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