Premier League Match 10 - Southampton 0 Newcastle 0

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Well we’ve got to win this one. We need to prove that there are three teams worse than us in the division and even if we only win six games all season as long as they are the two against Newcastle, Cardiff and Huddersfield, it should be enough to keep us up. Today is the first of those 6 cup finals and it is against the team probably in the most disarray and we are at home. We really have got to win this one.

There comes a point with every football club that has a shit owner and cuts every corner imaginable and just expect the manager to keep pulling miracles out of his ass, when it all comes crashing down. It appears that Rafa Benitez talent of making a silk purse out of a sows ear are now not proving enough to balance out the Mike Ashley shit show from the boardroom. Rafa must wake up every morning and wonder what the fucking hell he’s done to deserve this. A Champions League winning manager and someone who managed Real Madrid. I know there have been some criticisms of his signings but are crap signings the managers fault much these days? This was a club that was so morally bankrupt at boardroom level that Alan Pardew, hardly a paragon of virtue himself, decided to quit because he couldn’t take it any more.… And they employed Dennis fucking Wise and gave him an important job.

Mark Hughes is still being very positive in his press conferences stating that the performances are nearly where we need them to be-newsflash Sparky, they’re not. He’s also saying that top 7 might be difficult but top 10 is achievable-newsflash Sparky, it’s achievable but it isn’t going to happen. It’ll be interesting to see how positive he is about things if we don’t manage to beat Newcastle.

Saints line up is predictably the same as it was against Bournemouth last week with the only change being Romeu in for the ill Hojbjerg.  The one change that should have been made was anyone for Charlie Austin but he’s in the side, having had a dig at negative supporters on social media.  I assume we’ll get a 90 minute performance out of him today then instead of the waddling half-arsed shite he served up last week.

One thing is immediately obvious and that is that Newcastle are barely going to commit a player out of their own half.  Muto up front is going to run around a lot, Perez is going to dive around a lot and as long as we don’t give Shelvey time to play, this game should be all about us and attacking.

It should be 1-0 on 5 minutes.  We build on the right, Redmond crosses and Lemina produces a horrible shank off a shot but it puts Elyonoussi clean through.  He produces a wanky chip when he should have passed it across to where even Austin couldn’t have missed from.  Dubravka comfortably saves what was neither a pass or a shot.  Bollocks.

The best Newcastle have is from their fans on Mike Ashley.  I’m not 100% sure but I don’t think they want the Fat Cockney Bastard at their club anymore.  Their mood was under no threat of worsening as Austin picked up a half clearance from Lascelles and tries a long ranger at the near post which any goalkeeper would save.  Redmond has the next shot as Ings attempts to bollocks the move by passing behind him by Nathan still manages to dig it out and fire over.

More chances come and go in the first half – Redmond to Bertrand and a near post defelecting by Lemina which hits the outside of the post.  Then Elyonoussi produces a promising burst from the left, cutting in but curling a shot wide.  The last action of the half is a corner swung in by Bertrand a header from Stephens which once again is comfortably pushed away by Dubravka.

You can’t say we haven’t had chances but somehow it has still been incredibly boring and Newcastle’s average defence has been very comfortable.  Whatever happened to concerted pressure?

The second half is clearly going to be the same as the first  Redmond plays a 1-2 with Ings and sees a low shot comfortably saved and then the only thing more predictable than us not winning happens, someone calls time at the bar and off waddles Charlie Austin for a last beer before hitting the kebab shop on the way home, after a hour of keeping his side of the bargain with the fans. Tosser.

Gabbiadini is on and Lemina has a dig from long range which is a decent hit but always going over.  Hughes is again positive with Romeu and Elyonoussi being replaced by JWP and Long with JWP going into the centre of midfield.  It really is a bit late but straight away we look more progressive but time is running out.  Lemina wins the ball and feeds Gabbi who produces a superb turn and finds Cedric overlapping – a good pull back along the top of the box … Shane with a free shot from 15 yards, 25,000 people including other Saints players with head in hands.

It takes a turn for the farcical as Gabbiadini, with three options to pass to, tries a shot from Bitterne Park which flies into orbit and we have one last chance with a  free kick fromt out on the right.  A brilliant delivery from JWP and Stephens can’t decide to kick it or head it and eventually does neither.  Another 0-0.  Fuck sake.

It’s very tempting to write “there is nothing to say“ but I will try to sum up what I have just watched. Newcastle came from a draw like we knew they would and they were fucking dreadful in terms of entertainment but they got what they came for. All you can do against teams like that is to keep things at a high tempo and put their defence under lots of pressure. We did it in little patches but as usual, even putting together a concerted 15 minutes of lively attacking play was beyond us. Last week I had issues with Hughes starting 11 but his substitutions were fine. Today I only have one issue with starting 11, Charlie Austin and more on that later. Today, the substitutions were average at best. Gabbiadini for Austin had to happen because Austin was a) injured and b) shite. JWP for Romeu was the right call but it should have happened 20 minutes before did and of course, allowing Benitez to put Shane Long on as an extra defender wasn’t the right call.

We have two strikers who are completely not fit for purpose. Charlie Austin is an embarrassment to the club and probably to the Premier league as well. He has to be the most unfit player to have played in the Premier League. Last week he actually had the nerve to come out and criticise the fans for not having blind faith 100% of the time. You can fuck off mate, you absolute waste of space. That bloke has had a full pre-season in which he could have addressed his obvious fitness problems. Someone from the club should have made him do it, cancel his holidays and making get fit enough to do his fucking job. Rumour has it the Nathan Redmond spent all summer in the gym making himself physically stronger because he thought it would help him in the season ahead. Assuming that’s true, that’s a great attitude. Doing fuck all except beer and kebabs like Austin has obviously done, is the complete opposite. Playing him from the start, as discussed before is a complete waste of time and a waste of a substitution that you have to make. If Mark Hughes can’t see that then you have to wonder what the fucking hell he’s doing during the week.  Playing Austin from the start doesn’t just mean we’re playing with 10, in fact means we are playing with 9 because Danny Ings has to play 20 yards deeper so he is further away from goal and not really a goal threat. By playing Austin we basically put all our eggs in the ‘Charlie Austin four years ago’ basket and guess what? He isn’t the player he was four years ago when he was rattling them in for QPR. He’s not even the player was at the start of last season. Since the 5 month hamstring injury last season he’s been a fucking useless pudding.

Shane Long. Is anyone surprised? A glorious chance to win the game in the 90th minute just by doing what the strikers practice before every game - taking a pass from the side and hitting it first time in to the net. We will for a minute gloss over the detail that he misses 99% of his shots in the warm up but the fact is that they practise it all the time for when that scenario arrives during a game. I actually feel sorry for him. The poor bloke is absolutely shot to bits with no confidence whatsoever and it’s almost cruel to keep putting him in the first team. He needs to get confidence from somewhere, maybe the U23s or whatever but trying the same thing time and time again just isn’t working.

Talking of which, a lot of Saints fans seem to have it in for JWP. If you can’t see that we looked much more likely to score in the 15 minutes that he was on that every other 75 then you really don’t know much about football and I question both your eyesight and your sanity. We have to find a place for him in the starting 11. We are desperate for goals and he’s our best set piece taker. Would he really detract elsewhere? Would he really offer less than Elyonoussi? Would Sam Gallagher and Michael Obafemi be worse than Long and Austin? We have Stuart Armstrong not even in the team. Would giving Hesketh a go really have been worse?

On the face of it, the football side of the club from the players we’ve signed down to the way we utilise the ones we’ve got, to the ones we loan out that we shouldn’t have, to the ones we loaned out we should’ve sold. It’s all wrong. We have a bloated squad full of average squad players. We could probably put two 11s out that would be more or less exactly the same ability which is why we do well in the League Cup. We can rest 11 players and it doesn’t make much difference to our team where is with other teams there is a distinct drop off. Today we were missing Hojbjerg, one of the few that is a big loss, has become our most important player and I think it showed today, well though Oriol Romeu completed.

Today, we should have won. We were the better side and we created enough chances. However, our strikers just aren’t good enough. If you’d persist with playing two up front and it is not Ings and Gabbiadini, then Hughes is as big a fraud as Pellegrino. To be honest I don’t think the majority of this shitshow is Hughes fault but I don’t think anyone can have the opinion that he is getting the most out of the resources he has available.

There is no way that the board will be wanting to fire another manager and admitting that they have fucked up for the third time in a row - not yet anyway. I think Hughes will certainly get the January transfer window when the recruitment and probably more importantly, the letting go will have to be spot on.

There is an apathy and disinterest in the fan base. Personally, I’m kind of in the ‘shrug your shoulders’ camp. I watch the games and they are in the main fucking boring with nothing to get you excited and I look at the clock sometimes and it says 35 minutes of gone and I can’t remember anything of note that happened in the previous 25 minutes. It’s like I’ve been asleep. Some people I know who have been supporting Saints for many years are getting to the point where they just don’t give a fuck anymore and the cost to the club is going to be in hugely decreased season ticket sales for next season.  Season Ticket Plus… My Arse.

Next up, was the chance to give our bloated squad of senior pros a game against Leicester City in the League Cup but as everyone knows, the tragic helicopter crash that happened at the King Power Stadium on Saturday night means that the game is postponed. I feel a bit of a dick getting irate about a wanker like Charlie Austin when things like this are going on so enough of him and here’s hoping that Leicester City recover from the loss of their Chairman and that the families of those affected are allowed to grieve and can find their own peace.