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