Premier League Match 30 - Newcastle 3 Southampton 0

Saints Unveil One Off Kit for Newcastle Game

A trip to what is usually pretty happy hunting ground for us - St James’s Park, Newcastle.  Bearing in mind the situation that we are in and the fact that we cannot win a fucking home game for love nor money, this is one of the more winnable games out of the nine we have left so hopefully, Pellegrino and the players will feel the same way.

Rafa Benitez has a reputation for playing fairly dour defensive football but in his defence, his Newcastle squad is almost exactly the same as he got promoted with from the Championship so he knew where he stood from the start the season. I will say though that they appear to target the more winnable games and really go for it. Their away game at West Ham was a classic example where every time they attacked they absolutely flooded the box and emerged with a 3-2 win.  They were brave and they were rewarded – who does that not remind you of?  I think you can safely assume that they will be looking at Southampton at home as one of their target games so we have to be prepared for that. I’m sure the Pellegrino will be prepared for that, especially as he has first hand knowledge of working with Benitez and he will set up in his usual way to defend the living shit out of it.

Adam Blackmore from Radio Solent conducted an interview with Pellegrino this week which was laced with usual riddles and Pellegrino defending the accusation he was a stubborn manager who was scared to make changes. He pointed out that he’s change the goalkeeper, the defence, the midfield and attack. Whilst this is undeniably true, the one thing he hasn’t changed is the style of football and the risk averse nature of everything we do. Basically, I don’t see how you can get even mildly irritated at any question when you’ve only won 5 games out of 29 and a club with an upper-mid table squad of players is staring squarely at relegation to the Championship. The way you judge a manager is by what they achieve with the resources at their disposal and  let’s face it, by any measure like that, Pellegrino completely sucks ass.  Elsewhere in the interview, on the face of it there were encouraging noises about the possibility of playing Gabbiadini just behind a central striker so there is hope there, especially when you look back to the home game against Newcastle when Shane Long and Gabbiadini we both in the starting line-up.  Not that Shane is a striker.

And so, it’s 2pm and time for weekly ritual of waiting for the team announcement. Romeu out, Hojbjerg in. What the fuck? It seems strange on the face of it because Romeu is our most defensive midfielder but I know what he’s done. He is resting him for the cup game next week against Wigan. This is worrying.  Does he feel like he can’t risk his best defensive midfielder in a must win league game and would rather have him available for a cup tie against a League One side. Doesn’t the fucking idiot realise that if we lose today, Wigan versus Southampton is likely to be a Championship fixture next season. If he played today and got booked then so what? Surely we can cope against a League One side. Does he not fucking realise how deep in the shit we are?

The other change to the team saw the best player from the last couple of weeks, Josh Sims, drop to the bench with JWP being restored on the right wing. On the face of this, I don’t think it’s a bad call but with those being the only two changes, he has actually managed to pick a more defensive line-up than we had in the shockingly shit first half against Stoke last week. He is learning all the time though so that’s good….twat!  So, we have the terminally fucking useless Tadic on the pitch and Boufal, Gabbiadini and Sims on the bench with four players who are not goal threats, Forster, Bednarek, Romeu and Long.

We are wearing a different variation of our home kit with a solid red back instead of the usual one with a white central band.  We must be the only team who has had to unveil two new one off kits to get through the season.  Red and White home kit, Yellow away kit - it's not difficult.

So, away we go on our latest fear and caution driven epic. 63 seconds, 1-0 down, game plan fucked.  It’s not even a good goal.  Hojbjerg loses the ball in a challenge in midfield, Shelvey lobs it over Stephens who looks like he’s nailed to the floor and Kenedy brings it down on his chest, spins past the most pathetic powder puff challenge from Cedric and bobbles it past McCarthy and into the net.

Redmond then loses the ball by basically letting Shelvey have it and Shelvey is a very good player when no one gets near him and he curls a lovely ball behind Stephens to Gayle and luckily, McCarthy is one of the few who looks like he gives a nshit and he’s off his line smartly to save.

It usually takes conceding a goal for us to do anything in a game so I guess the good news is that we’ve done it early and we have 90 minutes of improvement to come.  I’m expecting us to start peppering the Newcastle goal soon but not a bit of it.  Hoedt passes short to Lemina and aside froma  return pass to Hoedt, no fucker wants the ball.  Lemina is one of the few that tries to be positive all the time and he’s looking forward at the statues and gets caught on the ball by Diame, through it goes to Gayle and McCarthy has to get down well to his left to keep it out one handed.  It’s easy to blame Lemina for this and sure, he shouldn’t get caught with the ball but all of Tadic, Redmond, JWP and Carrillo should all know that Lemina is going to be looking forward and they should be making themselves available.  What he should have done is launched it out for a throw in and then called every other player a useless sack of shit for making him look bad by not moving.

It’s celebration time as we win a corner on the left after a really decent one touch build up on the right involving JWP, Cedric and Hojbjerg.  We are still celebrating winning a corner when it’s cleared and Lemina has ‘goal of the season’ in his mind as he lines up a volley before falling on his arse.  3v3 break and away they go with Perez.  He carries it to about 30 yards out before sliding in Gayle and instead of shooting, he calmly rolls it across taking the keeper out of the game for Kenedy to tap into an empty net.  We’re not celebrating winning a corner any more.  We are shit.

There are still 20 minutes to half time but time stands still.  There’s some sort of vacuum and we all wake up at half time with nothing else having happened and we’re 2-0 down.  Has anyone ever been sacked at half time?  As the teams emerge and take their positions for the start of the second half it’s obvious that Pellegrino has not been sacked as we have yet more nonsensical bollocks in the form of substitutions and reshuffle.  Shane Long is on.  Yep, Shane Long.  Not Gabbiadini but Shane Long.  Josh Sims is on as well but Lemina is off along with that useless waste of oxygen Dusan Tadic.  I honestly wouldn’t give a shit if I never saw Tadic in a Southampton shirt ever again.  So it looks like we’re going 4-4-2 but without the Romeu – Lemina central midfield which is crucial for that to work.

To the surprise of no one, it’s no better.  Lascelles has a free header over from a corner.  He gets a free header because he’s the only player who attacks the ball and jumps.  Honestly – this game has gone and we would be better served with it being 5-0.  Shelvey is just strolling about and then taking as long as he needs to do what he wants.  He picks out Kenedy but he puts the hat-trick chance well wide.

Just before the hour mark we get pinned in our left corner and Bertrand hoofs it away.  Again the ball ends up with Shelvey who, under no pressure, wanders across the top of our penalty area, feigns to shoot a couple of times before finally noticing that Ritchie is standing unmarked a few yards away waving his arms about.  Despite the fact that Ritchie has been stood there waving his arms about and presumable yelling his head off, no fucker in a red and white shirt is aware enough or bothered enough to close him down and he simply passes it into the net left footed from the edge of the box.

Newcastle have got a goalkeeper and we see him for the first time as we get enar his goal.  Sims beats a man and crosses and Carrillo arrives at the same time as a defender who is actually committed to keeping the ball out of the net and it spoons up to Dubravka.  Benitez knows the game is done so Newcastle save energy and settle for playing out the game.  They only have to put in the slightest effort to keep us out.  They do allow Bertrand a free header from a corner which he heads over the bar and on about 80 minutes, Sims cuts in from the right and forces a decent save out of the keeper.

Useless sacks of shit.

Just when you think you’ve seen it all this season. Just when you think you’ve seen every catastrophic low there can possibly be, then along comes Pellegrino and the team and gives us a new benchmark by which to judge low points.  Instead of ‘Goal of the Season’, can we have a ‘Sack of Shit of the Season.  Vote now: A – Leicester at home, B – Liverpool at home, C – Spurs away, D – Newcastle away, E – Brighton at home, F – Huddersfield at home, G- Wolves at home, H – Liverpool away, I – Burnley at home.  These are just off the top of my head and there are many more.  The worst is probably still to come, probably next week – getting beat 3-0 by a League 1 side in the Quarter Finals of the FA Cup.

And yet it’s all so predictable. After the Stoke game which had an appalling first half and marginally better second-half when we had attacking players on the pitch, he reverts to a team selection which is even more negative than the starting selection against Stoke. 1-0 down in a minute, 2-0 down after half an hour, then he burns one substitution bringing on a player who hasn’t scored since Margaret Thatcher was in power, 3-0 on the hour and then sweet fuck all until the final whistle. We made the keeper make his first save on 80 minutes I think.  The good news is though that we had more possession than they did, 63% so that’s something. Do you get any points for that Pellegrino?

To be honest, I have done Pellegrino to death so there’s no point other than to say that he absolutely has to be sacked now. I will not take any of this bullshit argument about there having to be a ready-made replacement or that it is too late. We have an eight game season left and we need to win about three or four games so we need a short term solution. I don’t care if Marco Silva manages the team to safety and then fucks off to Everton next season. I couldn’t care less. We are in a short-term crisis and we need to get out of it. Saints are all about thinking about the long-term but the long-term can wait for the next few weeks because the long-term will collapse in a big fucking heap if we don’t sort out the short-term. Sorting out the short-term means getting in the best person to scramble enough points out of the next eight games. Radhi Jaidi, Kelvin Davis or even Donald fucking Trump couldn’t be worse at managing a football team then Pellegrino is and any vaguely competent manager would have done better than Pellegrino has. Get rid of him and get rid of him now.  He is probably the worst manager Southampton have ever had – ever.  Steve Wigley and Jan Poortvliet come close but they had shit squads to choose from.  Today was billed as Master vs Pupil but it was Master vs Useless Fucker Who Learned Nothing.  Benitez has a Championship squad but he knows what he's doing.

There seems to have been a tipping point in the local media today and they all feel that it’s time to turn the guns on the players and yes the players do have to take a lot of responsibility. Fans don’t usually turn the guns on the players for the simple reason that players cannot get sacked so there is no real point. The manager can get sacked and rightly or wrongly, that is the way it is. The tone is set by the manager and he dictates the style of play etc but individual players have got to be doing a damn site better than they are. The basics are not there - tracking a runner (too much effort), running off the ball (massive issue because it takes effort), putting tackles in (might get hurt), winning headers (takes a bit of bottle), crossing the ball somewhere near one of your own players (takes a bit of brain and you need a target) etc. None of these things are in place. Things that you learn from about eight years old onwards are not in place there is no point in naming the players who were utterly shit today. You may as well name the ones that weren’t. McCarthy had no chance with anything and Carrillo was hopelessly isolated again like the centre forward has been in virtually every fucking game we’ve played this season. Ryan Bertrand was ok-ish and Josh Sims did ok second half but that was it. Utter bollocks.  Out of the others, the only ones who really looked like they gave a fuck were JWP and Hojbjerg but they were just generally poor.

As I see it, the main advantage of being relegated to the Championship is that we will get rid of some of the useless fuckers who got us there. We will however not be able to shift some of them because of the performances they’ve been putting in this season. Who the fuck is going to take Shane Long off our hands for example? He is shit and I wouldn’t even want him in the Championship.

Next up we have a trip to Wigan for the FA Cup 6th Round followed by an international break so there is no Premier League game for three weeks. We have to sack him now.