Premier League Match 13 - Fulham 3 Southampton 2

This is Mitrovic.  Massive isn't he? Might be a Good Idea to Mark Him

Craven Cottage and Fulham in one of those defining games of the season and that it’s a game against one of the teams in the shit mini league of six that are going to be fighting over relegation places at the end of the season. We can’t afford to lose but as I’ve said before, wins in the games against our fellow shite teams will be enough to keep us up this year.

The international break saw Alex McCarthy make his England debut and well deserved and about time. England managed to win the Nations League Division A group and it’s always good to see Dejan Lovren crying. That particular sight will never not be funny. Elsewhere, Stuart Armstrong had a good game for Scotland in their Nations League Division Z win against the Arse End of Nowhere or some country I have never heard of, probably.

Regardless of what anyone says about him being miserable or whatever, Ryan Bertrand, having reached five bookings, will be missed today though at least in Matt Targett we have a decent replacement.  An academy product who could step into the first team as and when required. What a novel idea that is as opposed to having lots of journeymen experience to pros who are on big money and not very good.

The main issue today is the injury to Danny Ings which was picked up against Watford. There are a number of choices for Hughes to make here. Assuming Ings is injured then he could start with Shane Long which gets a big fat no from me because he’s fucking useless. Another option would be to start Michael Obafemi who also made his International debut this week for the Republic of Ireland despite being about as Irish as I am. This option will be far too brave so I can’t see it happening. The other option is to put Gabbiadini upfront and bring in either Elyounoussi or JWP on the right wing. I can’t see that happening either. You just know he’s going to start with the Fat Beered Up Kebab Merchant on the basis of his scuffed disallowed goal from two weeks ago and on the basis that he as good at QPR for half a season 4 years ago.

Fulham are bottom of the league and Jokanovic paid for it with his job.  Getting promoted to the big money league doesn’t buy you very long it seems.  His replacement is the ever popular Claudio Ranieri whose Leicester title win is still for me, the best achievement by any manager in the English game since football began in 1992.  Hopefully Claudio won’t have had time to sort out a defence which has been absolutely dreadful so far this season.

He was helped in this by the Saints team news, when as feared, Charlie Kebab was leading the line.  The rest of the team was as predicted with Michael Obafemi making the bench and once again, Oriol Romeu was nowhere to be seen but there were places for both Steve Davis and JWP, which is pointless.  Why not put someone like Callum Slattery or Marcus Barnes on the bench?  The headline though was that Hojbjerg had been made captain and well deserved.

Saints tsart well and we should be in the lead after about 4 minutes.  Ac roner from the left comes in from Targett and is headed out to Redmond whose follow up is blocked out to Armstrong who absolutely smashes it through the crowd, forcing Sergio Rico to parry it straight out to Gabbiadini.  With the whole goal to aim ain and a free shot, Gabbi merely farts it back at the prone keeper.  Dreadful.

There is nearly another dreadful moment when we nearly let Callum Wanker Chambers score, allowing him a free header from 10 yards which he puts straight at Macca.  How can no one be marking someone ten yards out?

Despite that near horror moment, on 18 minutes we get one of those odd moments.  A throw on the left is taken by Targett, Redmond hooks it over and there’s a shite headed clearance back to the penalty spot and there’s the magnificent hair of Stuart Armstrong who chests it forward and drills it under Rico on the stretch.  This is the Day.  Surely…..

….Not. Out of nowhere a few minutes later, Fulham start all this one touch shit and we of course, don’t get close enough to stop it.  They work it out left to the full back and Cedric is ballwatching from the middle and Le Marchon’s stands up a cross and there’s Mitrovic, stading in a circle of 5 Southampton defenders, like some sort of training drill.  He jabs his head at the ball and the Southampton 5, who are all 4 defenders and Lemina, admire it as the ball goes past McCarthy.  Fucking useless sacks of shite.  When you watch Mitrovic in the build up, Hoedt has him but our fearless Dutchman shites his pants and stands off when the ball comes in.

Fulham are now moving the ball well and we look clueless.  Cyrus Christie is allowed to cut in from the right and curl a shot past the far post and as we approach half time, down the other wing, Sessegnon makes Cedric look a complete mug, leaves him foor dead and then crosses low to the unmarked Schurrle to bury it to make it 2-1.  I’m not even surprised.  Just beofr ehalf time we get a free kick out wide right when mawson cynically takes out Gabbi and earns a yellow card buy Targett’s cross finds the unmarked Hoedt who loses his bearing and heads it backwards and over the bar. Shite.

In the second half we should be dead after 5 minutes.  A misplaced pass upfield and Fulham break again with us in full panic mode.  Schurrle and Mitrovic combine again and the unmarked (that word again) Serb forces McCarthy into a great save down low to his right.  The ridiculous thing is that these are isolated breaks by Fulham.  We have more control on the ball and we look the far more accomplished side but we’re as sturdy as a house of cards in a wind tunnel.

Hoedt pinds a crossfield ball towards Cedric and it doesn’t quite get there because Sessegnon heads it up in the air.  Cedric beats his fellow dwarf to the dropping ball and flicks it to Gabbi, back to Cedric and a backheel into the path of Armstrong and it’s another great hair moment and he sidefoots it into the top corner, giving Rico no chance at all.  What a fucking finish that is.  2-2 – Come On!!!

We’ll surely keep it tight now and turn the screw and …. No.  A clearance is boomed over our defence and into the far left corner and Wesley will surely just smash this up the park… nope.  Wesley will surely smash it off Schurrle and win a throw… nope.  Wesley will surely not fuck about and give the ball away…. Yes he fucking will.  Fulham work it into a crossing position, over it comes, Dwarf Sessegnon beats Yoshida in the air and flicks it on to Mitrovic, unmarked, goal. F.U.C.K.!!!

Time for a substitution and time to play with 11 and off goes the Hologram and on comes Elyounoussi who goes to the right with Gabbi to the middle.  Captain Hojbjerg creates a great chance for himself, jinking past a challenge before smashing it straight at the keeper.

Michael Obafemi is next on for Armstrong who has got cramp.  By running onto the pitch, Obafemi has covered more ground than Austin did.  His first contribution is to take a pinged pass with a great first touch around a defender but then he can’t keep his shot down and puts it narrowly over.  It’s the 90 minute plus panic with Redmond again tormenting down the left and crossing for Elyounoussi to fall over horribly and the final chance falls to Obafemi is shoots first time from an Elyounoussi pass and brings a great save out of the keeper.  Obafemi’s swing at the rebound loops up to the keeper who collapses with an imaginary injury and somehow it’s deemed as Obafemi’s fault by a couple of prick Fulham players and that gets him booked.  Small matter in the scheme of things… we’ve lost to a shit team again.

So, we’ve just lost to one of the worst teams in the Premier League so what the hell does that make us? This is another quite ridiculous defeat where we played by far the better football and actually look decent going forward (despite having a hologram at centre forward) and still managed to lose because of three of the worst bits of defending you will ever see.

When you are rating the players for that performance then you would find it hard to rate any out of Cedric, Yoshida and especially Hoedt anything higher than ‘fucking dreadful’. All of the defenders on the first goal, fucking dreadful, both full backs on the second goal, fucking dreadful but the absolute belter was the third goal.  Wesley fucks about with the ball in the corner and then Maya loses a header to a dwarf and then the fucking great big guy is unmarked - again. When you manage your kids team, one of the things you have to teach defenders is that you don’t try and run the ball out from your own corner flag, you just kick it off the fucking pitch and get back into position to defend the throw in. Hoedt showed a level of confidence which is well beyond the realms of confidence and is completely in arrogance and recklessness and stupidity territory.  The guy obviously doesn’t give a fuck. We’ve already let in two completely fucking dreadful preventable goals and he decides to take a chance like that in the corner.  So, Hoedt caused the whole thing but then you have the role of Yoshida getting beaten in the air by Sessegnon, who is about 5 foot 2.   We might as well do the first two goals whilst we’re here - well you need to know about the first goal is that after Cedric is turned inside out by Sessegnon, the cross came in from the Fulham full back and there was Mitrovic, all 6 foot 3 of him with five Saints players making a nice little circle around him and no one getting anywhere fucking near. It’s embarrassing.  Second goal, Cedric gets fucked over again and the cross comes in and Targett has lost his man.  What is the point of Cedric?  He gets beaten in the air which you can kind of live with because he’s funsize but surely the payoff for that is that he doesn’t get beaten easily on the deck.  Not today.

You can’t really blame Hughes for Hoedt making massive fuck ups with his decision making like that but at the end of the day, Hughes is the one who picks the arrogant  fucker and Hughes’ staff of fucking goalkeepers, presumable train him and the rest. Vestergaard got dropped after one poor game at Wolves when he was up against a lightning quick attacker alongside Wesley Hoedt.  He also made about one 10th of the mistakes that Hoedt has made this season. I’ve defended Hoedt against the masses for his fuck-ups because when he’s on it and not being a dick, I can actually pick up that he has was a bit of ability but today is indefensible. I can only think that he gets picked purely because he is left-footed but it isn’t worth it for the calamities he brings and there has to be other options. Vestergaard has to come back in instead of Hoedt and play alongside either Yoshida or maybe Bednarek.

The midfield three of Hojbjerg, Lemina and Armstrong were in the main, excellent today and Redmond and Gabbiadini both tried hard and tried to create.  We played some lovely football in their half  but when the play you’re trying to play around the Hologram that is Charlie Austin that you are really up against it. If he touched the ball more than about five times in the first half then I’d be amazed.  He had about another five touches in the second half before he was predictably substituted. Some of those touches actually went about 20 yards and of course, someone else had to run after them. There’s nothing more to say about Austin other than that he is finished as a top-level footballer but Hughes keeps picking him up because he is his favourite. Michael Obafemi did more in 10 minutes then Austin has done all season.

Two Twats Who Don't Play for Saints Any More

Today is the day where the tide turned for me. Hughes, like Puel and Pellegrino seem absolutely incapable of getting a tune of these players and that’s his job. The Motivational Hockey Guy and Decision maker in Chief says that the squad is better than this league position so who’s to blame?  The noise for Hughes to go is only going to get louder and louder and to be fair, if his stubbornness and his persistence with his favourites continues, it is going to cost him and it deserves to.

The main positive today was of course Stuart Armstrong who scored two superb goals and with his intelligent movement, provided the outlet for many passes from the central defenders and the midfielders. Now we see the reason why we bought him and it makes his limited game time so far, even more baffling.

The day after the game there was an interesting couple of quotes from Cedric.  You know Cedric, the bloke I usually talk about when I’m talking about all the things that were shit about whatever game I’m talking about.  Well he said we have a weak mentality and even at 1-0 up we think we’re going to concede.  Tell you what mate, if I was in a team with you and Wesley Hoedt, I’d think we were going to concede as well.  How you’ve got the brass bollocks to level any criticism remotely at anyone else is completely beyond me.  Wanker.  Fuck off back to your boy band.  Like when Charlie Austin criticized the fans - why does it always come from the most guilty as they adopt attack as a form of defence.

Next up is Leicester away in the Reserve Team Trophy but next up in the League is another manager under pressure but for very different reasons, as Manchester United and José Mourinho come to town. It’s fucking November and we are looking at having a must win home game against Manchester United. As far as the big six are concerned, United are probably the least likely to beat us easily so we have to go out there, be positive and try and win the game, hopefully without the arrogant prick centre back and the Hologram.