Premier League Match 6 - Southampton 1 Bournemouth 3

Callum Wilson Working Really Hard for his Goal.

When is the draw against Portsmouth happened and the date was announced, a few people noticed that we were playing two South Coast sides in a row but not many did. No one with any Southampton affiliation really cared. The Bournemouth game is a home game in the Premier League and that’s it. It’s a home game against a team that we should certainly be looking to beat and that will be the disappointment if we don’t win. There won’t be any extra hurt if we lose to Bournemouth except for the fact that there are elements of their support that are trying to stoke this up as being some big rivalry, who are tinpot and annoying. Personally, I work in Poole and quite regularly pop into Bournemouth at lunchtime. I have seen Saints shirts around town and they have never been on a person who is running up from a baying mob of psychopaths. You see where I’m going with this? You do not create a rivalry just by being tinpot and annoying. It’s in the blood or it’s not there.

Both Saints and Bournemouth have had the same start of the season with two wins, a draw and two defeats. Due to this game being played at sky o’clock on a Friday night, a winner tonight would find themselves in the Champions League places overnight which will be a bit of a laugh. Eddie Howe, a manager who I mostly admire, is still at Bournemouth and still doing a good job. I do wonder occasionally when the bubble is going to burst down there and I am always a bit surprised by the eye watering transfer fees they seem to pay for players out of the Championship. I do feel that deep down there may be a bit of a comparison with Portsmouth in that they have had years of Premier League money without building a new ground to replace the very small one that they playing in and I do wonder if it all might go to shit very quickly should they get relegated. They shouldn’t get relegated of course but they, like ourselves are one of the 12 or clubs who can’t rule it out. Last year down here was a very entertaining game which ended in a 3-3 draw. It was entertaining because both defences were absolutely shit. Dan Gosling spent most of that game goading the crowd but as I haven’t seen his name on the team sheet recently, I’m guessing that he is injured.

The news coming out of Ralph's press conference was mixed in that it looks like Moussa Djenepo will be missing but Nathan Redmond could be back. If he is 100% fit then fine but if not, I hope we save him for the bigger game that we have on Tuesday night.

I expected there to be a traffic jam coming from Bournemouth towards Southampton at 5:30 but there wasn’t one, just like there won’t be an increased police presence around the ground tonight or any sort of special atmosphere. Was there any discussion about whether there should be a game where supporters traveled in a bubble with fans bussed in to a sterile area? I very much doubt it.

What the actual fuck?  He’s at it again – no left back on the team sheet so I can only assume that Danso is going to come back in at left back.  Good news is that Redders is back and will aid the attacking threat alongside Boufal and Adams.  Bournemouth have a couple of new players in Philip Billing who is a massive unit in midfield and Harry Wilson on loan from Liverpool.  One of their big money flops, Dominic Solanke is up front with the usual Josh King and Callum Wilson.

As if the horror of the team selection isn’t enough, we’re on Sky tonight so St Mary’s becomes a shit nightclub for five minutes with pyro and flashing lights and music turned up to distortion levels.  It’s really, really shit.

Saints have the majority of possession at the start but aren’t doing anything with it much.  Bournemouth’s first attack comes down our left and Cedric makes a horrific decision to press the player with the ball and leaves a huge space behind which the ball gets passed into.  We scramble it away for a corner and over it comes and you can tell when the ball has traveled about 5 yards that it’s ending up in the net.  It’s a ball just in front of our big guys who are all zonally marking the the 6 yard line and allows their big guys to attack it, one of whom, Ake, meets it unchallenged about 8 yards out. 1-0, garbage.

This makes you look around to see how hopeless we are.  Danso is like a fish up a tree at right back and Cedric is understandably cutting in all the time and we’re funneling into the areas where Bournemouth have Billing and Lerma mopping up everything.  Vestergaard looks even more clumsy than usual – especially when Angus Gunn gives him a short goal kick when Callum Wilson is right next to him.  We just about got away with that one.  Oh look it’s got worse as Solanke feeds King who strides on and scores comfortably.  2-0… or is it.  VAR time and of course as we know by now, in the ground we’re playing a game of trying to interpret the length of time it takes as that’s all we’ve got.  Offside and goal not given.  Lucky.

Ralph uses the let off to change the shape with Danso slotting in between Vestergaard and Bednarek and JWP being dragged to right wing back.  It’s slightly better but not much and having had a rehearsal at going 2-0 down, we do it properly and it’s one of those where the opposition go pass, pass, pass for 5 minutes with us not engaging with any player and King pulls it back, there is Harry Wilson who has come off the right wing, and arrived on the opposite side totally unmarked to sweep it into the net.  Vestergaard has tried to get to him at the last minute but too slow.

Hojbjerg at least forces Ramsdale into a save at close range and Redmond does likewise after Romeu (who had been magnificent so far) binned Wilson and set him up.  Half time and 2-0 down.  Boos ring around the ground and the irritating twats up the other end are loving it.

Half time and miracle of miracles, Ryan Bertrand is on to replace Danso and we have a team ready to kick off with all the players standing in the right positions and we look like a proper team all of a sudden – and that’s even before it kicks off.  Sure enough, for the opening 15 minutes we batter them with Boufal prominent a couple of times in a move which ended with Cedric putting over a good cross with his good foot from the correct side and JWP side footing over the bar.  Really should have scored that.

He has a chance to make amends as Hojbjerg puts Adams away on the left and he barrels into the penalty area and Steve Cook clumsily wipes him out.  The ref has given it but we go to VAR again and it’s confirmed.  JWP is on the pens and no messing, Ramsdale goes the wrong way, 2-1.

We’re in Stockley Park again a few minutes later as King goes over under a similarly clumsy challenge by Cedric and the VAR Official, Mr S.Wonder says that it isn’t a penalty.  I’m sorry but bollocks.  That was a clear foul and I’m sat 80 yards away.  Maybe we’re going to spawn something from this game after all.

Despite proving he can hit a dead ball, JWP is still struiggling with a moving one and after a Redmond burst on the right and a clever back heel from Adams, JWP sidefoots it over the fucking bar again.  Boufal is running the show now and is having his unplayable 20 minutes.  His left foot blast is saved by Ramsdale in true “one for the cameras” style and we recycle the ball to JWP who you’d think by now would be bored with hoofing it over the bar but not yet and over it goes.

Ings on for Adams and it makes a difference as the new man tees up Redders whose shot is blocked for a corner.  Ings next gets to the line and pulls it back to JWP who is too close to whack it into orbit but scuffs it at Ramsdale who saves it, drops it and re-gathers.

We’re getting a bit desperate now with time running out and we’ve thrown the Oil Tanker up front.  He causes chaos without touching the ball and Ings effort is blocked this time by Ake.  Boufal sees another effort saved as the clock ticks to 90 and it isn’t happening – big ball forward, Bednarek finds himself confronted by Gunn who for reasons only known to him, is ten yards outside his area, they both leave it and Callum Wilson walks it into the net so we now have a third entrant into the ‘Shittest Goal From Our Point of View” Competition.

It's a game that we lost because we gave away two shit goals in the first half and though we huffed and puffed and were better in the second, we book-ended it with giving away another chronically shit goal in the last minute.

Ralph had a fucking mare today. Danso has played a couple of times at left back and we’ve got away with it so hey, why not take it one step further and put him at right back, Cedric on the left and have both full backs out of position. Fucking joke. Both players were dreadful in that first half and most of it is not their fault. Playing players out of position is a surefire way of getting a disjointed performance though. By picking those two players and playing them where he played them Ralph managed to totally bugger our attack and our defence.

Whilst we’re on the subject of players out of position I’d like to know where Vestergaard and JWP play normally because they were fucking useless today. Oh – you mean they always play there.  Jesus.  Oh and the short goal kick thing…. for fuck‘s sake, passing the ball to Vestergaard when he is in close proximity of a striker is absolutely never ever going to be a good thing to do.

There may be some good comes out of the shambles of our own making because the difference when Ryan Bertrand was on the pitch, giving us a natural on the left hand side, was immense. Also, it was I think the first appearance of 4-2-3-1 this season which is a formation that suits the players…. Or was it 4-3-3… either way it was better as we looked like something resembling a coherent unit.

It was a strange game because the players were either very good or absolutely shocking and the shocking performances dragged us down. Boufal, Romeu, Bednarek and Redmond did not deserve to be on the losing side but when you have players playing as badly as Danso, JWP and Vestergaard and Hojbjerg basically giving the ball to Bournemouth every time he got it, you’re not going to win many games in the Premier League.

Didn’t Bournemouth have to work hard for their goals? For fuck‘s sake. Free header from a corner, free shot totally unmarked in the middle of the penalty area and goalkeeper and centre back running into each other on the edge of the box. Here you go lads, have three goals. Bournemouth weren’t even that good – they just waited for us to fuck up and then scored the simple goals that they were presented with.  Fair play to them, they won and deserved to as you can only beat what’s in front of you and what was in front of them was shite.

Another thing was that was worrying apart from the gifts, was that despite Boufal’s brilliance and Bournemouth‘s determination to keep trying to play out from the back when they weren’t good enough to do so, we still only scored once which was from a penalty. Sure the keeper made a few saves but most of those were pretty routine. JWP was driving me fucking mental. Before every game we see a warm-up where the players are practising shooting from the edge of the box but put JWP in a game situation and every shot he has from that distance flies over the fucking bar. Che Adams again, worked really hard but never looked like scoring.

This actually won’t do it any harm for the game against the Skates on Tuesday. Ralph know that having lost today, he is going to have to go all out to win on Tuesday and that means picking as close to his best side as possible. I don’t mind if Ings start ahead of Adams, Yoshida ahead of Vestergaard or McCarthy ahead of Gunn but I don’t want to see Shane Long or Jack Stephens anywhere near it. Me, I’d go with the same formation we finished with  - McCarthy, Cedric, Bertrand, Bednarek, Yoshida, Romeu, Hojbjerg, JWP, Redmond, Boufal, Ings

Spotlight on Ralph. When I looked at the Saints Twitter feed on Friday night, it was of course many references to the full back fiasco but one of the best ones in my view was one about Ralph thinking his philosophy is infallible and that it doesn’t matter which players playing which position as long as they adhere to his philosophy. It certainly does seem to go some way to explain why we have had this problem, primarily in the full-back positions this season. I doubt they would’ve been many Saints fans all journalists the cover the club that would not have been happy with Bertrand and Valery as the two full backs. There has obviously been some issue with Bertrand after he did have and admittedly poor game against Liverpool but is it really worth throwing other players under the bus. Danso in particular has been shafted and to a lesser extent, so have Cedric and Djenepo.  The farce at left back has really exposed Vestergaard as well to the point that soon Ralph’s going to have to make a decision about him. I really want to like the guy but he is too big at 6 foot 6 to get off the ground so any striker who can jump beats him in the air and of course he is incredibly slow and has the turning circle of an oil tanker.

To be honest, overall I have been a bit disappointed with the way that Saints have played this season. We’ve picked up some decent results but I wasn’t expecting us to be this disjointed. I expect this to be more of a finely tuned machine after a full pre-season under Ralph but that just hasn’t been the case. We look most disjointed whenever we try and play Ralphs preferred 4-2-2-2 formation. We might have the players to play but it certainly doesn’t work when you have makeshift full-backs and it certainly doesn’t suit two of Ralphs seemingly preferred starters in Vestergaard and JWP. The “George Burley when he’s been drinking” team selections need to stop or we will be ruthlessly exposed by the tough run of league games that we have coming up.

Before that though, all eyes on Tuesday when Ralph, with a win will be forgiven for anything that has happened so far. On the other hand… Let’s not think about that.

When I was leaving the ground, the way I felt kind of completely confirmed what I said at the start about the non-Derby status of this game. Sure I was feeling pissed off but I was feeling pissed off because we basically gave the game away to them and didn’t make them work hard for their victory. We lost because of a combination of poor managerial decisions and basic errors by the players. Honestly would’ve felt the same if we lost in that manner to any team outside of the big six.  Enjoy your moment Bournemouth.