Premier League Match 1 - Southampton 0 Burnley 0

I Can't Bear Any More of This - 4-4-Fucking-2

First game of the season and as my first game was in April 1976, that makes it the 42nd opening day of the season that I have truly been invested in. One day, I will count up how many of those 42 games we have actually won. I would be surprised if it is more than 10. Anyway, the transfer window has closed, the talking is over and now it is time to deliver… Hopefully.

Burnley managed to finish seventh last year and in doing so, qualified for Europe through winning the best of the rest trophy. That shows how fucking dreadful the rest actually were last season. Burnley were pretty much as functional as you could possibly get in the Premier League. Rigid 4-4-2, work hard, keep it tight and with 20 minutes to go, throw on a big guy, to add to the other big guy and smash it long, win a flick on or a free kick and win 1-0. Sour grapes? yes, guilty.  What cannot be argued that though is that they were seriously effective and no one of a Claret and Blue persuasion will give a flying fuck how they got there and into the Europa league. From recent memory, we know that the Europa League qualifiers can present you with a few problems and Burnley played in Istanbul on Thursday night so will hopefully not be 100% at it on Sunday. It is therefore essential that we start the game very quickly and not sit back and try and feel our way into the game like we have done for the last two seasons.

Burnley have some Southampton connections in Jack Cork and Sam Vokes and the same applies the other way round with Charlie Austin and Danny Ings likely to play against their former club at some point this afternoon. Burnley also have that horrible bastard Ashley Barnes who has done ridiculously well to make a Premier League striker out of himself and fair play to him. He is still a horrible bastard though.  Hopefully, the tactics of smash it long at Barnes, Chris Wood and Vokes won’t succeed as easily as they did last year with the addition of the huge Vestergaard to our defence. I’m really looking forward to seeing our new players and the difference that Armstrong, Ings and Elyonoussi will make at the top end of the pitch.

Mark Hughes has shown a kind of quiet confidence and isn’t outwardly making too much fuss about defeats in friendlies. I can see him being a bit like Nigel Adkins in that he won’t get too high if we win and he won’t get too low if we lose. Not getting too low when we lose is a mantra that much of our fan base could do with adopting.  I can’t however, see Hughes reciting a poem after a game.

The roads around Southampton resemble a car park, to be more exact, a car park with temporary traffic lights and roadworks.  An hour and 20 from Hedge End – ridiculous.  Anyway, I missed the free ice cream and limp pyrotechnic display but caught up with the team news on the way.  I was surprised at Stephens being picked ahead of Bednarek and was not expecting Austin ahead of Gabbiadini – it seemed like two selections at odds with what had been going on in pre-season.  One good bit of news is that Shane Long is not there to put the crowd in danger in the warm-up shooting drill.  Danny Ings is on the bench which looks strong, also containing Elyounoussi, Hojbjerg, JWP, Bednarek, Gabbiadini and Gunn.

Having performed the ceremonial launching of my clacker into an empty seat, we are ready to go.  For the first ten minutes we get a chance to have a look at our formation as we don’t actually break from it all because we don’t have the ball. 5-4-1.  Redmond is on the left wing and Armstrong the right.  The full backs aren’t pushing up at all and we are just clearing it in the general direction of Austin who is wearing concrete boots.

Vestergaard is showing up well as Burnley put the ball in the box and is organising those around him.  He heads out a free kick which gets returned to Cork on the left, flag up and he scores with a composure he never showed when playing for us.  Looked a bit tight that one I have to say.  We don’t heed the warning and cause our own problems – we have so many defenders that there is no one really taking responsibility and Hoedt and Vestergaard don’t go for the same ball and Lennon is clean through but you can’t have Lennon without McCarthy and our man saves well.

The referee is penalising Lemina every time he goes near the ball and Gudmundsson is a pathetic rolling dickhead.  He stops and curls the free kick onto the roof of the net.  The small contingent of Burnley fans thought it was in…ahhhhhh!  We finally show a spark and it’s Redmond who runs at the right hand side of their defence, beats the last man and gets a cross in which is headed away.  It lifts the crowd and you can see Redmond grow in stature straight away.  It’s funny what happens when players are encouraged and feel appreciated. Redmond again sets up the next attack, finding Austin who for once has moved into a space – he finds Armstrong whose cross just eludes the lumbering drunk looking bearded heavily tattooed number 10.

There was one occasion when Lemina had the ball in midfield and was looking forward for a pass but eventually went sideways to Romeu and we played it back to Vestergaard.  Armstrong had made a run from right to left, Redmond was on the left wing and marked and Austin was just stood there offering nothing.  When the ball didn’t go to Armstrong the move was dead – this is the problem.

We look like we’ve got to half time at 0-0 but there’s always time for a scare isn’t there?  A free kick comes in and Mee thinks he’s Gareth Bale for a minute and tries an overhead head but he’s not Gareth Bale and it’s shit.  It does however, fool everyone and flies sideways to Hendrick at the back post and he really should score but almost tries too hard to place his header and McCarthy makes what in the end is a fairly routine block.  Half time and we made it.

The second half starts in much the same fashion with Burnley on top.  A cross comes in from the right and Vestergaard and Stephens combine to block Gudmundsson in none too convincing fashion.  Another chance as Stephens’ weakness in the air surfaces again and it drops for Ward to shoot low and McCarthy is equal to it again.

I’ve had enough, Hughes has had enough, fuck this.  Off goes Cedric and the limping Armstrong and on comes Elyonoussi and Ings, the latter of which getting a heroes local boy special welcome.  Four-four-fucking-two.  Two massive unit centre halves, two strikers and two proper wingers playing on the correct sides.  Love it.

The effect is instant.  We are further up the pitch and in their faces.  Eloynoussi plays it into Redmond who sees a shot deflected over the bar.  Eloynoussi on the corner and in the melee in the middle, it flies of Mee’s head and is headed off the line by Westwood.  The ref checks his ‘goalline technology’ watch but sadly, no beep.  Ings has certainly added a spark with quick darting movement, highlighted by the lumbering presence of Austin along side him.  Austin is getting stuck in though and gets away with a clear foul on the left before feeding Ings who lashes narrowly over.  Ings is at the heart of everything and puts a superb cross just over Austin and Stephens meets it at the back stick but can’t force it past Hart in goal.  Another Moi corner, another decent flat trajectory one and Hart comfortably catches Lemina’s header

Finally Hughes decides to stop playing with 10 and Gabbiadini is on for Austin meaning we now have two strikers that move. Burnley meanwhile bring on Barnes and Vokes to give them two striker who batter people.  Vokes first contribution is to elbow Vestergaard in the head.  It’s a temporary repite for Burnley though as Redmond, attacking with intent from his natural side, wins a corner which comes in from Moi and Ings heads over.

This curious phenomenon of having forward runners has got Burnley all confused.  Ings plays Moi through and he runs at the defenders, cuts back to make space for a shot and the excellent Tarkowski dives in to block.  Another Moi corner and yet again we get to it and this time it’s Ings that heads over.  As the time runs out we have half a should for a penalty as Mee and Ings tangle and I didn’t think anything of it at the time even with it being right in front of me.  There is just time for Stephens to scuff a cross into the box and Ings to smash an effort at Hart which he parried away.  The ref had given a foul though because Ashley Barnes had fallen over.

Vestergaard Gets Ready for Sam Vokes

And so the game ended in a draw. If I had been offered a 0-0 draw at the start the game then I wouldn’t have been particularly impressed with it but as it happens, it was actually quite good and a quite enjoyable game – well an enjoyable 2^nd half anyway.  I have a feeling that Hughes went for the 5-4-1 formation because there is no way, having not trained at all, that Cedric was going to be able to bomb up and down the right wing. What it meant however was that Bertrand couldn’t get forward on the left hand side because Redmond was directly in front of him so we ended up not doing much at all in the first half. When the midfielders got the ball there was a complete lack of movement up front with Redmond being tied to the left wing and only Armstrong making any decent runs in front of the ball. Charlie Austin was fucking terrible and barely moved. I would say that Hughes got the selection of Austin wrong because with both Cedric and Austin in the starting 11, that is two of your substitutions predetermined as neither were going to last 90 minutes. After 10 minutes of the second-half, Hughes decided to be proactive and go for it and both Elyounoussi and Ings were superb when they came on. It was even better when Austin was finally removed and Gabbiadini came on and then we had four players making runs and making it difficult for Burnley defenders.

Burnley are hard to break down and remember, last year we lost this game 1-0 because Pellegrino fail to react when Dyche made his changes. This season, Hughes got in first and change the game and then Dyche had to respond, not that Dyche was ever going to do anything different than throw on two big lumps upfront in the second half.  It’s interesting that there’s no VAR this season – if it had been available for this game then I’m guessing that Cork’s goal would have stood, Ings would have had a penalty and Vokes would probably have been sent off.

All of the new players played well with Armstrong being pretty much the only positive attacking player in the first half, Ings showing a purpose and a movement which if combined with Gabbiadini, looks very promising indeed. Elyounoussi looked on that showing to be tailor-made for the Premier League as he has the skills but he also has a bit of physicality about him. Vestergaard at the back had an excellent debut, won more than his fair share of headers and put in a few vital blocks. He made sure that Burnley’s physical strikers knew that he was around and you can tell straight away that he will be a very good player for us.  He missed a few in the air but understandable as the Burnley forwards are all very good in the air because they have to be and they get so much practice.

Elsewhere, McCarthy kept up his good form from last season and it was pleasing to see Wesley Hoedt but in a good performance though a flat back four with Hoedt and Vestergaard as the two central defenders is probably something that you are not going to get away with against quicker opposition. Nathan Redmond again proved that he is much better when playing on the right wing and Mario Lemina went some way to winning back some of my goodwill which he lost with his half-arsed efforts last season.

More positives than negatives I'd say and I've come away feeling relatively happy with a 0-0 draw because of the second half once the chnages had been made.  Negatives... a lot are moaning about hte red carpet thing  To be honest, I didn’t really notice it during the game.  I did however notice the fucking drumming mascot dog.  I acknowledge that I may be being a bit of a drama queen here but I hate that forced atmosphere shit.  I bet it was Ralph’s idea.

A promising start overall and now a trip to the official Southampton football club graveyard, Goodison Park.

Pre-Season 2018 Part 2 - The Return of the Les

Watch This Les - I'm Going to Magic You Up a Striker

Pre-season continued…..

With Carrillo heading off unite the deadly Striker/Manager partnership with Pellegrino and four players having already come in, Saints set to work with clearing out more deadwood and Sofiane Boufal went out on loan for a season to Celta Vigo. Again, we dwell on how good he could be on his day and how much ability he has but after two seasons of not a lot, it is time to conclude that the guy is a complete fucking waster. Off we went to Derby for friendly and got dicked 3-0 was probably not part of the plan but not anything that anyone should get too upset about. There were debuts for Elyounoussi and Vestergaard and then off to France for a week before the home friendlies.

No sooner had we arrived in France then more deadwood was cleared out with Jordy Clasie heading off to Feyenoord on loan for a year. Another painful reminder of the mainly misfiring recruitment policy of the last 3 years. I’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating. We signed Clasie at a point where Harrison Reed was being touted as the next bright young thing out of the academy and by signing another central midfield midget, we basically stompled all over any chance Reed head of making any sort of progression. Clasie was signed as a replacement for Morgan Schneiderlin so we did need to sign someone but we just didn’t need an identical player to Harrison Reed.  It’s a bit like the argument of Sam Gallagher against Carrillo, there is no way we would have got less out of Reed then we did out of Clasie.

Clasie joins Carrillo and Boufal

The week in France ended with a friendly against Dijon and a 2-0 win with goals from Shane Long (yes, you read that right) who was presented with a tap-in after good work by Armstrong and Bertrand.  Said tap-in was dispatched from a slightly offside looking position. Gabbiadini got a second goal having been put through by Austin. In the same way that the 3-0 defeat to Derby doesn’t mean that everything is shit, a 2-0 win against Dijon doesn’t mean that everything is brilliant. Oh yeah, our third kit made an appearance. The shirt it is basically the home shirt with white stripes being replaced by dark red ones.  It looks alright if a tad unnecessary but apparently you can’t have yellow playing against white so it will be used at Fulham and at Spurs when we could quite easily have used the home shirt but there you go.

Celta Vigo rolled into town first of our home friendlies and hang on a minute, that’s the club at the Boufal has just moved to. I bet he doesn’t turn up... oh look he’s injured. Hughes named what looked like quite an experimental line-up with Sam McQueen right wing-back and Steve Davis having a place in central midfield alongside Romeu. Disturbingly, there is also a place for Shane Long. The first half is not great and we go 1-0 down when Bednarek gets outmuscled and it’s 2-0 not long after as Shane Long gives the ball away horribly on the edge of our penalty area trying to do some sort of wanky skill move he probably saw someone else doing training. The second half though is miles better with Matt Targett playing a starring role from right wing-back instead of his usual left. Firstly he put a superb right foot across onto the head of Charlie Austin he made no mistake before sliding a ball through into the path of Armstrong to make it 2-2. The comeback was complete in the 94th minute as JWP hit the post from the edge of the box and the ball rebounded kindly for Elyounoussi to roll home the winner.

The final friendly was at home to Borussia Moenchengladbach and we were quite frankly dreadful and lost 3-0 and barely raised a gallop all game. There’s not much to be said about it really other than we seemed to get cut open every time the Germans came forward and that seem to in the main be down to no cover from the midfield. At least it will ensure that no one takes the foot off the gas in training next week.

Transfers… The general message coming out of the club for the last few weeks is that we would need to sell before we can buy and whilst we have shipped a few players out on-loan, I still can’t see any significant incomings. It’s hard to pinpoint where we are most likely to strengthen if at all. The obvious place would be upfront but we have players there who can stick a ball in the net but we don’t get the supply to them. So maybe it’s the wide areas that need strengthening with the formation we are playing at the moment, there isn’t really a place for wide players. You could say that we are still lacking in defence but we have five central defenders so unless you’re going to sell one and sign hopefully a better one, I can’t see that happening either.

Right back seems to be the new pressing issue as Cedric appears to maybe have done a Jose Fonte and that he has gone away with Portugal for a tournament and after Instagramming his lads holiday, he has a mysterious stomach bug which he’s probably got from wearing too many tight shirts.  As far as I’m concerned – he can go if we can get a replacement.  Questionable defender, questionable attacker and has wanted away all last season if rumours are to be believed.

The only other interest in any of our players appears to have been a rumoured enquiry from West Ham for our Rock Star Instagram Model and Part-Time Footballer, Mario Lemina. Whilst he is brilliant on his day, his attitude clearly stinks and I would drive him to the Olympic stadium myself if West Ham offered us more than 20 million for him.   Someone might have to drive him as the thick twat keeps getting done for speeding.  Meanwhile, back on the pitch, I can’t get over the times I spent last season looking at these two players (Lemina and Cedric) in particular and wondering whether they really gave a shit about anything so I wouldn’t be too fussed if either of them left.

My main hope for the season is that we play some positive football. By this I mean that we actually go out to win some games and not just sit back and wait for something to happen which is what we have done for the last two seasons. There is a significant difference in the Premier League of course between the top six and everyone else. The other 14 teams outside of the top six are all pretty shite so you should really be looking to win the majority of your games against these teams and the best way to do that is to be positive and even if it isn’t the best way to go about it, that is what I want to see this season. I want a team that I feel has some sort of goal threat and some sort of intent. I don’t wanna see us go 1-0 down and the rest of the game be like creeping death when you know absolutely fuck all is going to happen apart from losing and not scoring.

A lot of people seem to be looking at the players the other sides have signed and automatically assuming that they are therefore going to be better than us. I’m sure the fans of other teams looked at Southampton when they signed Boufal and Lemina and the like and thought that we were going to be semi-serious contenders. We of course, were anything but.  Players have to bed in and managers have to be decent or else it’s a collection of talented individuals with no structure and it achieves little.

Saints have made mistakes, big mistakes in recent transfer windows in the players we haven’t replaced in time but also in the players that we have signed. These mistakes are expensive to rectify as you can see by the fact that we haven’t been able to get rid of Carrillo, Boufal or Clasie permanently – that’s about £45 million we paid for little return. We have also made mistakes and some of the contracts we have handed out with Fraser Forster the most ridiculous. A year ago we offered him huge pay increase and added a couple of years on a contract for him and fast forward 12 months and he is our third choice goalkeeper on more money than anybody apparently and surprise surprise, we can’t get rid of him because he has this super fat fucking contract.  The rumoured £90k a week that he is on would certainly pay the wages of someone who may actually challenge to be in the first team. These mistakes, for a club like us, take time to sort out and they restrict us in the meantime.

Personally I think we have the players to do reasonably well this season and by reasonably well I mean, challenge for the top half. The days of challenging for the top six are over for now until we fully rectify the mistakes of the past couple of years and start getting more right than wrong again.  What Hughes has to do better than his two predecessors is get the balance right in key areas of the pitch. For example, at the back. You cannot expect Vestergaard to replace van Dijk and be as good. He just won’t be as he is not the same kind of player. He will be as good in the air but he hasn’t got the turn of pace so I don’t see how are you can play Vestergaard and Hoedt in the same defence unless you have a third much quicker defender in between them. I don’t see how you can pick Lemina and Hojbjerg as your midfield two when neither are prepared to do the dirty work that only Romeu brings to the party. Up front I believe we need some pace. If it’s Austin or Gabbiadini up front then one out of Long Redmond and Elyounoussi has to play and by that, I mean one out of Redmond and Elyounoussi. I think that Hughes will play what is basically a 5-3-2 formation against most sides but don’t be surprised that if it doesn’t work, we adopt the 5-4-1 like we had at the tail end of last season.

If I was picking the team for Burnley then it would be McCarthy in goal, Cedric and Bertrand at fullbacks, Hoedt left, Vestergaard right with Yoshida in between them. Romeu and Hojbjerg in midfield with Armstrong, Redmond and Gabbiadini furthest forward. Charlie Austin can’t play 90 minutes so I’d rather keep him until he’s needed rather than having to make a sub every game when he’s blowing out of his arse.  If Cedric is still having problems with tight shirts then I’ll go with Targett at right back in the short term.  I will settle for a solid season.

My season ticket has just dropped through the door – the packaging is plain this year instead of a fancy box.  It does exactly what it says on the tin – maybe a metaphor for the season ahead.

Netley Boy Returns

Thursday – Transfer Deadline Day – JWP rumoured to be off to Watford – this sounds like utter bollocks to me and I hope it is.  Sam McQueen rumoured to be off to Bristol City – yep, can see that one happening. Danny Welbeck coming in…. hmm, would be good for us but he’s been at United and Arsenal so will be on stupid money – can’t see it. With the Twitterati getting into ‘slit their wrist’ mode at the thought of Saints not signing a striker - at the last minute, it turned out that Les Reed had secretly whisked a Liverpool striker off to the Isle of Wight for a clandestine meeting, offered to buy him a house, showed him videos of where he would be playing and dangled a contract in front of his face, said ‘BOOM!’ (in a German accent) a few times and gave him a special hug and then Les claimed that nothing was our fault ever and we were always the victim.  He did all this without Liverpool knowing anything about it of course.

Quite a few unthruths in there as Les is an honourable man so having agreed a fee of £16 million-ish for this time next year with Liverpool, Danny Ings joined on loan for the season. This can only be a good thing. Of course there are the injuries he’s had which, let’s face it, are the reason we can afford to sign him in the first place.  Despite these, he is a better bet than at least two of the strikers that we have in our squad and that’s enough for me. Also, I’m a sucker for a local boy at the club, especially as he grew up in Netley, where yours truly lived for the first eight years of his life, considerably longer ago than when Danny was there.  Hopefully by the time he’s my age he’s not writing a shitty blog that no one reads.

In addition to ings joining, no one left, not JWP, not Targett so another two local boys in the mix for next season. The signing of Ings has had a somewhat transformative effect on most of the fan base with people in the main feeling more positive now. Some, however, will always be negative and miserable and they’re the sort of people you can do without on your Social Media platforms and in your life in general. I went on a course at work a few weeks ago when I explained that it has actually been measured that it takes eight positive people to counteract the effect one negative person. I’ve never really thought about that before but it certainly seems to carry some weight.

First up – Burnley at home.

Les Celebrates Making Shane Long 4th Choice Striker