Painfully Predictable Puellegrino's Piss Poor Performance
The fourth
game of our mini-season within a season and we have Burnley at St.Mary’s. Draws with Newcastle and Brighton and a win
against West Brom have left us well short of a decent total of points from the
three games so far so today was really as much of a ‘must win’ game as you
could get at this stage of the season.
Burnley are
riding high in the league at the moment – being top of the also rans in 7th
place due mainly to some dogged performances where they’ve won 1-0 with a late
goal. They’re very well organized and
exactly the kind of team you know that we’re going to struggle to score
against. Sean Dyche has been there 5
years but maybe not for much longer as he is being strongly linked with the
Everton poison chalice as rumour has it that they’re persuing their policy of
appointing the manager of the team who finished where they want to be. Worked out well last time Everton didn’t it….
Still, massive club, massive history etc.
We know
what’s coming today with the focus being on Burnley’s striker who are Saints
fan Sam Vokes, Chris Wood and Ashley Barnes.
All three are big physical, 6 foot plus strikers. Vokes was seen last season pogoing around in
the Liverpool end when Shane Long scored the winner in the semi-final. Respect to that man. Another Saints connection is Jack Cork who
rejoined Burnley after leaving Swansea in the summer. He’s done well this season and is being
talked up as a potential England call up again which is not as far fetched as
it may sound when you consider that Jordan Henderson is the man in possession.
Post-Brighton
has been interesting with the Daily Echo publishing an interview with Oriol
Romeu where he hinted that the manager was telling the players that they had to
always be thinking of defence when they were attacking. On first reading it looked horrific but on
reflection, maybe Oriol was only referring to his particular role in the team
which as a defensive midfielder is fair enough.
However, I strongly suspect that the wingers are being reminded of their
defensive responsibilities on a regular basis.
Wesley Hoedt was also pretty vocal in interviews about us not killing
the game off when we had the chance.
It’s a good theory but it’s not happening with this manager. The manager on the other hand was voicing his
regret that the players didn’t go for it.
So, we have the players almost blaming the manager and the manager
almost blaming the players. Interesting
and worrying times.
Having
ditched the clappers for the West Brom game, they’re back today so mine is
launched three rows down as soon as I get in the ground. Mercifully, the three year old who kicked my
chair all the way through the West Brom game and his oblivious father are not
present today. I look around the family
stand and there are a lot of young kids there – I’m talking under the age of
10. I wonder how many are going to keep
coming if the entertainment on offer doesn’t improve. My son has a mate who had a season ticket
last year but didn’t renew it this year.
His dad was keen to renew it again but the kid just didn’t want to as
he’d been bored watching Claude-ball last season.
Away we go
and as is typical with Saints home games against sides who come to sit deep –
nothing happened. I mean nothing. Short of a tumbleweed blowing across the
pitch, there couldn’t have been less going on.
Desolate. We had little intent
but Burnley had absolutely none. Chris
Wood had Hendrick somewhere near him but he was useless and Wood was fighting a
losing battle against Virgil and Maya.
Virgil had the cigar out when defending but it annoyed me that he wasn’t
stepping into midfield, seemingly content to just knock it around.
Anyway,
Bertrand fired over in a rare moment of interest and Boufal was buzzing around
in the 10 role and looking lively. He
stands out because he has purpose and is looking to make things happen rather
than just playing it safe. Redmond
suddenly wakes up and opos up on the right with his cross being headed upwards
and Boufal connecting beyond the back post and volleying it into the ground and
Pope had to tip it over at the near post.
That brief moment of excitement was dissipated by Davo’s corner not
getting more than 5 foot off the ground.
We are awake
though with Bertrand bursting forward, playing a 1-2 with Boufal and seeing his
cross shot well held by the keeper.
Tadic then makes his first contribution for weeks with a run and cross
and again it’s Bertrand hitting the shock which was well blocked by
Tarkowski. This is the most attacking 5
minutes we’ve had for months as Redmond skips past a couple of challenges as he
cuts in and hits a good right foot shot which Pope does exceptionally well to
get a strong hand to. The bit before
half time doesn’t detract from the utter garbage that went before but it’s
enough to earn a bit of applause at half time.
The chances
continue to come after half time with Cedric getting forward well, teeing up
Tadic and his cross is good for Gabbiadini but he doesn’t get a clean head on
it and it goes wide. The the closest we
have come as Bertrand sees a shot deflected over after good work to press and
win the ball high from Gabbiadini and this time Davo gets the corner off the
ground and Pope flaps it down to where Maya spins and volleys goalwards only
for Pope to take off well and shovel it over the bar. Great save – bastard.
Sean Dyche
responds to the Saints pressure by removing Wood and Hendrick and sending on
Vokes and Barnes so Burnley are now 4-4-2 which two big brutes up front. The change in the flow of play is instant and
Burnley have us under a bit of pressure.
The tactical magician that is Puellegrino responds by taking off our
main goal threat in Gabbiadini and bringing on Charlie Austin who looks tired
when he’s jogging onto the pitch. I
spent about a minute watching Gabbiadini in the second half when we were
passing it around in front of Burnley’s midfield and he makes run, after run,
after, run , after run. He’s always on
the move, then checking back when the ball doesn’t come and then running
again. Poor fucker. I’d be glad to get off if I was him but it’s
a horrendous substitution. Then the
idiot compounds it by bringing on Long for Tadic and now we’ve gone 4-4-2. Why not Gabbi up front with someone instead
of ‘Can’t run’ and ‘Can Only Run’.
Steve Davis MBE
takes a Cedric pass and weaves across the top of the box before firing over
left footed and then Burnley have their one attack, The pour through our midfield, Cork feeds
Gudmundsson on the right, he crosses it in with his left foot to near the
penalty spot and Vokes manshames the static Yoshida and flicks a header down
which speeds up off the turf and finds the bottom corner. Fuck sake.
You know
we’re fucked at this point and then the boos start for Fraser the next time he
touches the ball. Absolute wankers. Fuck off and don’t come back. I’d rather we played in front of 2000 less
people than have you wankers as supporters.
A complete lack of knowledge and completely moronic.
Mr Puellegrino’s
tactical nous dictates that Virgil should be launched up front but nothing is
happening because the delivery isn’t good enough. So, the final sub is to stick JWP on for
Boufal when we win a corner as Boufal joins Gabbiadini on the “Biggest goal
threats we have watching the game” bench.
A few minutes later and it’s over – again. They’ve got near our goal once and won it. It’s ridiculous and so
utterly predictable.
The Boos were
pretty loud at the final whistle. I don't know if I'm more pissed off with the
players, the manager of the fans to be honest. I guess I'm okay with the ones
who have waited to the final whistle to show their displeasure at things. To be
honest, it wasn't really that bad until the last 20 minutes - actually, yes it
was. It was fucking dreadful apart from about 10 minutes either side of half
time. We had a few shots today which in
the context of what we’ve got used to in the last 8 months, was actually not
bad. It’s not really good enough though,
not by a long chalk.
On first
viewing, the goal looks like an unpressured across from the wing and a centre
forward beating Yoshida in the air and perfectly placing the header in the
bottom corner. Vokes has attacked the ball with intent and Yoshida has more or less just not done the same and let him do it. It's similar to Cedric against Glenn Murray last week but at least the midget tried and got a touch on it. I have to say that from the other end I didn't feel that it
wasn't the goalkeepers fault but the view from the bandwagon was that it was
his fault. The in-game barracking of our goalkeeper is pathetic. The ironic
cheering when he picks up a simple one etc. I'm actually quite glad at times that
I sit in the family stand because you are kind of insulated from that sort of
dickhead. Some people do blame every goal in the keeper but they are usually
under 6. I have to say that if I was sat next to someone who
was giving a load of shit to our own goalkeeper then I would struggle to keep
my mouth shut. As I've said before, I don't believe McCarthy would be
better but it is worth considering that Nick Pope, the opposition goalkeeper
today was excellent and made two or three really good saves. He is their reserve keeper. Their
first choice is the excellent Tom Heaton who is out injured.
One thing I
do know though is that the manager got it completely wrong again. The
non-selection of Wesley Hoedt against a team with three big physical strikers
in their match day 18 is beyond a joke. Everyone around the club knows that
Maya is not at is best against big physical strikers. We signed Wesley because
we didn't have enough height in the team and he is an amazing header of the
ball as borne out by the stats from all the main European leagues last season
when he was near the top. That's twice this season that he has been dropped
having done nothing wrong in the previous game. Puellegrino then made that decision
even more of a joke by the moaning the fact that we were a very small,
lightweight side in his post match interview. The fact that he is using this as
an excuse shows that he knew about it from the start so why does he have the
six-foot plus of Hoedt, Hojbjerg and Austin on the bench.
Our allegedly
tactically innovative manager decided to match up Dyche and go with a 4-4-2
formation for the last 20 minutes but only after Dyche had done it first and
changed the whole game. Sadly and obviously, in order to go 4-4-2, you have to
have some physicality in midfield as you are basically playing with one less
player in there. We, despite the manager knowing we are physically lightweight,
tries to do it with Romeu but also with Boufal, Davis and Redmond. Three
players who weigh about eight stone each and are about 5 foot seven.
In front of
them we had Charlie Austin who doesn't even look like a footballer at the
moment and we had Shane Long whose last goal was so long ago the match report
was carved into a stone tablet. He also took Gabbiadini off again. I
expect Gabbi was quite pleased to come off given the shite service he had been
given yet again but he's more likely to score with one pass again than Long is
with 20 and at the moment he is the only striker we have who has a goal in him.
I tell you, Sam Vokes would have been a
great signing for us in the summer and I wouldn’t be against getting him in
January. He’s not brilliant by any
stretch of the imagination but he’d do a job and would he honestly be worse
than Long or Austin? I’m sure he’d
rather be up front or on the bench for us rather than bench warming at
Burnley. He is just what we need to give
us the option of actually pressurising the centre backs physically.
Anyway, back
to Puellogrino and even the last minute desperation substitute was fucking
retarded. I understand the want to get JWP on the pitch for a free-kick but why
take Boufal off. Why not take Cedric off who had an absolutely diabolical game. Is Puellegrino still worried about
defending and keeping it tight when we are 1-0 down with a minute to go for
fucks sake? Wouldn't it have been better to give Boufal the confidence of
playing the full 90?
Yet again
there aren't many positives from today. Despite continued questions about his
attitude I thought Ryan Bertrand provided the odd moment, as did Boufal and
Redmond but the positives were pretty thin on the fucking ground. Boufal and Redmond are two players who are
regularly the target of the prick element of our fanbase of course.
People often
hark back to the good old days and wanting to go back in time to a time when
things were better. Well, take it from a bloke who remembers Saints in the
1990s - we could well be in for a relegation battle this season so get ready
for a few things. Get ready for looking down the fixture list and wondering
where our next win is coming from and looking at the league table and trying
desperately to find three teams who are worse than us. The good news is that
you don’t have to do this on Ceefax. That is the way it's going this season
without something changing or without us getting some miraculous results in the
next couple of months when we play all the big teams. If the performance levels with the lack of
goal threat carries on until Christmas, we are going to be very near the bottom
three. Currently, there are three teams
worse than us – Palace, Swansea, West Brom.
Any manager,
be it Puellegrino or anyone else is going to struggle with the current group of
players that we have. The striker options are not good enough, we have an
attitude problem in some players and we have a goalkeeper who is struggling and
we don't have an adequate replacement. They do appear to be plenty of ways that
we could get more out of the current squad however. Far from being tactically
flexible or innovative, Puellegrino seems to be a bit clueless to be honest.
Personally, I think he is now in a position where he simply has to get some
headline wins in the next couple of months. In amongst all the big boys, we
have matches against Bournemouth, Everton and Leicester and the pressure to get
at least seven points from those three games is going to be huge and we are not
going to get seven points from these games by doing the same things that we
have been doing it since the start of the season.
Wouldn't it
be ironic if Claude Puel's Leicester give us a tactical doing over and that
proves to be the last nail in the Puellegrino coffin. We’re going back to the good old days and
normal service has been resumed and Saints are crap again.
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