FA Cup Semi Final - Chelsea 2 Southampton 0

FA Ticket Prices Meant There Were a Few Empty Seats

Semi-final day and a break from our dismal Premier League campaign. It’s a day when we can all dream that the 11 players in red and white will put in a performance and we throw all logic out of the window and actually win a game against a team who are much better than us.  After all, we were 2-0 up against Chelsea a week ago and let’s not dwell on the fact that 10 minutes later we were losing. I spent Sunday morning before we left thinking about how I felt before other showpiece games that we have had. In last years EFL cup final I felt that we were underdogs but that we had a decent chance. In the JPT final I knew we were going to win. Going back further, the final in 2003 against Arsenal, I knew we’d be tough to beat but we were severe underdogs and for the semi-final against Watford I knew that we were going to win. Today, I have to admit I don’t even have a sneaky suspicion that we might win. I basically think we’ve got no chance, so depressing has this season been so far.

Mark Hughes has got to balance being competitive and resting some players, or so he says. Personally, I think he will pick his strongest possible side as you would expect when you are a manager with only a five, or by some miracle, six games left on your contract. Besides, I don’t see that he really has any option unless he wants to play some of the players who clearly don’t give a shit like Boufal or Lemina.

The drive up is mercifully free of traffic jams and we are by the ground by 12:30 and a decent atmosphere is building. We sat down and did a bit of people watching. It is remarkable how many people you recognise who go wandering past. Into the ground and find the seat and we struck gold being directly behind the middle of the goal, 24 rows back. Perfect.... and so it should be for £65 fucking quid.

As an aside, I’m a bit skint at the moment having been made redundant before Christmas and struggling to find work since. I’m very fortunate that my dad offered to pay for me and my son to come to the game as when I saw the prices, I was seriously considering not going. So, thanks Dad. It actually amazes me that The FA are only charging a fiver for the program. Surely they can rip off a few more punters by charging a tenner.

Team news and two strikers with both Charlie and Shane in the starting lineup. The miracle is that Tadic has been dropped to the bench and bloody Lemina is starting alongside Hojbjerg and Romeu in what looks like a 5-3-2 formation. Not much creativity in that midfield but I assumed that the game plan is to dominate the midfield and get the ball out of the wingbacks who are both going to have to have huge games today and actually get forward and not just play in a flat back five. The headline news from Chelsea is that of course, they have picked Giroud so we are going to have to score at least once to take this to extra time.

With a game about to start I have a quick look around and there are plenty of empty seats in the top tiers which is a complete indictment of the shit season that we have been having but mainly, of FA prices. There are three empty seats directly in front of me but as the game kicks off, in come three lads who I just know from looking at the back of their heads, are going to be complete arseholes. The club have left a complimentary flag for everybody to wave was the teams come out and of course that has already been and gone but the three knob heads are all still waving their flags as the game kicks off, on their own. I’m already wondering how I’m going to get through 90 minutes without giving any of them the benefit of my opinion. The ringleader and the one directly in front of me looks like a 5 foot 3 ugly, shandy drinking version of Olivier Giroud so if any of them are getting it, it’s going to be him.

Away we go and Austin appears to be playing deeper than Long but it’s irrelevant for now as Chelsea have the ball and pin us back.  In the league game last week, Hazard was asleep in the first half and then he came alive and ran the game in the second.  The problem is that he looks up for it from the start today and looks very threatening.  He plays a 1-2 with Giroud before firing one just over the angle of post and bar.  I don’t think many appreciated how close it was.  It wasn’t as close as the next effort though.  We actually have an attack of sorts as Romeu carries it forward but he loses it just outside the Chelsea box and Hazard gets it and he’s gone with us trailing in his wake.  He eventually feeds Willian on the right who cuts inside Bertrand before shooting over McCarthy, off the bar and over.

We manage to establish some sort of holding pattern afterwards and I find myself watching the clock a bit.  We’ve made 20 minutes without conceding, now we’ve made 30 etc.  We are not doing a thing going forward.  When we get the ball and avoid the immediate attempts to win it back, we go sideways and whoever gets it is looking for a forward runner but no one is making any, especially Lemina who is playing on the right of the three in midfield but is not showing for Cedric to pass to at all and not getting ahead of him so the full back can play it down the line.  Hojbjerg is bossing players about in midfield, making sure that they hold their positions and trying to get Lemina to actually contribute anything.  Pierre is a bit like a proper captain.  He should be captain.  Bednarek has surprised me – he looks decent, calm on the ball and not afraid to get stuck into Giroud when the opportunity presents itself.

As the half goes on I begin to notice a problem and it’s Martin Atkinson.  Yellow cards start getting handed out and they’re all to us.  Kante can foul people at will and nothing is given whereas every tackle we make is a booking.  Mind you, Yoshida trashing through someone after the ball had long gone didn’t leave him with much option but every 50/50 is going their way.  Half time.

I’ll take that – 45 minutes and we’re not behind.  My hope for the game was that we would still be in it at half time and we are.  The game plan would have been to keep it tight and stay in the game and then try and nick something in the second half so so far so good.  It wasn’t the most entertaining but it’ll do.  The shandy boys have returned to eat their gourmet pizza which they missed 10 minutes of the first half to go and buy.  They spent some of the remaining time when they were actually in the ground turned round the wrong way taking selfies.  Arseholes.

Away we go for the start of the second half and a ball forward from Chelsea.  Hazard picks it out of the sky with superb control and find Giroud in the penalty area.  Lemina slides in, misses the tackle, Yoshida slides in, misses and Giroud twists past the flailing bodies of Cedric, Bednarek and McCarthy and pokes it into the net.  For fucks sake.  How the fuck did we allow him to do that?  Bastard!  Well, we did know that he was going to score at some point.

Giroud in 'Goal Against Southampton' Shocker!

Our need to be more expansive was of course going to bring problems and straight away, we lose it to Willian and he finds Hazard who curls one just wide of the far post.  He’s a wonderful footballer and you just have to admire it sometimes.  We are getting a foothold now and have a great chance as Hoedt pings in a good ball to Austin who steps over it and Shane just has Caballero to beat.  Guess what happens?  Instead of sidefooting it first time like 99% of strikers would have done, he tries to take a touch and go round the keeper and the touch goes straight out for a goal kick.  That was shit.  Real shit.  It’s like the Leicester ‘clowns feet’ incident.  The decision to try and do what he did was fucking ridiculous and only matched in it’s ridiculousness by the execution.

He’s put out of his misery soon after with Redmond and Tadic coming on for Shane and Hojbjerg.  Lemina has shown signs of life since half time but it doesn’t sit well with me that he’s still on and one of our best players is off.  The two who have come on can be decent but more often than not are maddeningly inconsistent but with only having half an hour, they both seem keen to have an impact.  We are pinning Chelsea back a bit now and Tadic picks it up on the left after decent move, finds Redmond who breaks a tackle and smashes it from the edge of the box and it moves all over the place and I’m up celebrating the goal and Caballero somehow and incredibly luckily, sits on it and it squirts off some part of his anatomy and goes wide.  Fuck off!!!  From the corner, Romeu heads it up in the air and it comes down on Caballero right on the goal line and with Austin in attendance he drops it over the line and claws it out.  It looks over the line and there’s barely been a challenge by Austin.  For a microsecond it looks like Atkinson has given the goal as he points to the centre but no – with his other hand he’s making exaggerated gestures that it’s a free kick to the keeper.

Charlie in Vicious Goalkeeper Assault

The main Shandy boy thinks it’s a good idea to pick up his flag and start waving it around.  As he’s older than 7 and everyone is pissed off it is not a good idea.  A voice from behind me asking if the flag can be put down is enough for me…”I didn’t come here to look through your fucking flag”.  What we get next is another of the Shandy boys making witty comments like “we can’t be enjoying ourselves, that would never do”.  So amusing… pricks!

Anyway, you just know that Chelsea are going to capitalize on the Austin escape and score and they have a go with McCarthy making a decent save from Hazard and then Hazard is at it again, firing over a cross which Cedric lashes at in the manner of a park player rather than a Euro winner and it smashes off Yoshida and out for a corner.  We’re too nice.  Everyone should have been in Cedric’s face giving him a bollocking for what was an appalling piece of play.

Gabbiadini is thrown on as Bednarek is sacrificed and Morata is on for Giroud and guess which sub has the greater impact?  Pedro, another sub, puts over a cross from our left and there’s Morata with a  free header at the back post to score a goal that we’ve seen many times.  Hoedt appears to be trying to lean on Morata to manoeuvre him out of the way to allow the ball to go past but he fucks it up and ends up doing nothing.

We are keeping playing despite being 2-0 down but some can’t be arsed.  Lemina is in full ‘walking football’ mode now and Cedric again, rather than make a tackle or get into a position where he might have to take a tackle, smashes it anywhere straight across the pitch and it luckily falls to Tadic.  On it goes to Bertrand and a decent low cross which is met by Austin beyond the back post and his first time shot across the goal pings off the post and out.  Not happening.

The game ends with all eyes on Eden Hazard as they should be.  Firstly he breaks and finds Morata who beats McCarthy only for Hoedt to get it off the line really well.  Then Hazard jinks in and fires in a low cross which Hoedt slices goalwards for McCarthy to smother.  The good news is that the Shandy boys have gone.

Game over and we stick around and clap the players who can be bothered to come over. My personal applause are for about half of them.  I’m not really disappointed as the result is more or less exactly what I expected and the game panned out in more or less exactly the way I expected it to as well. Tight first half, concede a goal, get some shit decisions off of the referee, concede another goal, lose. It was all a bit predictable.

Players who came out in credit today were McCarthy, Bednarek, Yoshida and Hoedt.   Hoedt will get some deserved stick for the Morata goal but overall I thought he was ok.  It’s a classic performance from a Saints centre half – play well for nearly all of the game but then a lapse… every game.  Romeu battled hard in midfield and Hojbjerg was very unlucky to be substituted. Austin tried hard and was our main goal threat as usual and Redmond was very good when he came on and was very unlucky not to score when Caballero found a new part of his body to save that shot with that he didn’t have a fucking clue about.

As for the others, well Cedric was fucking gash as he always is, frequently wellying the ball anywhere and shitting himself any time and opponent went anywhere near him. Let’s not forget that our European champion was up against a kid playing about his second game for Chelsea and he didn’t try and impose himself on him once. He is a fucking waste of time. Bertrand almost totally failed to provide any attacking impetus down the left hand side and looked like he was completely playing within himself. Jay-Z himself, Mario Lemina was a fucking disgrace. It actually makes me angry that this useless fucker was selected to represent Southampton at Wembley.  I was born in the city, I live here, this is the team representing me and we’ve got this guy representing me.  Why not select someone who it would actually mean something to like JWP or Sam McQueen. For the first 45 minutes, Mr Z just existed and did absolutely fuck all, didn’t make any runs and may as well not have been there. He obviously got a bit of a bollocking at half-time so for 20 minutes he tried but for the last 25 he just jogged about as if he was injured, only he wasn’t. He doesn’t give a fuck about you, me or anyone else who paid to go and watch him today. He doesn’t give a fuck about the club, the city or any of his team mates who do actually care. He only cares about himself and his Fanny and his brand and he’s a complete waster. Just to clarify, I like Jay-Z, the real one. He is brilliant at his day job and deserves everything he gets in life unlike the fucking arsehole wannabe playing for Southampton.

I bet Shane Long wishes that he had some of Lemina’s talent. If he had any of his talent along with his own work ethic then we would have a good striker on our hands. However, Shane was dreadful all day from the moment he started lashing balls over the bar during shooting practice in the warm-up until when he left the field of pay having been mercifully substituted.  If he can’t hit the target in the warm up with no defenders, why does anyone think he’ll be any different once the game starts?

I still think it was a good formation that was picked by Hughes which was to try and give us more attacking threat than when we have played 5-4-1 recently and the only thing that I would have changed would have been picking JWP ahead of that fucking arsehole Lemina. Despite making a solid midfield three, we didn’t get a foothold in the game to provide any basis for getting forward. This was mainly because there were only two of three who were prepared to put a shift in. With Bertrand basically playing like he’s got the World Cup in mind, it is down to Hojbjerg midfield to be the only one who was looking to organise the team. He is one who I would be genuinely disappointed to lose in the summer. Hughes sacrificed the creativity (I use that term loosely) of Tadic to get a second striker on the pitch and you could see the logic but it didn’t quite work because of individual failings and attitude.

Chelsea deserved to win the game. We rode our luck in the first half to keep them out when Willian hit the bar but the whole match was the Eden Hazard show. He was absolutely brilliant. I have a feeling that he probably wants to move on from Chelsea and onto one of the huge European clubs but the way he’s doing it is by playing as if his life depended on it, unlike our players who want to move who are basically just killing time until the summer when they feel they will get one by default. It probably makes it easier to secure move if your team is in the Championship so high why bother. We all knew that Giroud would score today but I feel that he got a bit lucky because he couldn’t possibly have known where all the challenges were coming from but to weave past four players in a goalkeeper and score in that tight a space looks brilliant and fair play to the guy.

We have to mention the referee Martin Atkinson and the mythical rub of the green which we never get against the big clubs. I thought Atkinson was dreadful in the first half, giving Chelsea every 50-50 decision and allowing Kante to foul people at will and get away with it. In the second half he took it to a new level, failing to book Giroud for exactly the same offence that Yoshida had committed earlier in the first half and then we had the controversy over the goal not given to Charlie Austin. Because of the way games are refereed, I am not remotely surprised that the goalkeeper got away with it but when you see the replay it is embarrassing that that can be given as a free-kick. He barely touched him, the ball was over the line and even though he had it available, Atkinson didn’t look at VAR. Even if he had though, he still would’ve given the foul so it’s a moot point really but at least we would have at some level felt like we got a fair trial and he at least had a look at it, whereas we come away again thinking that the referee is just given all the big decisions to the Big team. We were unlucky with Austin’s shot that hit the post and we were also unlucky with Caballero’s save from Redmond. To beat teams like Chelsea you need a lot of things to go your way and you need a strong performance from the referee and we didn’t have any of that.

Every time I go to Wembley I think the same thing. As someone who remembers the original ground and the Twin Towers and all the history that came with it, the walk up Wembley Way to the ground was fantastic and that is not there any more. The whole outside of the ground is quite unremarkable and it’s similar to any other huge football ground. To be honest, the Emirates at Arsenal looks better from the outside. I am really not fussed about the arch either. I know it’s the centrepiece of the ground but it just seems like something someone thought was a good idea at the time. Where Wembley wins is once you get in sight of the pitch but then you get the shandy drinking arseholes who are part of the reason why these big games can sometimes be a bit shit. People with no regard for other fans around them who think they are the funniest and most entertaining part of the day. 

Then we have the ticket prices. I sat in category B which was £65 for an adult ticket with the concession tickets that my son and my dad had being £55 each.  That is ridiculously expensive for semi-final but as we were waiting in the queue at Wembley Park tube, I was looking at Twitter and saw that the same ticket for the final will cost £115.  The FA are not fit for purpose. How dare they use the phrase “the magic of the FA Cup“ in any advertising that they do. They have totally killed what was once the most prestigious cup competition in the world. There is no magic aside from in the early rounds.  Once you’re past those there is just corporate greed and contrary to watch Gordon Gecko says, greed is not good. Greed will eventually kill everything. The FA have managed, for probably the first time in my football supporting life to actually have the thought that in some ways, I’m glad we fucking lost.

Also whilst in the queue, there was some gentle banter going on between Saints and Chelsea fans and a group of Chelsea lads decided to chant about us going down. It is hardly news lads. Of course we are going down. When we got to the platform, we were stood next to a family of Chelsea fans, mum and dad and four kids Aged from about 5 to 12. That’ll be about £600 if you want to go and watch the final.

On to the final four games of the season. Results went our way again this weekend with Stoke failing to win having led at home to Burnley and Swansea getting smashed by Manchester City. Bournemouth at St Mary‘s is next and this really is the point of no return. I can’t see us winning this game and I certainly can’t see us not losing to Swansea when it comes to a do or die relegation battle. We have too many players who just don’t give a fuck and I’m beginning to think that we will have a better chance if we just drew a line now under all the players who wouldn’t want to play for us in the Championship and didn’t pick any of them.

Onwards.

Premier League Match 34 - Leicester 0 Southampton 0

Another Thrill Ride

Somewhen in December it was becoming painfully obvious that keeping Pellegrino was going to mean we were in for a relegation battle, I saw some Saints fans already looking at the results that other struggling teams were getting and filling in predictors and all that sort stuff. I said back then that there was absolutely no point in looking at other teams results as we had to get our own house in order otherwise it would all be completely irrelevant. Has the time come when we need to start worrying about other teams results? To be perfectly honest, the deal is exactly the same as it was back in December. If we don’t get our own house in order then we are completely fucked.

Having said that, at the end of The Chelsea blog however, I was guilty at looking at the fixtures that Brighton have left to play and pondering that they wouldn’t get another point and that we would only need 7 to overhaul and then the bastards went then got a point against Tottenham so by that logic, my new target is now eight points. So, it is pointless looking at other times at the moment. There will be some point if we can win this game tonight.

We have reached the point of no return. Today we are playing a Leicester City Side with absolutely nothing to play for and it would appear, a manager that no one wants to play for. That manager is of course Claude Puel who started well and it of course at it fuelled the fire of everybody saying Southampton were such dicks to sack the manager we finished eighth and got into a cup final with. We all said that there was more to it than that but no one listened and Leicester’s good start under him seem to confirm in everyones' eyes that our decision was a bad one. However, he clearly hadn’t had time at that point to fuck everything up at Leicester. Now he has and the rumours are that Leicester players and Leicester fans are getting pissed off with it. Their fans were so arrogant when they tanked us 4-1 at St Mary‘s so they deserve it really. Hopefully they will keep him next season and see the full effect. Maybe they can appoint Pellegrino to replace him as well.

We have to go for the win today. There is no question about it and if we play with the application we had at times against Chelsea and Arsenal then we have a decent chance. They of course have a danger men in Mahrez and Vardy but they are the sort of team that we should be able to beat if we apply ourselves properly, especially given that they have not much to play for. To be honest, I am not expecting the team to be any different from the one that took the field against Chelsea.

In preparation for the latest most important game of the season, our resident Rockstar Instagram model has gone for his football related social media post this time to show that his mind is fully focused. That would be a big wobbly dangling dirty lie though as Lemina as purely posted a picture of his Fanny. That’s his girlfriend’s name in case you’re wondering. Look mate, if I wanted to follow Jay-Z and Beyoncé on Instagram then I would.

A soundbite from Mark Hughes’ post match interview after the Chelsea game was that he knew which players he could trust and which ones were up for the fight. There has been some speculation as to which players he is referring to as not being up for the fight. The fact that Sims has come on ahead of Redmond and Boufal in the last two matches tells you that those two are being questioned. I would also suggest that Lemina is not focused and Gabbiadini doesn’t really want to be here judging by all the agent-speak that has around him for about a year. The pre-match press conference for Leicester confirms some of this in that Boufal and Lemina are missing the game with unconvincing excuses. It’s not quite my ‘dog ate my homework’ but it’s not far-off and no surprise really.  Two of our most expensive signing and probably two of the highest wage earners don’t fancy actually earning their money.  Wankers.

In the event we name the same side as the Chelsea game with Steve Davis and Jeremy Pied on the bench in place of the ‘Can’t be Arsed 2’.  Leicester have some serious pace up front with Iheanacho, Gray and Vardy as well as Mahrez.  They have some decent players it has to be said.  Hopefully Claude will have sucked any attacking instincts out of them.

It’s a game of severly pressing in the first few minutes as no one gets anywhere with everyone working hard to close everybody down.  The first chance of any description is for Leicester as they work and opening for Mahrez who hits a daisy cutter for McCarthy to fall on.  I know we are trying to keep things tight but there seems to be a complete lack of any urgency and when we win the ball there is no one to pass the ball to.

Out first effort of sorts comes from Tadic as a Bertrand cross is headed out to him on the edge of the box and he connects sweetly with a half volley but well wide. We accidentally create a much better chance as Romeu plays a 1-2 with Tadic and the ball finds its way out to Long and he puts in a really good first time cross and picks out Cedric.  It’s a wonderful chance to at least work the keeper, he’s not marked and could probably have brought it down but he just shits it wide of the near post on the volley.  Full back or not, that was fucking rubbish.

Then came the moment when keeping it tight should have paid off as Hojbjerg threads a great ball through to Long who is virtually thorough.  He should hit it with his left foot but instead tries to square it to Tadic by using his right foot instead of his left and but he resembles a clown in size 20 shoes as he totally fucks it up and just knocks it to the keeper.  Fucking garbage.  After a brief renaissance and a couple of decent performances, you remember that Shane is incredibly limited and not good enough to play clever flicks or do anything much aside from run fast.

Half time and the good news is that we’re still in the game and hopefully we’ll step it up in the second half.  There is nothing really to say about the second half.  We are the better side in the first 15 but nothing is happening going forward. The first sub we made was JWP off and Davis on.  Bringing Davis on is not exactly a positive move especially when removing your best dead ball taker.  We had a half chance when Tadic tried a shot and it deflected to Long which of course means that it doesn’t end up in the net and Hamer smothered it.  Leicester are no better than us aside from one great long ball from Albrighton which picks out Vardy but McCarthy keeps out the effort comfortably.

With 15 to go, Charlie Austin is on but Shane is off so we’re still being pretty unadventurous.  I think Hughes is terrified of going 4 at the back and so he’s hoping to nick it rather than really going for it.  To me, with Austin on you need more pace on the wings in Redmond or Sims.  There is a rare moment of good defending from Cedric as he gets his head on a diagonal cross from Mahrez and clears it.  It’s the sort of cross that usually floats over Stephens and the guy Cedric is supposed to be marking usually scores.  Redmond comes on for Hojbjerg in the end and in the last minute we double our shots on target as Austin tries one from 35 yards and the keeper saves easily.

To be honest I don’t really know what to make of that. Actually, come to think about it, yes I do - it was a load of boring bollocks. If Pellegrino had still been on charge and we played like that and drawn 0-0 then I would be spitting feathers. I am reluctant to criticise Mark Hughes too much because I feel he has been handed an impossible job with everything that has gone on but you have to question the fact that we appeared to play for a draw tonight. Basically wasting a substitution by bringing on Steve Davis was a bit of a strange one, maybe pointing at the game management issue which was so obvious lacking against Chelsea.  As a player, Steve Davis doesn’t add much in terms of going forward and scoring a goal, even when he is fully fit, let alone when he is as rusty as a bag of old nails. Making a like-for-like substitution upfront points to the fact that maybe everyone was happy with a point today. I’m not happy with a point today as Leicester had nothing to play for and were there for the taking. There seem to be a collective lack of energy about us and again, I think this is down to the rubbish that went on under Pellegrino with players not being fit enough.

It was good to know that Les Reed and Motivational Ralph were in attendance to see the shitshow first hand. Ultimately, those two are responsible but particularly Les - he's the King of Football at Southampton FC, he ultimately decides who we sell and buy, he decides on where we need strengthening, he decides who the manager is and how long they stay.  He's had his successes of course but this year he's got it all wrong.

It has to be said though that tonight, a lot of our players just put in piss poor performances. I have never seen Oriol Romeu be as bad as that. Hojbjerg had a dreadful second half as well and JWP and Tadic we are diabolical also, creating next to nothing for the strikers. By default, Shane Long has become our main striker and today he showed how ridiculous that is with the total fuck-up just before half time. He should have just smashed it but instead he tried to pass it, got his clowns feet mixed up and totally fucked up. I cannot think of any other Premier League striker who would have tried to pass that ball.  High energy running – yep, pressurising defenders – yep, football ability – nope.  Cedric and Bertrand on the wings gave us next to nothing going forward and Cedric was back to his best wet lettuce impression when defending. The only four players we come out with any credit of a goalkeeper and the three centre backs who all did pretty well.

It was probably another nail in Claude’s coffin at Leicester as well. He is gradually sucking the life out of them and to be honest, they need to get rid of him in the summer before it becomes ingrained and they go the same way as we are going. Today’s draw in my opinion leaves us needing a further seven points to have a chance of staying up which means basically two wins and a draw out of Bournemouth at home, Everton away and Swansea away.  At the moment you would say there is as much chance of that as Dusan Tadic winning the PFA Player of the Year award.

I sit here after every game and try to write about it but I really can’t be arsed to think about it any more at the moment. Nothing much happened and it was dull as you like.  I don’t feel like I’ve watched a game – I feel like I’ve been repeatedly punched in the back of the head.  Bring on the semi-final against Chelsea. It’ll be a good day until the game starts at least.

Premier League Match 33 - Southampton 2 Chelsea 3

Sorry! I'm a Useless Prick

Saturday and I was surprised to find that we have a home ground. I was beginning to assume that we were one of these franchise teams that only played away games or that we were a bit like the Harlem Globetrotters. Sadly, we  are not the Harlem Globetrotters. We are Southampton and we are in the shit. Our latest attempt to get out of the shit is a home game against Chelsea, last seasons champions and I expect it will be easy.

This weeks news has been that the vultures are already circling with many of our players already being linked to moves away. Most of them can fuck off with my blessing but for now we must support them, even the ones who we don’t think are any good or the ones that we think have a shit attitude. 

Following last weeks away defeat at Arsenal, Jack Stephens has a course been suspended for three matches and the Arsenal player that got sent off for basically the same offence has been banned three matches as well.  This is still unfair really when you consider that their player, Jack Wilshere, instigated the whole incident. Oh, hang on a minute, the Arsenal player who got sent off Mohammed Elneny has been let off so apparently, the video evidence which clearly shows him pushing Cedric in the face, is all a myth, it’s a lie and it didn’t really happen. Ultimately it makes no difference to us but the FA really are a shower of cunts which should come as no surprise to anybody.  The FA of course set the ticket prices for the Wembley semi final next week and of course, they are not selling particularly well for any of the four clubs involved.  If Man United are struggling to sell tickets, especially tot heir local London fanbase then you’ve clearly got something wrong.

Anyway, with Stephens being suspended, would we revert to a back four or would we put the next cab the rank in at centre back. As soon as the topic of Jan Bednarek came up in the pre-match press conference, then we knew what the answer would be so that was no surprise that the young Pole was given his first start in a five man defence. I’ve seen Bednarek played twice and on both of those games he was weak in the air and even more alarmingly, seem to completely off balance and spending most of his time on his arse. If he plays on the right of the defence of three where Stephens played then he will in all likelihood, be directly up against Eden Hazard so it’s a good job that Hazard is shit then isn’t it.

Elsewhere, the team was exactly the same as the Arsenal game with Long upfront and Austin on the bench. Chelsea have gone with very strong side which is a bit surprisingly to me seeing as the FA Cup next weekend is the only chance they have of winning anything. The only regular not in the starting lineup is Victor Moses and he’s replaced by David Zappacosta. The good news is that they haven’t picked Olivier Giroud, persevering with the shit-every-time-I’ve-seen-him, Alvaro Morata. There were rumours during the week that Antonio Conte had been sacked which in the gloriously entitled world of the Premier league big boys, would be par for the course. The message to anyone who is the manager of one of the big clubs is to win a trophy and then leave because you have absolutely no fucking chance otherwise.

In the time since we had a home game, there has obviously been some sort of brainstorming session behind the scenes where the match day experience has been discussed.  I can just imagine Motivational Ralph gathering everyone together for a Think Tank and discussing that the ‘My Way’ monstrosity was not really the right message talking about not stopping until we reach the top when we’re third from bottom.  So ‘My Way’ has been binned but the Think Tank has replaced this with a fucking band.  They are stood in the Chapel / Kingsland corner and they are playing as the game starts, well the drummer is, trying to beat out something to clap along to.  I’m sorry but fuck right off.

Despite being irritated by the Little Drumming Twat, I enjoy the start of the game as we start well and look decent.  When we haven’t got the ball we allow Chelsea to have it and only close down when Chelsea get near the final third.  We allow the more limited players like Kante to have the ball but as soon as Hazard gets it we’re all over him. Bednarek has started well and we look solid.

It’s miracle time on 22 minutes as we play out fro the back with Hoedt and Hojbjerg and a lovely diagonal ball along the deck behind Zappacosta and Bertrand is motoring past Azpilicueta and he torches him for pace and lays the ball back for Tadic to sweep into the net first time.  Brilliant goal, brilliant move and an outstanding run by the skipper and once more, we look like a proper team.

We have our first problem just after that and it’s called Mike Dean and his linesman.  The lino on Bertrand’s side has already indicated that he doesn’t have a clue by not knowing which way to give obvious throw-ins and he and Dean fail to spot two hands from Zappacosta in Bertrand’s back as he heads a cross across the six yard line and Morata climbs and heads over.

It’s a temporary thing though as we are the more threatening side.  I’ve been a very vocal critic of Shane Long but he is terrifying them with his running and he decides to let fly from 30 yards and screws it wide.  He is also winding up the Chelsea defenders and was lucky to escape a booking for a foul on Azpilicueta which the Chelsea man wasn’t happy about.  Long creates another chance for JWP but he doesn’t quite hit it properly and Courtois saves comfortably enough and the momentary excitement as the ball rolls to Tadic is killed by the offside flag.

Then it all kicks off.  Chelsea are clearly pissed off with Shane so Marcos Alonso takes an opportunity to steam in and stamp down on his calf.  Mike Dean doesn’t give anything and despite the stricken player, Fabregas true to form, doesn’t put the ball out and Chelsea attack.  JWP is the closest player to the incident and after remonstrating with Dean, manages to get himself booked.  Free kick to Chelsea, yellow card to JWP, treatment for Shane, shit referee award to Mike Dean.  Half time.

The expected battering from Chelsea doesn’t happen at the start of the second half with Saints looking the better side still.  We are looking for Long at every opportunity and one ball gets him in behind but Christiensen gets back to haul him down before Long gets up and slips as he hits it, looping it up off of his own standing foot and for a second it looks like it’s over Courtois but he’s seven foot tall and tips it over easily enough.

When you play the big boys you hope that their big players don’t fancy it but unfortunately, Hazard seems determined to make it happen and he draws the first real save from McCarthy with a blast from a narrow angle which is dealt with.  Willian then has a go from the edge of the box and McCarthy is again equal to it.

From the next Saints foray, Kante trashes through Hojbjerg and we win a free kick out on the right.  Chelsea line up on the edge of the box and there’s a big gap for JWP to drop the ball into which he duly does, Cahill misjudges the flight and there is Bednarek of all people at the back post to cushion volley it across Courtois and into the net.  Fantastic stuff and we are staying up and all that.  2-0 against Chelsea and a goal from Bednarek – it’s written in the stars.

Conte has not read the script and Conte takes off the utterly shit Morata and the almost as shit Zappacosta and on comes bloody Giroud and Pedro.  Not bad subs those two.  Whilst Chelsea are reorganizing we manage another break with Long feeding Tadic in the box and he should just hit it but instead tries to tee up Long again and Fabregas gets back, knocks it back to Courtois who pick it up but Mike Dean clearly hasn’t read the rule book for 10 years when that became a free kick to the attacking side.

Hazard is doing his stuff and Hojbjerg gets in a good tackle which Dean decides is a foul.  A quick free kick out to Alonso and he crosses it unchallenged by either JWP or Cedric.  I know what’s going to happen.  Giroud, header, 2-1. Shit.  Hoedt has tried to get across from the left but Yoshida is nowhere.

Bastard

Oh shit they are seriously ramping it up now, creating a load of pressure and we have a load of goes at clearing it but don’t.  Eventually the ball is worked out to Willian on the left and once again there is no pressure on the cross and he picks out the unmarked Hazard and guess what happens when one of the World’s best players is totally unmarked 8 yards out with the ball at his feet? 2-2.

In the apce of four minutes it has all gone to shit and can it get worse?  Of course it can.  Alonso gets tangled up with Romeu and it’s a 50/50 as their both holding eachother but of course it goes Chelsea’s way.  Another quick free kick and Hazard, who I may have mentioned its one of the World’s best players is standing where Cedric should be and his cross is half cleared and lands at the feet of Giroud and the Suave Good Looking Bastard smashes it into the net. 8 minutes, 3 goals, fucked.

Austin is on for JWP (why take off our best set piece taker?) and Sims is on for Tadic as we try to rescue something but you know that this season, it isn’t going to happen.  Bertrand fires over a croner which Hojbjerg meets but it’s easily saved by Courtois and Hojbjerg again puts Sims in on goal but he smashes the chance straight at Courtois once more.  The final throw is Gabbi on for Bednarek on 90 minutes and Gabbi does as much in 3 minutes as he usually does in 70 and doesn’t touch the ball.

Mike Dean gets something right and blows for full time.  Shit.  The fans who are worth a shit and are still there give the players a decent round of applause.  There is something to be proud of today as they gave their all even though the end result is gutting.

Well that was quite something. Only the Southampton class of 2017/18 could go from 2-0 up and cruising to providing a springboard for safety to 10 minutes later, being completely and utterly fucked. Unbelievable, yet so believable. Whether Conte was preparing to make the change anyway I don’t know but as soon as we scored the second goal Chelsea basically took off two shit players in Zappacosta and Morata and replaced them with two very good ones in Giroud and Pedro and we just couldn’t deal with it. There is of course also the mental aspect but why were we so comfortable at 1-0 but not at 2-1?  I said before the game that the longer Giroud spends on the bench, the better our chances. As soon as that bastard got on the pitch you absolutely knew that he was going to score. I think it took him about 12 minutes and as soon as the cross came in I knew it was in the net even before he headed it. From that point on the roof fell in.

On the one hand, it is easy to see what Mark Hughes has brought to the party. In the first hour we were organised, disciplined and determined. We had a game plan and we were sticking to it and it was working brilliantly. We were making up for the fact that our players are not as good as theirs and we genuinely looked like we were going to win but we are so fragile. The moment Chelsea got one back, you knew it was going to be a draw at best and once they got their second pretty quickly afterwards, you just knew that we were fucked. I’ve seen criticism of Hughes for not doing anything at 2-1, maybe bringing on our Rockstar Instagram Model. That might be a good suggestion but let’s not forget that he has been pretty useless against everybody but the absolute dross in the Premier League this season. Could Hughes have been aware of the total paralysis that was about a setting on our players who up until five seconds earlier had been playing really, really well?

We were not helped of course, by the Mike Dean factor.  I kind of stop short of calling him a referee because he isn’t really.  A strutting peacock perhaps. This guy is fucking useless. The tackle on Shane Long (and I use the term tackle loosely) is one of the worst assaults you will see on the football pitch. Mike Dean, to his credit, is in the absolute perfect position to see it. His view is completely unobstructed and he’s less than 10 yards away from what is a clear stamp on a players leg. It is a straight red card and is not even open to debate. He didn’t even give us a free kick. The player in question, Marcus Alonso, not only stayed on the pitch but of course he had a hand in all three Chelsea goals so after the Jack Wilshere incident from last week where Arsenal basically got away with everything and this incident this week with Chelsea who have basically got away with everything, can you be surprised when people scream about big club bias? Alonso might get a three match ban so he might not play in the semi-final but the fact is that if Mike Dean wasn’t so fucking useless he would’ve been sent off before half-time, sites would’ve had a much better chance of winning this game and he still would’ve been banned for the semi-final. Either way, we are worse off because Mike Dean is useless. It wasn’t just that one tackle, there was loads of other stuff as well, mainly assaults on Shane Long who was not innocent himself but Shane should be grateful of being able to walk this morning. If that had been Harry Kane getting kicked to fuck like that, then you can be sure there would be a massive outcry about it.

I Guess it Was a Bit Far Away for Him to See

As far as the overall picture goes, I don’t think anyone was really expecting to get any points out of Arsenal and Chelsea. The next four games will make or most probably, break us. Leicester, Bournemouth, Swansea, Everton. Basically, we need seven points as West Brom and Stoke will finish below us and Brighton, who are seven points ahead of us have a horrendous run of fixtures against the real top boys and are going to be fortunate to get another point. Brighton are our new targets, especially after Huddersfield manage to win 1-0 against Watford in the 91st minute with their first shot on target.

There were some real positives in the first hour today. The thought of Jan Bednarek playing was horrific before kick-off but he did well and was certainly no worse than Jack Stephens has been. The moment that he popped up with the second goal was one of the most surreal moments of the season but the boy did well and can’t be blamed for the implosion that happened next. He proved that we have four centre backs who are all what you could term as ‘support’ centre backs. We have four supports and no main man which is something which has been incredibly obvious since a certain shithouse left at the end of December. Wesley Hoedt is the best of an average branch but he is similar to Maya in that there’s always the trademark lapse in concentration at some point. I can’t believe that after five years in the Premier League, Maya is still getting too close to the strikers and allowing them to roll him or just trashing through the back of them.

I thought the midfield four were all excellent with Tadic having a marvellous first hour, ably supported by JWP, Romeu and Hojbjerg. Shane Long was superb up front and was a constant pain to the Chelsea defenders who of course were allowed to regularly assault him by Mike Dean.

Hughes has got us playing decent football and we now look like scoring goals but the trade-off has been to our defence is exposed and the players we have are not good enough to deal with it.  The route of this started in Summer 2016 with Wanyama leaving and it’s gathered pace ever since January 2017 when Jose Fonte left and a certain shit house going injured. Les Reed, King of Football, has totally failed to address this. Though he has lost all three of his league games so far, I have to say that I have been impressed with Hughes and I hope he is the Manager next season, regardless of what division we are in. The improvements he has made make it even more staggering that we persevered with the dreadful Pellegrino for as long as we did whilst the King of Football sat on his hands and twiddled his thumbs. Everyone could see it, apart from him.

#WeLimpOn To Leicester On Thursday Night

Premier League Match 32 - Arsenal 3 Southampton 2

It's a Miracle... and we need a few more

And so the difficult games start with a trip to the Emirates to play Arsenal. This is not one where I’m expecting to get any of the eight or so points that we need to survive but stranger things have happened and I saw us win at Arsenal once in the league… in 1987 when I was 18.  We have however won a couple of cup matches here in recent seasons when Wenger has played all those brilliant youngsters that they have who never amount to anything much. With Arsenal having had the Europa league match on Thursday and another one next Thursday, maybe Monsieur Wenger will rest a few today.

This season, Arsenal have been Arsenal.  Not good enough for the top 4 but too good for pretty much everyone else.  Their fans are in the main, entitled dicks but for as big a club as they are to go so long without a league title and not change the manager is somewhat strange.  The criticism used to be that they never spent any money but Lacazette and Aubameyang arriving this season suggests otherwise.  They have sold Oxlade-Chamberlain who was never going to amount to anything with them and Sanchez has left for Man United which, as he wasn’t giving a shit was smart business anyway.  They are just the two central defenders and two decent strong midfielders away from being title contenders and we’ll be saying the same thing this time next year when Wenger signs his next contract extension.

Meanwhile, back in the land of clubs with real issues, after the West Ham abortion, Mark Hughes said that he would have learnt a bit about a number of our players and hinted that would be changes for this week. All of the usual social media whores were sensibly quiet this week with the exception of course of our resident rock star model Mario Lemina who made two Instagram posts, one of him poncing around in some sort of designer jacket in a male model pose and the other one was him and his girlfriend in full Posh and Becks power couple mode. Focus on the football and have the tiniest bit of self awareness you fucking dick.  Even Cedric knew it wasn’t the time to model a spray on shirt for another boy band audition.

When the team was announced, Lemina was conspicuously absent from the 18. I am hoping for the long-term good of everybody that this was because he is a dick though to stop people asking questions, it was hidden behind the standard ‘virus’ excuse. There was certainly a few changes with those of decent character coming back into the fray. Yoshida, JWP, Romeu and Long were all chosen to start. There was a change of formation going to a back five so both Stephens and Hoedt stayed in, as did Mr Boy Band himself at right back. Lemina’s absence saw the welcome return of Oriol Romeu but the Serbian Cloak of Invisibility once again protected Dusan Tadic and he yet again kept his place.

Arsenal have a somewhat makeshift look about them which gives us more of a chance.  The defence was so makeshift that Calum Chambers got a chance. Elsewhere Wenger handed a debut to midfielder Reiss Nelson. Upfront, they had Pierre Emerick Aubameyang who is of course cup tied and therefore cannot play in the Europa League. He has started his Arsenal career with five goals in six games so no worries for us then.

Away we go and we are very definitely playing 5-4-1. The midfield looks to have a good balance to it and we have actually selected the right forted JWP on the right and the left footed Tadic on the left. I am genuinely shocked.  You can tell it’s 5-4-1 because Hughes has obviously sent them out to give nothing away in the first 10 so we are rigid as fuck – a line of 5, a line of 4 and letting Arsenal have the ball and knock it around.  The thing we have in our favour is Chambers and Mustafi at centre backs for the Gunners and one long ball finds Shane in space behind a floundering Chambers and Marriner the ref fails to spot Chambers pulling Shane back.  Shane surprisingly doesn’t hit the deck.

Another Chambers clanger gives us our first real chance as he misses Stephens long ball to Tadic and he should shoot but squares beding JWP who has to try and dig it out from behind him with his left foot.  He gets it past Cech but it’s easily cleared from in front of the goal.  We recycle and it eventually falls to Tadic on the left who beats Elneny and again should just smash it goalwards from the narrow angle but tries to pick out a player and it’s cleared.

Despite picking what is on the face of it a defensive line up, we are going forward well and with purpose.  JWP finds Tadic who in turn finds Cedric on the right and though he’s running out of room, digs out a cross and what happens next is a surprise to everyone.  Not that Mustafi and Cech left it to eachother but that Long darts in front of then both and deflects it past the keeper and into the net for only his second goal since man landed on the moon.  Fucking hell, we’re winning…. And from the restart, Arsenal cross it and Stephens wins a header.  What’s going on?

10 minutes.  It’s a good 10 minutes in the context of this shithouse of a season.  We’re 1-0 up away and the home fans, those that have bothered to turn up are pissed off with their team – then they have a shot.  1-1.  It’s one of those typical Arsenal goals.  The ball goes in Aubameyang’s feet and two quick passes and a flick by Welbeck and Aubameyang pokes it past McCarthy whilst we play statues.  Shit.  It’s a good goal - you could be critical of the statues but it's a good goal.

We are still competing well and then Arsenal have another shot.  A ball down the right to Welback with Cedric out of position and Stephens commits the cardinal sin of showing a right footed attacker inside, towards the goal and onto his good foot.  Yoshida could bale him out but turns his back on the shot and leaves a leg dangling out which deflects the ball, giving McCarthy no chance at all.  Fuck sake.  Half time.

Do we keep it tight or go for it at the start of the second half – neither.  It’s all Arsenal vs McCarthy.  He beats out one from Aubameyang and Arsenal then tee up Xhaka from the edge of the box and McCarthy gets down low to keep out the ensuing piledriver.  Great save.  It’s Iwobi’s turn to have a free hit from the edge of the box and again McCarthy is equal to it.  We are staying in position but not making any tackles.  Get into them for fuck sake.

Hang on – Arsenal have taken the foot off and it’s all us again.  A superb move up the left with Tadic to the fore ends with Hojbjerg drilling in an effort from the edge of the box which Cech gets down well to save.  From the resulting corner, Hoedt flicks goalwards and Elneny heads off the line – bastard.  Another cross from Tadic and up goes Shane and heads downwards with Cech again preventing it finding the bottom corner.  He’s almost as good as McCarthy.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh… No! Offside…Shit. Cedric hits one from the edge of the box and Long sidefoots in before going into full finger wagging mode at the linesman.  Replay… is it offside?  Of course it is.  More Saints pressure after Welbeck attempts to win a free kick with a dive and Hoedt creams one goalwards which Cech again saves. 

Hughes decides it’s time for Austin and Yoshida makes way and The referee is obviously ill as we win our first free kick at the Emirates since the ground was built.  We play it quickly and nearly create a chance for Long.  Cedric eventually picks it up, plays a 1-2 with Tadic and surges into box, drops the shoulder and gets to the line before rolling across and there is Austin to knock it in from a yard.  Superb from Cedric and I hope he buys himself a really really tight shirt to celebrate his second assist and it's a deserved equaliser.  Hughes switches to 4-1-4-1 with Shane wide right and away we go.

We immediately try and give it away again with our old favourite, the cross from our left into the Stephens/Cedric Corridor of Uncertainty and everyone watches as Wilshere gets it back into the middle and Welbeck manages to miss an open goal from one yard out.  Then, THE chance.  A long ball, helped on by Tadic and Austin is in behind the defence but on the stretch can only poke it to Cech.  The good news is that his hamstring didn’t go.

Long has had one of those games where he’s run everywhere and been kicked everywhere so he has to come off and interestingly, Hughes goes to Sims ahead of Redmond and Boufal to come on and then disaster.  Iwobi avoids Tadic’ pathetic efforts to stop the cross, chips it into the Stephens/Cedric Corridor of Uncertainty and Welbeck has an easy header into the net for 3-2.  Fuck off.

The remaining 5 minutes are all about Jack Wilshere.  He gives the ball away then rips Stephens shirt off his back, to which Jack responds with a kind of clothesline effort which dumps Wilshere on his arse.  Stephens has to go but the horrible little twat Wilshere just gets a yellow.  I would imagine a 3 game ban will follow for Stephens.  Elneny then gets involved in delaying the free kick, pushes Cedric in the face and Marriner decides to even it up.  If the ref had blown his whistle when Wilshere first started hanging on to Stephens then two players wouldn’t have been sent off.  We have one final effort which was a decent shot on the turn by Tadic which Cech again kept out.  The end… fuck it.

If we had won either of the Newcastle or West Ham games then this defeat would be seen as some sort of unlucky heroic effort. We played pretty well in fairness, especially when compared to the absolute bag of shit that the other two games mentioned served up. It was a game that overall, reminded me of the EFL Cup Final last year. We played well and at times look threatening going forward and at 2-2 I genuinely believed we were going to win but ultimately, we are far too easy to score against. The first goal is fair enough. It is classic Arsenal and the flick from Welbeck to Aubameyang would have undone most defences. The second goal is absolutely tragic from Cedric, Stephens and Yoshida with Maya ballsing it completely by leaning out the way and sticking a leg out which ultimately deflected the ball past McCarthy. The winning goal is one we seem to have conceded loads of times this season with an unpressured cross from our left, over the top of Stephens and a striker appearing in front of Cedric and behind Stephens and scoring. You only have to go back to the second West Ham goal from last week to see exactly the same goal.

There were some good performances for us out there today, unbelievably, led by Shane Long who scored one, nearly scored with a header and had a goal disallowed for a tight offside. Romeu and Hojbjerg combined well so we didn’t miss our Instagram Rock Star Model and JWP did pretty well. Tadic showed that on the left hand side is the only position that he can play and he was decent going forward though I do wish he would shoot occasionally instead of looking for a pass every single time. The negatives are all about the defending. Cedric was excellent going forward was a disaster defensively, Stephens we’ve already touched upon and Yoshida can be partially excused because he is somewhat rusty.

A lot of the media focus after the game will be about the shit storm that was completely initiated by Jack Wilshere.  Wilshere’s contribution to the game was to basically give the ball away and then stop the subsequent Southampton break by grabbing hold of Jack Stephens shirt and hanging onto it for about 15 seconds before taking a second bigger tug of the shirt and ripping it. Stephens then throws him to the ground which meant that he was always going to get sent off whilst Wilshere did what he always does and made a massive meal of it before bouncing back to his feet and getting in Stephens face again. There is also the suggestion that he stuck a knee in as well as he bounced back up. For all this, Jack Stephens got a red card and Jack Wilshere, who had initiated the whole thing only got a yellow. Wilshere’s antics also encouraged Elneny to get involved when he had absolutely no business in getting involved and his push into Cedric’s face meant that he was softly sent off as well. I’m sure part of that dismissal was Andre Marriner wanting to even things up because Wilshere had been such a complete prick. Wilshere even got involved in that, acting like the big peacemaker. All a big act to hide that a) he gave the ball away horribly and b) he’s an odious little twat.  The media love Jack Wilshere though. Fuck knows why as he has done next to nothing for the last three years.  Having said all that about the little shit head, his contribution didn’t affect the result in any way. We still have lost regardless  – the only effect on us is that Stephens will get a 3 match ban which will be Chelsea in the league, Leicester away, and Chelsea at Wembley.

If we had produced this performance under Hughes three months ago, when Pellegrino should’ve got sacked, then everyone will be talking about a brighter future for us but unfortunately because of the procrastinating by the board, all it is is another game gone by and the chances of us getting relegated have increased further. Make no mistake, there were positives from this performance but we need results and we need one in our next home game against Chelsea. I realise that I am sounding like Captain Fucking Obvious here.

Another ‘must win’ coming up and this time it’s against last season‘s Champions. Luckily, they are not what they were last season so we have a chance. I can’t see Hughes playing the same formation because Stephens will be banned, unless he’s been impressed by Bednarek or Alfie Jones in training or under 23 matches. After today and despite the loss and another game drifting away, I am feeling a little bit more optimistic. We have to finish above Stoke and Huddersfield and to be honest, both of them are as shit as we have been but I don’t think they are capable of any better - whereas we are. We now have to prove it.

Premier League Match 31 - West Ham 3 Southampton 0

Saints Give Wolf of Wall Street a Run for It's Money

The Wolf of Wall Street has a 'Fuck' Count of 569 in 180 minutes - just over 3 a minute.

This blog will take about 5 minutes to read so it only needs 15 or 16.  Easy. 

After a couple of weeks off after the Wigan cup game due to the international break, we rock up at another must win game at West Ham and the Taxpayer Bowl. West Ham of course have been in complete crisis with fans invading the pitch in protest at the Dildo Bros and Karren Brady ripping the soul out of the club and bleeding the club dry. Also, they have been pretty shite on the pitch, so shite in fact that they decided to employ David Moyes as their new manager and so shite that they are only two points ahead of us and as you know, we have been completely shite. So, the task for Saints today is to win this game and put West Ham in the relegation zone instead of ourselves. It’s yet another must win game.

There are some players will have been away on international duty, today represents a chance to see what our team is like now that Mark Hughes has got his feet under the table and had a chance to work with them for a couple of weeks. Hopefully, this will be unrecognisable from our last away game in the Premier League which was the utter abortion at Newcastle which ultimately did for Mauricio Pellegrino. The Wigan game had had some encouraging aspects, not least the attacking intent but we did look wide open at times.

When the 11 names were announced, it looked like quite a decent line-up with the regular back four, Lemina and Hojbjerg anchoring the midfield and a return for Charlie Austin upfront to replace the floundering Guido Carrillo. Nathan Redmond was picked on the wing in place of Boufal and bloody Tadic got yet another opportunity. Gabbiadini was also present, I assume to play in the number 10 role.

The game kicks off and we are absolutely playing 4-4-2 with Gabbiadini right up top alongside Austin. The trouble was straightaway, that we had no possession of the ball whatsoever and West Ham looks quicker into every challenge and to every second ball.  Cedric has started like a drain and gives the ball away to Masuaku who feeds Antonio who hits it and sees it ping off of Hoedt and behind.  Antonio is one who will doubtless give us problems but not today as he’s down and out and holding his hamstring and on comes Fernandes.

Saints create their first opening but it falls to Tadic to do his job and pick out a striker but his cross, under no pressure, balloons up in the air and West Ham needlessly put it out for a corner.  With no JWP it’s down to Tadic to take the corner from the right and he plays a 1-2 with Austin before finding Lemina on the edge of the box.  No doubt, fresh from his triumph in the Sure Pressure Challenge, Lemina had visions of spanking one in the top corner but instead he pissed about with it, found himself under pressure and lost it.  One pass and Fernandes is away up the right with all our defenders up front for the corner that never arrived.  He gallops to the edge of the box before pulling it back to Joao Mario who is on the edge of the box with no Saints player in the same fucking post code.  He can even afford a shit bobbly touch before lashing it past Hojbjerg’s lunge (at least he tried to get back) and screaming past McCarthy for 1-0.  Fuck sake.

Our response is to resolutely give the ball away and Arnautovic cuts through the ring of steel that is Cedric and Stephens and misses an absolute sitter, placing it wide of the far post with McCarthy sat on the ground.  You feel like it should be a wake up call but you know it isn’t going to be.  We look as bad as the Newcastle game – absolute gutless wankers – and we’ve only been playing 10 minutes.

As we try and work it out of defence, Hoedt  gives Hojbjerg a hospital pass but instead of lashing it out and bollocking him, Pierre tries to make something of it and loses it.  Fernandes again picks it up and curls in a crosd from our left and Arnautovic is totally free as the cross sails over Stephens head who should be marking him.  Header, saved, toe poke, goal, 2-0, fuck off.  Hoedt and Hojbjerg have combined to give it away, Cedric and Stephens have combined to let Arnautovic have a free header and a rebound.  Pathetic.

West Ham are now playing keep ball.  Masuaku – he who has just come back from a spitting ban – is looking like a world beater as Cedric and Tadic get close enough to make him swerve round them but not close enough to actually put a fucking tackle in.  It’s an embarrassing and shameful display from two international footballers who clearly don’t give a fuck.

The rest of the half is shit and we create nothing and then Lemina loses it again and Masuaku carries it this time, pings a ball over from the left and there’s Arnautovic who has peeled off the back of Hoedt who has no idea that he’s there and he rams it in for 3-0.  Game over – embarrassing.

I can only hope Mark Hughes turned the air blue at half time.  If it was down to me I’d make three subs straight away and take off the three most useless twats.  Cedric, Lemina and Tadic would win, just ahead of stiff competition from Steohens, Hoedt, Gabbiadini, Bertrand and Redmond.  Gabbiadini has touched the ball about 3 times at the most but has he dropped deep to try and get the ball? – has he bollocks.  In the event, it’s just Gabbiadini who gets hauled off and Shane Long comes on.  For some perverse reason it makes sense to bring on the most technically ungifted player we’ve had for years.

The second half starts and it’s clear that West Ham know they’ve won as they barely raise a leg.  Long is running about and wins a header to set up Tadic who is clean through but of course he checks back, finds Austin whose shot is blocked and over.  Oh look there’s Joe Hart.  Hart could be counting the flecks of dandruff he’s got individually for all he has to do.

Long again tees up Austin and he plays a comical air shot before finding his balance again and seeing his shot blocked once more.  Look at those defenders actually defending….unlike fucking Cedric who is miles out of position as his Poruguese mate Joao Mario has all the time in the world to tee up Arnautovic who puts it just wide.

Boufal is on for Redmond who has been fucking useless but the useless quota is retained with Carrillo coming on for Austin who is blowing out of his arse.  The final action of the game is Mario floating a free kick from the right to the edge of the box and Cresswell acrobatically volleying against the bar and over.  4-0 would have been about right.

What annoys me most is that we’ve got these fancy players who have some skills and have some presence but they don’t have any heart and they don’t have any guts and they don’t have any collective will to win.

Take Mario Lemina for example. He is one of these wankers who is too concerned about his fucking brand to actually do the basics of being a central midfielder in the Premier league. Every team knows that you are quite vulnerable from your own corner if you don’t get it right and that’s twice in two league matches that he’s decided to be some sort of hero when we had everyone in front of him, lost the ball and we ended up conceding a goal. Fucking wanker. Still, his girlfriend looks nice on Instagram and his model photographs win him a legion of new fans every week.

Cedric. I’m sure there were some decent footballers called Cedric back in the 50s and they came from places like Yorkshire and were tough bastards. They didn’t ponce around on the football pitch or pose around on social media in spray tight shirts looking like a member of a fucking boy band. That guy has been fucking useless this season. He has all the physicality of a piece of wet fucking lettuce and he shits himself every time an opponent comes near him and just crashes the ball 3 miles up the pitch. There’s always one player in the team that wins a major trophy who is actually fucking shit and we’ve got him.

Wesley Hoedt. We signed him from Lazio, an Italian club with a really good European pedigree and what we’ve got. A 6 foot 4 string-bean sack of shit. Another one totally concerned with his personal brand putting out videos of him looking like he is some sort of ferocious monster centre back. He’s not, he’s a fucking wanker. He can’t do the basics, he can’t track a runner and in our league for some reason he can’t win a fucking header despite having about 95% aerial fucking duels win success in the Italian league. The Italian league must have a load of 5 foot 6 strikers. He can block you on fucking Twitter If you give him the slightest bit of criticism but he can’t block the run of the striker he is supposed to be marking. Ice skating giraffe. Partnering him with Jack Stephens is fucking hilarious. Stephens has to be the worst centre back in the air in Premier League history since Titus Bramble. As I’ve said many times before, it’s not Jack’s fault he’s playing in the Premier League, he just simply isn’t good enough. A fourth choice centre back at best. He would maybe okay in a three-man defence but as part of a centre back pairing, he is an absolute fucking nightmare.

Nathan Redmond gave quite good interview in the week and there was a bit of positivity from it. You would think he would feel quite good about himself going into the West Ham game but once he got on the pitch he was fucking garbage. When you play as the wide man in a 4-4-2 formation you have to be getting crosses into the box you cannot be fucking around trying to work the ball on to your good foot getting crowded out but that is what he did. He contributed absolutely fuck all. He tried but he was shit.

On the other wing of course, we had Dusan Tadic. It was put to me on social media the other day that the reason that Tadic doesn’t get a hard time from the fans it’s because he played well for the first two seasons. I think that if you dig into those first two seasons they were long periods of time were he didn’t actually do anything but I can say without fear of contradiction that he has done more or less fuck all for the last two seasons. He has about one decent moment something like every 15 games which for a Premier League footballer is simply not enough. Totally predictable for another game of pass by without him doing a fucking thing and he seems to have the cloak of invisibility when it comes to the manager standing there looking round for the worst player to substitute him. Absolutely stealing a fucking living for a long period of time. We moved him around today so he could be shit in more than just one position. He came out in the media after the game and said it wasn’t good enough. Fuck off. The main culprit in not giving a shit speaking out just means he’s trying to cover his arse to make it look like he cares. Tosser. And then there was that line that he came out with about it being impossible to win a game when you are two nil down. Maybe lost in translation a bit there but even so, just fuck off.

Gabbiadini did absolutely fuck all. He did his usual and made lots of runs and never got the ball but did he attempt to play with any brain at all and drop it to midfield to maybe help us get something going. He just ran around upfront, must’ve touched the ball about three times and got substituted. Does he really want to be here? I don’t think so. Is he the sort of player you want in the relegation battle? I don’t think so.

Pellegrino was painfully inept as we all know but he’s gone now so these wankers haven’t got anyone to hide behind they have to get out of the pitch and absolutely fucking do it because no one else is going to do it and no amount of branding on social media or to tight fucking shirts or model girlfriends is going to alter the fact that if today is the best you can do out on the pitch then we are going to get relegated and we have a wasted a stupid amount of money buying tickets to watch you useless bastards at Wembley in a couple of weeks. It’s a simple as that. The players probably don’t give a fuck as they know they’ll be moving on and the only good thing that will come of our inevitable relegation is getting rid of some of these fancy wankers.

What gets me is that it doesn’t take too much to forgive the twats. Cedric scores a goal at Wigan and for a while we think he’s half decent despite the logical side of your brain knowing full well that he is a fancy fucking wanker. Lemina scores a decent goal and we forget for a while that he is incredibly inconsistent. Tadic… actually no forget that one.

I think that ultimately, Mark Hughes got it wrong today with a 4-4-2 formation. When I saw the 11 I assumed that Gabbiadini would play deeper and drop into midfield when we didn’t have the ball. In the event he played right up with Austin so that puts pressure on the midfield 4 to cover the ground in the middle and on the wingers to get the ball in. All this is obvious and I’m sure the players knew but they were just fucking useless. The goals we let in we’re all preventable and down to individual players not doing their job properly. Lemina on the first goal, Hoedt, Hojbjerg and Stephens on the second, Cedric and Hoedt on the third.  We play a formation which gives us two players in the box and how many shots do we have on target? Nil, none, nada, zip, fuck all. It is not as if the strikers missed chances. They never got the ball because of the inadequacies of the players behind them.

What can the manager do? Seriously? If we play any of the system is not rely on having one striker on his own upfront, we don’t have a striker who is suitable for that role. Carrillo it’s probably the most suitable but he just isn’t good enough. Austin doesn’t have the pace or the touch to play up on his own, Gabbiadini doesn’t have a physical presence and Shane Long doesn’t have the footballing ability. If we play a 4-4-2 formation then we don’t have the central midfielders to cover the ground and we have lightweight, fancy wingers who don’t offer enough defensively. If we are going to play a four in midfield and it really has to be McQueen, Romeu, Hojbjerg and JWP. Not very exciting and not very creative but those four you at least have a chance of not getting ripped apart. We could play with three centre backs but we haven’t really got even one centre back who is good enough to consistently play well at this level.

All of these shortcomings can be laid firmly at the door of Les Reed, The self-proclaimed King of Football at Southampton FC. The leaders that we had at the end of Ronald Koeman’s last season have all gone. Graziano Pelle was the main man in attack who could play upfront on his own. Victor Wanyama was the main man in midfield and at the back we had Jose Fonte and Virgil Van Dijk. We have had three goes at replacing Graziano in Austin, Gabbiadini and now Carrillo and none of them have done half the job. We have basically replaced Fonte with Hoedt and we haven’t replaced van Dijk, other than with Jan Bednarek who has never played a league game and probably never will... oh yes we’ve promoted Jack Stephens from squad player to first team regular and he can’t head the ball. We have a lot of money in the bank though after the January transfer window so everything is cool.

The only good news on a day like this is that everyone else lost so these gutless bunch of pathetic wankers are going to have another chance. The trouble is that now the chances come against Arsenal and against Chelsea in our next two league games. The “winnable” games are running out and ironically, it could well be a home game against Bournemouth that consigns us to the dustbin of Championship football where we deserve to be. Hughes said in his post match interview that he learned a lot about the players that he has and I think we can safely assume that Hughes will act on what he’s learned, unlike Pellegrino who said he learned and then did nothing. Flaky lightweight players like Boufal, Tadic and Redmond don’t keep you up, it’s players like Romeu, Hojbjerg, McQueen, JWP and Yoshida. It may not sound like much but these are the closest we have the likes of Francis Benali, Jason Dodd, Neil Maddison, Tommy Widdrington, David Hughes, Chris Marsden. None of them were great players but the sort of players you need in a relegation battle.

If you believe that sort of stuff, Easter was the time when someone rose from the dead. Saints could’ve made The first inroads at digging ourselves out of the grave but we’ve just taken the shovel and kept on digging down.