Football is Better When You Care
This is it. This is the big deal and as far as I’m
concerned, it is crystal clear. If we win this game today away at Swansea then we
are 99% certain to be safe, any other result and we have 99% had it. Because
it’s football and can’t be mathematical tonight, there is always an 1% element
of doubt but that is basically it. We can’t afford to be blaming referees, bad
luck or any other such intangibles, we have to win.
Swansea and their fans seem to be doing their best though to
bring more factors into play. Saints had a hotel booking at the Swansea Marriott
and 40 rooms were mysteriously cancelled with official reason being a virus.
This virus only affects large group bookings though because you can still get a
room as an individual at the hotel. Shithousery at work. I want to know how the
hotel manager is going to be able to explain to his boss why he turned down 40
times whatever the room rate was, basically to be a shithouse? I hope whoever it gets fucking fired because
they deserve it. I think if I was one of the residents of the hotel I’d be
demanding to know why I wasn’t being evacuated as this virus is such a problem.
As I said, utter shithouses.
The fallout from the Everton game was that Mario Lemina was unlikely to be available and Maya Yoshida definitely wasn’t, due to his red card. The two most likely to replace them, Jack Stevens and Nathan Redmond were duly confirmed to be in the starting line-up. As the game approached, further reports of shithousery came through. Firstly, the police escort it was to be a provided from the Vale of Glamorgan hotel in Cardiff to the Liberty stadium didn’t show up and then, as Saints arrived at the ground at the exact allotted time, they were told they would have to wait on the coach for 25 minutes because of a delay on loading the Swansea coach. Apparently, Hughes just got the players off the coach and made them walk a hundred yards. I imagine he told the hapless official who was dispatched to tell him to wait on the coach for 25 minutes to go and fuck himself as I cannot imagine that Hughes is someone to be fucked around with. The fact that Sofiane Boufal has not been seen for a few weeks tells you all you need to know on that score. I can’t imagine that all the shithousing is going to have any affect other than to fire the Southampton players and staff up even more.
Swansea the team, have been suffering a dreadful season having not replaced the quality players that they sold in the summer. I see no quality replacement for Gylfi Sigurdsson at all and their idea of replacing Fernando Llorente was Andre Ayew who has been brought in to partner his brother Jordan. Elsewhere they have Alfie Mawson he looks a decent young English prospect and Lukas Fabianiski in goal who has done well this season whenever I’ve seen him play but other than that, they don’t have much. They started off the season with Paul Clement as manager and he was eventually fired and replaced with Carlos Carvalhal who started well and was a media darling with some very funny analogies for things that went on during games but it’s all very well being a comedian when your team is doing well, when they are on a losing run like Swansea are, it’s kind of hard to be funny and have everyone laughing along with you. Basically, you turn into Ian Holloway.
Sparky got in a quick interview before the game in which Swansea Marriot was brought up and he was quite thankful to them because it is probably the worst hotel that anyone has to stay in when they play Premier League matches. Ouch. Don’t fuck with Mark Hughes!
Thankfully, today’s referee is not Jon Moss or Mike Dean but Michael Oliver, fresh from being chased round the Bernabeu by Gianluigi Buffon. Away we go – it’s hard to see both of these teams surviving. A win for either means West Brom are down and the loser will be needing snookers to stay up. Stephens has directly replaced Yoshida in the centre of the defensive three and Saints seem to settle the better of the two teams but it’s Swansea who have the first shot as a cross from the left is punched put by McCarthy but King picks it up and his low shot is comfortably saved.
The fallout from the Everton game was that Mario Lemina was unlikely to be available and Maya Yoshida definitely wasn’t, due to his red card. The two most likely to replace them, Jack Stevens and Nathan Redmond were duly confirmed to be in the starting line-up. As the game approached, further reports of shithousery came through. Firstly, the police escort it was to be a provided from the Vale of Glamorgan hotel in Cardiff to the Liberty stadium didn’t show up and then, as Saints arrived at the ground at the exact allotted time, they were told they would have to wait on the coach for 25 minutes because of a delay on loading the Swansea coach. Apparently, Hughes just got the players off the coach and made them walk a hundred yards. I imagine he told the hapless official who was dispatched to tell him to wait on the coach for 25 minutes to go and fuck himself as I cannot imagine that Hughes is someone to be fucked around with. The fact that Sofiane Boufal has not been seen for a few weeks tells you all you need to know on that score. I can’t imagine that all the shithousing is going to have any affect other than to fire the Southampton players and staff up even more.
Swansea the team, have been suffering a dreadful season having not replaced the quality players that they sold in the summer. I see no quality replacement for Gylfi Sigurdsson at all and their idea of replacing Fernando Llorente was Andre Ayew who has been brought in to partner his brother Jordan. Elsewhere they have Alfie Mawson he looks a decent young English prospect and Lukas Fabianiski in goal who has done well this season whenever I’ve seen him play but other than that, they don’t have much. They started off the season with Paul Clement as manager and he was eventually fired and replaced with Carlos Carvalhal who started well and was a media darling with some very funny analogies for things that went on during games but it’s all very well being a comedian when your team is doing well, when they are on a losing run like Swansea are, it’s kind of hard to be funny and have everyone laughing along with you. Basically, you turn into Ian Holloway.
Sparky got in a quick interview before the game in which Swansea Marriot was brought up and he was quite thankful to them because it is probably the worst hotel that anyone has to stay in when they play Premier League matches. Ouch. Don’t fuck with Mark Hughes!
Thankfully, today’s referee is not Jon Moss or Mike Dean but Michael Oliver, fresh from being chased round the Bernabeu by Gianluigi Buffon. Away we go – it’s hard to see both of these teams surviving. A win for either means West Brom are down and the loser will be needing snookers to stay up. Stephens has directly replaced Yoshida in the centre of the defensive three and Saints seem to settle the better of the two teams but it’s Swansea who have the first shot as a cross from the left is punched put by McCarthy but King picks it up and his low shot is comfortably saved.
There is not much going on for the next 20 minutes or
so. Both teams are defending well enough
but to be honest, there’s not a lot of defending needed when the final ball
from both sides is so poor. We build up
to the final third and then invariably lose it and Swansea are more direct and
get crosses into the box which we deal with in unconvincing fashion. It’s not great when you see a cross bounce in
the box when we have three 6 foot plus central defenders. Football breaks out after a little dart by
Redmond, a pass to Hojbjerg and a through ball to Austin and he should do
better but hits it first time straight at Fabianski.
Saints are clearly the better side as half time approaches
and after a shit panicked clearance by Olsson, Cedric cross and after a
deflection, Austin smashes it perfectly on the volley but once again, straight
down the goalkeepers throat and Fabianski calmly catches it. The last chance of the half is ours with
Redmond being positive and his low shot deflected wide. A predictable 0-0 at half time.
We start the second half appallingly with Tadic dwelling on
the ball and getting dispossessed, the ball eventually finding its way to
Jordan Ayew on the left. He jinks across
past Bednarek and curls one for the top corner but no danger, McCarthy takes
off and superbly tips it over the bar.
It takes is 10 minutes to get going again and the full backs are getting
forward more now. Bertrand crosses,
everyone misses it and Cedric picks it up on the other side and wins a
corner. Over it comes and Stephens 50p
head header hits a Swansea player and off for another corner. Over it comes again, flicked out and Cedric
puts over a superb cross which Austin meets with a free header from 10 yards….
Straight at the keeper again for fucks sake.
Long is on for Redmond and our next sub is self inflicted as
McCarthy again confidently punches a corner away but the follow through on the
punch cleans out Bednarek who is out for the count. It takes a few minutes for him to wake up and
he wants to carry on but off he goes to be replaced by Gabbiadini. We are officially going for it. In my head I’m trying to work out what we’re
doing. Looks like a 4-4-2 or a 4-2-3-1
with Gabbi behind Austin, Shane right, Dusan left. Only having two scary centre backs should be
better than having three but I’m trying to convince myself here.
Tadic instantly looks a better player when on the left and
wins a corner. Over it comes, Shane
winning it at the back post, Romeu flicks on and another Austin volley,
straight at the keeper yet again but it bounces out and there’s Gabbiadini who
hits it goalwards from about 5 yards, deflecting off a defender and in. 1-0,
mental. You can see in the eyes of the
Swansea players – they know they’re toast.
They know they can’t buy a goal.
They know we want it more than them.
They know we’re better than them.
6 minutes goes up on the board – no worries, no danger, we
got this. Another long ball up to
Abraham and he controls it with his face but it drops nicely for him and he
swivels and puts it in the crowd. I know
how easily this could all go wrong but we’re going to win this, no
worries. We’re keeping playing forwards
and Shane is running at defenders and they just bring him down. Yep, we’ll have a free kick and we’ll take
ages taking it. We are learning game
management, taking time when we can and clearances are not being chipped into
midfield, they are being hammered into the crowd. 6 minutes extra have gone and one last punt
forwards towards Abraham but Hoedt wins it and Bertrand whacks it. Full time.
Mental.
You can see what it means to the players and the staff as
they celebrate wildly. To the outside
world, celebrating nearly staying up might look a bit dumb but fuck’em. The players and staff deserve to celebrate
with the fans. They cared today and they
wanted it and they were rewarded. Some
like Stephens and Bertrand looked very emotional whereas some like Hoedt and
Romeu were pumped up big time. Even
unused subs and injured players like Lemina were bouncing around. Football is better when you care.
Yassss! We are staying up, say we are staying up. You
fucking beauties. Swansea Marriott, Jon Moss, Abdoulaye Doucoure, Mike Dean –
fucking have it! We deserved it today. All the clear-cut chances were ours and
we saw the game out quite comfortable (says he who was watching through his fingers).
That performance was the very epitome of doing what you have to do and the
players deserve the celebrations afterwards. I only hope that the coach detours
to the epicentre of the Swansea bullshit virus at the Marriott and the team and
staff go for a very loud celebratory beer before heading home and Mark Hughes
presents the manager with a signed signed Saints shirt for them to hang in the
Lobby, The bunch of pathetic cunts.
It’s not often this season that they players have been heroes but they were today. We need to talk again about Alex McCarthy. If you take the second half of the season as qualifying as recent form, then the best two English goalkeepers in the country have been Nick Pope at Burnley and Alex McCarthy. The three that will probably go to the World Cup are Jordan Pickford, Jack Butland and Joe Hart. Joe Hart would obviously be some sort of sick joke and if you want to take him as some sort as experienced cheer leader then you may as well dig up Winston Churchill and take him – he’s shit in goal as well. Southgate was at the Everton game and if he wasn’t there last night, he would have been watching so if McCarthy doesn’t even get on the plane then I seriously question what the fuck is going on with the National team, even more so than I already do. McCarthy looks calm, he is calm, he spreads confidence to all those around him, He is happy to get off his line and take command with either catches or punches. When a high ball is lobbed into the box and I see our goalkeeper going for it, I am as confident with Alex as I have been with any keeper right back to Antii Niemi. With Niemi, you knew it was no problem as he was going to catch it and I feel exactly the same with McCarthy. After years of Kelvin Davies nailed to the goal line and more recently, Fraser Forster being the same, it is such a huge difference now. Alex didn’t have to make many saves today, aside from the one from Jordan Ayew but everything else was absolutely spot-on.
The defending of our back three was shambolic at times especially when we are letting balls bounce in the penalty area and not heading them away… For fuck sake. What I will say though is that there was a collective will from Bednarek, Stephens and Hoedt to get something in the way at every opportunity and basically just keep the ball away from McCarthy. It wasn’t the tidiest defending and it wasn’t the best defending but it was enough. Both full back also did good jobs defensively, even Cedric who I have criticised wet lettuce defending on more than one occasion but when he needed to, he stood up and took charge a couple of times when the ball was bouncing around and no one wanted to clear the bloody thing. Ryan Bertrand was fired up after his fuck up against Everton and at least backed up what he said on social media this way about the club and the badge being massively important to him.
In midfield, Romeu and Hojbjerg were immense. Often outnumbered but never giving an inch with Romeu managing to get booked for the 13th time this season which must be some sort of record. Off the top of my head I can only think of Mark Hughes himself who has beaten that number of bookings in the season for Saints. Up front, Charlie Austin got everything on target but never look like scoring. He is a strange player, at times looking like he has no football technique whatsoever and then he’ll perfectly connect with a volley but it’ll fly straight down the goalkeepers throat. Tadic and Redmond flitted in and out with Tadic in particular struggling in the first half. Redmond caused a few problems with his pace but didn’t have anywhere near the same impact as he had against Everton.
It’s not often this season that they players have been heroes but they were today. We need to talk again about Alex McCarthy. If you take the second half of the season as qualifying as recent form, then the best two English goalkeepers in the country have been Nick Pope at Burnley and Alex McCarthy. The three that will probably go to the World Cup are Jordan Pickford, Jack Butland and Joe Hart. Joe Hart would obviously be some sort of sick joke and if you want to take him as some sort as experienced cheer leader then you may as well dig up Winston Churchill and take him – he’s shit in goal as well. Southgate was at the Everton game and if he wasn’t there last night, he would have been watching so if McCarthy doesn’t even get on the plane then I seriously question what the fuck is going on with the National team, even more so than I already do. McCarthy looks calm, he is calm, he spreads confidence to all those around him, He is happy to get off his line and take command with either catches or punches. When a high ball is lobbed into the box and I see our goalkeeper going for it, I am as confident with Alex as I have been with any keeper right back to Antii Niemi. With Niemi, you knew it was no problem as he was going to catch it and I feel exactly the same with McCarthy. After years of Kelvin Davies nailed to the goal line and more recently, Fraser Forster being the same, it is such a huge difference now. Alex didn’t have to make many saves today, aside from the one from Jordan Ayew but everything else was absolutely spot-on.
The defending of our back three was shambolic at times especially when we are letting balls bounce in the penalty area and not heading them away… For fuck sake. What I will say though is that there was a collective will from Bednarek, Stephens and Hoedt to get something in the way at every opportunity and basically just keep the ball away from McCarthy. It wasn’t the tidiest defending and it wasn’t the best defending but it was enough. Both full back also did good jobs defensively, even Cedric who I have criticised wet lettuce defending on more than one occasion but when he needed to, he stood up and took charge a couple of times when the ball was bouncing around and no one wanted to clear the bloody thing. Ryan Bertrand was fired up after his fuck up against Everton and at least backed up what he said on social media this way about the club and the badge being massively important to him.
In midfield, Romeu and Hojbjerg were immense. Often outnumbered but never giving an inch with Romeu managing to get booked for the 13th time this season which must be some sort of record. Off the top of my head I can only think of Mark Hughes himself who has beaten that number of bookings in the season for Saints. Up front, Charlie Austin got everything on target but never look like scoring. He is a strange player, at times looking like he has no football technique whatsoever and then he’ll perfectly connect with a volley but it’ll fly straight down the goalkeepers throat. Tadic and Redmond flitted in and out with Tadic in particular struggling in the first half. Redmond caused a few problems with his pace but didn’t have anywhere near the same impact as he had against Everton.
From the bench, Shane Long ended up on the right hand side
and ended up playing as a right winger which is probably his best position as
there’s not as much responsibility to shoot at the big netty thing. He did a
good job at stretching Swansea in the last 20 minutes and win a couple of free kicks
to eat up some time. The lash into the side netting was sadly predictable
however. There have been many occasions
when he’s passed it when he should have shot and today was the opposite as
McQueen was free in the middle. The
other sub of course was Manolo Gabbiadini and he played like a God. Not only
did he of course score Saints most important goal in recent times, he got
involved (which he often doesn’t), got on the ball and his hold-up play and
perceptive passing was absolutely brilliant. Many have been calling for him to play as a
number 10 just behind the main striker and that is his position without a doubt
and hopefully that is where he will be used in future.
After the hotel fiasco, the lack of police escort through the rush hour and the coach parking issue, whoever was responsible deserves for their team to get relegated. Absolute shithousery… and all you did was give Saints even more motivation to beat you. Mark Hughes was very quick to say that Swansea the club had nothing to do with it but I’m not so sure because as far as I know, clubs pay for the policing and Swansea will have known exactly what time Saints we’re going to arrive.
There are a lot of Saints fans now saying that they were wrong about Mark Hughes. I have been pleasantly surprised about how good he has been and the difference he has made and I thought when he came in, that he would be a good appointment, certainly much better than the last two total fucking arseclowns that we have had as manager. With the modern day Premier league player, you need to be a bit tough, you need to have had a playing career they will respect. He has earned the right to stay on and barring a total shocking calamity on Sunday, be a Premier League manager with Southampton next season.
We have a better chance of staying up than Swansea at any rate. I have never had any real problem with Swansea of until all the shithousery around today’s game. On the pitch, they were fucking dreadful. I couldn’t believe how much they were punting the ball forward aimlessly and there was no reaction at all after the goal went in. I know they have a few injuries with Wilfried Bony probably being the most missed but the Ayew brothers are Championship standard and Tammy Abraham is a kid who is only hyped up because of his connection with Chelsea. He scored goals in the Championship last year so what made them think he was going to be the main man this season. If that is your forward line when you are struggling.
Being a Saints fan, you can never be completely happy until it is mathematically certain, especially with Manchester City coming to town. They make noises about scoring a record number of goals and having a record number of points but to be honest, that things are not that important when you have won the league already and most of your squad is off to play in the World Cup in a couple of months. There is no way that even if they are a couple of goals up, they are going to put the foot down and try and score 7 or 8.
We are virtually there.
Les, you have had a diabolical season but you got the appointment of Mark Hughes right. Have a contract ready for him to sign on the pitch, after the game against City, there’s a good lad.
Shithousing the Southampton FC Way
Swansea for me were summed up by taking a 95th minute throw in, punting it into the box, and throwing it straight out for a goal kick. Rory Delap burst into tears at home.
ReplyDeleteGlen, your blog has been the highlight of a dire season. Please keep it coming.
ReplyDelete