if Pellegrino wants me to have a word with Cedric then I’m happy to.  Cedric has this scenario and in addition, it’s pissing with rain and the pitch is wet.  He tries to dummy the striker who is behind him and slips on his arse, allowing Choupo-Moting a free run on goal.  Shoots, saved, pinball, carnage, penalty appeals as Oriol piles in and eventually the ball, via a lucky mis-hit finds its way to Crouch who is three yards out in amongs the strewn bodies of defenders. 2-1 – fuck off.

There are 5 minutes plus stoppages to go but you know we’re fucked.  Austin is on for Lemina and Virgil is thrown up front as well.  We have a go to be fair - Boufal to Bertrand, a cross and it’s just too far in front of Gabbi.  Then a Virgil flick on from a punt forward and Butland punches it into Gabbi but instead of bouncing in or to a Saints player like the scramble in our penalty area fell for Crouch, the ball hits Gabbi and bounces off for a goal kick.  Austin knocks one down to Long but a predictable shit first touch means the chance is gone.  Corners and whipped in with poor delivery and comfortably cleared and yawn.  The End.  This is a ridiculous defeat again, culled from an episode of Groundhog Day that we seem to be reliving over and over again.  Good in the main at the back and in midfield but completely blunt in the final third. 

We’ll start with the return of Virgil - I have to say that as we neared the end of the transfer window, as was as long as it wasn't to Liverpool, I wanted van Dijk gone. So, I didn't really know how I was going to react to him being back in the first team. On the one hand, I know that he's a world-class player when 100 percent fit and focused but on the other hand, if the two incumbent centre backs are playing really really well, then I would've been quite happy for Virgil to get splinters on his arse from being sat on the bench for the whole season if necessary. This is why I have a problem with him playing and Wesley being dropped.  He'd had a great game against Palace and apart from being fouled for United winner he had not put a foot wrong. That game was against a United side who have routinely been scoring four against absolutely everyone. I guess that we can expect Yoshida to be dropped next week as it was probably decided in advance that the two Dutchman would be the first choice centre back pairing.  It would be harsh to drop Maya as he’s done nothing wrong but neither has Wesley Hoedt.

The penalty incident was very interesting because it looked to me like Virgil just couldn't be fucking bothered to defend the run properly so he just held him back.  In that instant it made me wonder whether he was rusty or whether he actually gives a fuck.  Does he care as much as Yoshida or any of the others?  That’s the problem now – does he really care?  By all accounts he had a pretty decent game aside from that incident.  I guess that the bottom line is that I as a fan have not forgotten or forgiven all the shit that went down over the past six months.  If I was the manager, at the moment I wouldn’t trust him to put in that last ditch tackle when it was needed.

Now we get to Senor Pellegrino and the rest of his selections.  There is that oft quoted definition of madness - trying the same things and expecting a different result. If you pick as your four most advanced players, players who score approximately one goal every 10 or 15 games then what makes you think that they're going to score with any regularity. We need to rely on our very strong central midfield players and play a more attacking player in front of them and not Steven Davis who, great footballer that he is, hardly has a goal or an assist in him.   On the wings, Nathan Redmond has been crap this season. The odd flash of ability and the odd shot after a direct run is not enough for seven games of effort.  He’s actually been a good source of attacks for the opposition as he has a tendency to cough up possession by falling over when back in the defensive third.

Tadic played pretty well today but he is in the team to score goals and provide assists and so far he's not achieved much of this seven matches.  You could argue that with his assist today, Boufal has contributed more in half an hour.  Boufal should be starting, probably in place of Redmond but Tadic has to do so much more to justify his continued selection.  Hoedt got dropped despite doing nothing wrong yet our forward players get picked despite not providing what they’re in the team to provide.

Now we come to Shane Long.  For all his effort and commitment and being horrible to play against, he has not scored now for 20 matches and this is not the first time he's had a 20 match streak without a goal.  A good striker gets twitchy after going about 3 games without a goal.  Twenty games…. That’s half a season.  That tells you all you need to know. He's not a goal scorer and whilst he is the one striker in our team, we are never going to score enough goals.  I would be quite happy for him to play wide right but with our present goalscoring crisis, he can’t be the main starting striker.

I'm not Charlie Austin's biggest fan but at least he knows where to goal is. Also, Gabbiadini got dropped because he kept on making runs and the midfield players behind him couldn't pick him out and didn't give him the ball so consequently he looks completely ineffective. This was solved by dropping him and putting a striker with much less ability in his place instead of sorting out the actual root of the problem which was the supply.

This right footed player on the left and left footed player on the right thing that we do does not work for us.  It just means that every attack is slowed down to the point where the opposition can get loads of players behind the ball. Also today, with Stoke playing a very deep defence and not leaving Shane with any space to run into, why did we not try something different? We only try something different when we get to the last 20-25 minutes and we’re behind.  This was a piss poor Stoke side we were playing against and we left it til 60 minutes to try something different.  Pellegrino was supposed to be tactically flexible and whilst I don’t agree with totally changing everything (like Puel tried to do with the diamond), we clearly can’t go on like this.  I almost lost interest in this game as soon as I saw our line up.  Same again and guess what … we did the same again.

We lost in the end because the normally reliable Cedric fucked up big style.  What the fuck was he doing? – just fucking clear it.  You are not going to set up an attack when you’re facing your own goal line with a player up your arse so just clear it.  Man of the match today was the big man Fraser Forster who was superb – saving a penalty, catching everything in shite conditions for a keeper and basically being ‘The Wall’.  Unfortunately, for the goals there was a dereliction of duty from the players in front of him.  To be fair this doesn’t happen often but it happened today and we ended up losing to a very limited Stoke side.  I don’t think Mark Hughes could actually believe that they’d managed to get away with that one.

Someone's Rebuilt The Wall 

So, we have a couple of weeks to stew on this before Newcastle at home and following that there are three more winnable games against West Brom, Brighton and Burnley.  These four games are going to shape our season.  Comfortable mid-table to looking over our shoulders?

As the players arrived in their camps for international week, there was the usual interviews done.  For the foreign players, it’s good because they tend to be a bit less guarded in what they say.  Virgil – bearing in mind he had not uttered one word about Saints since the summer – used his interview to talk about hopefully being able to go in January, having no regrets about the way he acted and wanting to take a step up.  Now I’m sure a little has been added or lost in translation but his answer clearly wasn’t “I’m a Southampton player and that’s all I have to say for now”.  Words fucking fail me, aside from ‘drop him now and sell him in January to anyone except Liverpool’.

Ryan Bertrand, a player who according to common knowledge, also wanted to leave Saints in the summer, spoke of helping the Grenfell Tower victims and has also recently spoken of how Saints gave him a platform to prove himself and how grateful he was.  The difference couldn’t be more stark.  I know with Ryan Bertrand that if he makes a mistake then it will be genuine.  I remain to be convinced by Virgil van Dijk.