Premier League Match 24 - Southampton 1 Tottenham Hotspur 1

Jack Hindenburg Stephens - Shit in the Air

What an awesome transfer window it’s been a Southampton so far. Absolutely no one has left, if you don’t count the player who we got out of the door before the transfer window opened.  I wonder the club are using the excuse that technically, we haven’t actually bought in any money in this transfer window as a reason for not spending any.

Meanwhile, other teams of got on with it and Everton have signed the player who was allegedly our main target, Theo Walcott. The clubs favourite media outlet is trying to let it be known that Saints were virtually there with a deal but at the last minute, Everton came along and blew our offer out of the water. Whilst that is entirely feasible, I’m not convinced that that is the whole story.

There has been some acknowledgement that our position in the table may actually be putting off players from joining us. No shit Sherlock. It hasn’t been mentioned in the media but the fact that our manager is fucking useless may have something to do with it as well. The club is becoming a victim of its Boards inactivity. By not sacking Pellegrino a couple of months back, our league position has fallen to such a degree that as I write, we are in the bottom three so we are not in a position of strength. Even the thickest footballer is going to look at that and wonder if he wants to play in the Championship potentially next season. Of course, the player won’t care if we are paying stupid money which of course we are not going to do.

It’s a vicious circle because the board won’t want to splash all the cash because the ball game completely changes financially if we get relegated. The name of Guido Carillo has been mentioned. He is a striker who plays for Monaco Reserves and has worked with Pellegrino before. For starters, I wouldn’t take Pellegrino’s recommendation if I was asking him what to eat at a fucking kebab shop, let alone on a footballer and secondly, it appears we gone in with an offer which is well under the asking price despite having 20 days so far to try and get things sorted.  In all likelihood, it is probably going to be left to the players and the manager who got us into this mess, to get us out of it. That is a huge gamble.

Today we entertain (And are use that word ironically) a Tottenham side who only recently, thrashed us 5-2 in a game where a more accurate reflection would’ve been about 12-0. With a couple of exceptions, we were completely bollocks that day so it should be fresh enough in the memory of the players to put a shift in. This of course is taking Pellegrino out of the equation which sadly, we can’t do. Spurs are a team that close very quickly and aggressively in midfield and defence so we need to stand up to that. Steve Davis will not do that as he will get completely bottled out of things in midfield. Dusan Tadic will disappear after the first tackle on him so in my opinion, neither of those two should play today but I bet they do. It is the ideal game to play all three of our strong midfield players to at least compete against whoever Spurs have got in the centre of midfield, usually the excellent Dembele and either Dier or Wanyama. I just feel that if we set up defensively then we will lose so why not give Spurs something to worry about at the other end of the pitch.

I feel like starting drinking now and I’ve only just had my breakfast. If it wasn’t for the fact that I have to be responsible adult and drive the car then it will be very tempted to get completely fucking hammered before the game starts.

On the morning of the game, Marco Silva got sacked by Watford. Usually I wouldn’t give a shit about a Watford manager but Twitter exploded with conversation about whether he would be any good as a manager for Saints. The only question you really need to ask is, would he be better than what we have?. The answer is of course a resounding yes. One of the best managerial decisions made in the history of Southampton was sacking Nigel Adkins and appointing Mauricio Pochettino. Yes it was a very harsh decision to dump the manager after two promotions and being in 14th place but the board at the time thought that Pochettino would be better and so it was conclusively proved. Besides, “Marco Silva’s Red and White Army” fits a lot better because it has the correct number of syllables.  We can’t even get “Pellegrino out” into a chant because of the syllable issue.

Our team on paper looks decent.  Maya Yoshida is still injured so Stephens keeps his place and he’s picked pour best three midfielders in Romeu, Lemina and Hojbjerg.  Tadic is on the left in preference to Boufal and Shane Long is ill apparently which means Gabbiadini starts and 17 year old Michael Obafemi is on the bench.  My experience of him is watching videos of the Under-18s and he seems to score a lot of goals once being put through and he’s rapid.  Spurs are missing Alderweireld who is long term injured and our other ex, Big Vic is on the bench.  Christian Eriksen is out which is good news but with Kane, Alli and Son, they still have plenty for us to worry about.

Away we go and what’s this?  We have a chance after about 10 seconds as Spurs don’t deal with a long ball and Gabbis tries one from 25 yards and which Vorm saves comfortably enough.  Gabbi appears to have been possessed by the ghost of Shane Long from our next attack as JWP’s wicked cross from the right evades everyone but Tadic fires it back over and Gabbi plays an air shot.  Spurs begin to get into the game and eventually a cross comes in from Davies and Stephens is ball watching and not marking anyone as it comes over and Hoedt has to leave his player and attack the ball and knock it our for a corner before leaving Stephens in no doubt as to what he ddid wrong.

Another Spurs attack is broken up by Stephens and he moves the ball left to Tadic who waits and feeds Bertrand galloping up on the left past the very average looking Aurier.  Bertrand fires the ball over low and the sliding Davinson Sanchez slides in and shows great skill to get just the right connection on it to poke it goalwards, off the inside of the post and in.  Great finish and we are now in the usual position of leading.

The predictability continues as Spurs go for an immediate reply and win a corner, Over it comes from Davies on the left and we’re all over the place, allowing Dier to smack a shot which bounces away off the near post.  Not heeding the warning, we concede another corner, this time on the right and Davies’ corner is met by Harry Kane, 6 yards out with a free header, 1-1.  We were ahead for 3 minutes. Stephens was supposed to be marking him but he’s brushed him off as one would brush off a feather landing on your trousers.  It’s that easy.  From the kick off, we play it back to Stephens who smacks it against the onrushing Alli and then just stands and watches as the ball balloons up in the air and we manage to panic clear it eventually.  Not a great couple of minutes for Jack.

Saints Demonstrate How Not to Mark Someone 

A feature of the first half so far has been the Bromance between Moussa Dembele and Kevin Friend.  The way this works is that Dembele can foul anyone he likes as many times as he likes and his special Friend won’t do anything about it.  I am waiting for the first tackle from Romeu to see if he gets booked.  Elsewhere, we nearly go behind as Davies drills in a low cross and Sissoko reacts and sidefoots wide on the volley.  Luckily, today is not one of the 5% of games when Sissoko is decent.  At the other end, Saints win a free kick as good old Dembele trashes through Hojbjerg.  No card of course but a free kick and JWP flots in a superb ball to which Stephens rises unchallenged and heads wide of the top corner.  Arse.  Has to hit the target from there and so we go in all square in what has been a decent game so far.

The second half starts and I realise that Dele Alli is playing as he lashes a shot just wide of the post.  Last season he was a horrible little shit but he was brilliant.  This season he’s dropped the second bit and has ramped up the first bit.  I remember him showboating in the last minute a couple of years back when they were 4-1 up against us or whatever it was.  Not so cocky today are you, you little shit.

We seem to be losing our way a bit and Hojbjerg is struggling a bit in his attacking midfield position so on comes Boufal in a surprisingly attacking move from the bench.  Boufal has gone straight into the 10 position which looks good with JWP and Tadic remaining where they are most effective.  Talking of effective – McCarthy does a simple bread and butter goalkeeper thing and catches a corner.  Why does this bring almost a standing ovation from the crowd?  Oh yes.

Having been impressed with his first bit of tinkering, I am scratching my head as Tadic goes right (where he’s shit), JWP goes central (where he’s shit) and Boufal is out on the left and then Lemina jogs off to be replaced with Davis in defensive midfield (where he’s shit).  It’s an even game but we haven’t created anything since half time and then Gabbis is off on 83 minutes to be replaced by Michael Obafemi.  This is going to be interesting.

Lamela and Big Vic are on for Spurs, replacing Son (who has done nothing) and Dembele (who finally managed to get himself booked).  Again, I cast my mind back to last year and remember Dembele giving Mike Dean a high five when he was substituted after another game of constantly fouling everyone.  Big Vic’s first contribution is to pick it up 30 yards out and try a shot.  Anyone who remembers him from Saints days will not be surprised to know that the ball ended up in Row Z.

We survive a scramble in our box as Lamela gets in but Stephens manages to block well and we get a break off the linesman as he incorrectly gives us a goal kick, the useless blind bastard.  The script is now waiting to be written by someone and it should have been Obafemi as Romeu plays Tadic in on the right and a low first time cross comes over and Obafemi swings a right boot at it and plays an airshot.  He’s 6 yards out so any connection and it’s a goal.  Balls.  Would Shane Long have scored?  No.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah..... Fuck it!

We have one more decent chance as Tadic picks out Boufal with a pull back but he takes a shit heavy touch which allows a Spurs defender to block the shot and having missed that, we have a go at conceding at the death as Spurs work it from Vic to Alli to Kane on the left and he, fortunately for us, shanks his effort across goal and wide of the far post.

The game is done and the players leave the field with the applause of the crowd in their ears as opposed to about 5000 people swearing at them. You could look at it in any number of ways. On the one hand, a point is more than what anyone was expecting at the start of the day. On the other hand, we really could have won it if either of the two chances at the end had been put away. Conversely though, no one would’ve been expecting Harry Kane to drag that left footed effort wide in the last minute which would’ve meant that we ended up with expected zero points.

Considering most of my pre-match venting was aimed at Pellegrino, I have to be fair and say that I don’t think he got a lot wrong today. I wouldn’t have picked Tadic from the start but to be fair, he did a decent job. I have a bit of an issue with Hojbjerg being played further forward then Lemina who I feel would be much better suited to that role but that’s not too bad. The only time I was mystified by something that Pellegrino day today was when he bought on Davis for Lemina. I hope that was because Lemina had a small injury and not tactical because if it was tactical then it was questionable.

Overall, we played pretty well and made a very good Spurs side look pretty average.   Having said that, some of our defending was of the panic stations variety and our defending of set pieces was generally dreadful.  The biggest problem that we had was showed perfectly by the goal that we conceded where a simple corner, a few yards out, was headed in unchallenged by Harry Kane – the one player who you really should be marking closely. Kane simply outmuscled his marker, who was of course Jack Stephens and scored easily. For all his strength as a ball-playing defender, Jack Stephens is a fucking nightmare. You have to go back to the Hindenburg disaster to find something worse in the air than he is.  Before we conceded there was one cross into our box that he completely ball watched, leaving his man and forcing Wesley to leave his own man and head clear. Straight from the kick-off after the goal he just stood there and watched as his own clearance cannoned off a Spurs attacker and looped up in the air and every single time the ball went into the air he just looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. This is against Spurs, who are not a team that frequently put the ball high into the strikers. At the other end of the pitch there was the free header wide, to be added to the free header against Fulham when he hit the bar from three yards.

It is not Pellegrino’s fault that he has to pick him because with Yoshida injured, Stephens is all that we’ve got. This one is completely down to Les Reed who knew that Virgil was leaving way before he actually did and he has not got us a replacement yet.  You could easily argue that this lack of preparation has cost us 4 points over the last two games.  We 100% percent need another centre half before the transfer window closes.

Talking of Les. Today we had to bring on Michael Obafemi up front because we had no one else because Charlie Austin and Shane Long are injured and ill respectively and our next two strikers off the rank, Sam Gallagher and Ryan Seager are out on loan and Gallagher at least has no recall option. Having scored a few goals for Blackburn last year, I fully expected Gallagher to be part of our squad of the season, particularly when we gave him a new contract and particularly when J Rod was sold but no, someone on the football side decided to loan him out for a second season of battling away at the bottom of the Championship because, I assumed at the time, we were going to bring in another striker. Needless to say we fucking didn’t and boy can we do with Sam now. Name me a single manager anywhere in English football aside from Pep, who would not want a big striker option, at least off the bench. It looks like maybe we are about to punt £20 million on Carrillo (I’ll believe it when I see it), a similar type of player without first seeing if the academy striker in that mould that we have is good enough. I’m reminded of the Southampton way and pathways and all that shit that doesn’t apply any more.

Overall today, considering we were up against the usual standard refereeing that we always get from Kevin Friend, we did ok.  As is usual against Spurs, Moussa Dembele is allowed to foul at will with no yellow card until it becomes embarrassing.  We don’t look anything like a side but should be in the bottom three but here we are. I think we caught Spurs on a bad day for them with Christian Eriksen out injured.  They seem to have a couple more dodgy players than usual with Aurier and Sanchez looking very average but they still have Dembele refereeing the game so all will be well. 

As for us, if we can keep playing with that intensity and Pellegrino can keep us on the front foot and attempting to play further up the pitch then we might be okay, as long as the aforementioned new centre half turns up along with the new striker. We cannot get too optimistic though. It is just one game and at the end of the day, it is another home game gone that we did not win and we are now no wins in 11 and one win in 15 so it is still quite remarkable that Pellegrino still has a job. He did show a sense of humour in his post match interview though which illustrated that he knows he’s under severe pressure, describing his situation as like being sat on the electric chair. They have a curious turn of phrase in Argentina.

Next up is Watford in the FA Cup where I expect Mr Doucoure, the basketball playing cheating fuck, will get a lot of stick if he’s playing. The dilemma for Pellegrino is to either pick a team reserves to save the first team to Brighton at home on Wednesday night or to try and build on this slight little bit of momentum that we have. Personally, I would play a mix and match side – for example, I would rest Wesley Hoedt for this game to give Hindenburg some practice playing against Troy Deeney. I would partner him with Florin Gardos who is after all, a 6 foot 4 centre back who has had decent games for us in the past.  I would maybe rest Lemina because of his ankle and play Davis or maybe take the opportunity to play Gabbiadini at 10 behind Long or Obafemi.

The next League game at home to Brighton on Wednesday is huge.  Win that and today was a springboard to something decent.  Fail to win it and we are right in the shit and digging deeper and any goodwill that Pellegrino may have earned from today, will be completely lost and the clamour for him to go will be deafening.

PS – It’s now the 24^th January, 29 days since we sold van Dijk to Liverpool and stll, no one has arrived.