Bad Day at the Office
Friday night, Sky o’clock kick-off for the visit of Brendan Rodgers and his very impressive Leicester City side. It has been said since the start of the season that they would be a very good bet to break the top six this season and nothing that has happened since the start of the season has changed that point of view. If anything, they should now be looking at the top four given the relative poor looking efforts from Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester United.
Brendan Rodgers has recovered from being somewhat of a figure of ridicule at Liverpool where Gerrard’s infamous slip cost them the title. As time has gone by, more of that indifference towards Rogers has proved to be coloured by peoples indifference towards Liverpool and finding every near miss very, very funny. Brendan did catch that Liverpool disease though of saying the most irritating thing at the most irritating time but a spell in Scotland winning every game with Celtic has revitalise the man and now, I think of him as being a decent manager first and a bit of a dick second. I wouldn’t have thought this was possible.
The team he has built since replacing the somewhat useless Claude Puel is impressive. They have replaced Harry Maguire, who some thought was irreplaceable, with a young player with a daft haircut who they already have on their books, Caglar Soyuncu. Jonny Evans has always been an excellent central defender and how Manchester United to do with him now. Too exciting full backs in Parreira and Chilwell complete the defence. The midfield three is as good as anyone else in the Premier League with Wilfred Ndidi, James Maddison and Youri Tielemans. Unlike the club playing in red and white stripes who will be opposing them today, Leicester signed their number one target and paid decent money to get him. 40 million sounds a lot and it is but if I sell him next summer he will go to double that. That’s how you invest in a football club. Up front they have Jamie Vardy who will always be a handful and it’s a terrifying prospect thinking of him running at a defence containing a 6 foot 6 totem pole that can’t run or jump.
There has been a sense of relief around the Southampton camp since we stop the rot with the point last weekend and I’m really not expecting any changes in personnel or tactical tweaks for this game.
Walking across the Itchen Bridge is a load of fun in the pissing rain and the wind. The three of us walk across like the front row of a rugby scrum with my son at tighthead, my dad at a loose head and me providing the ballast from the hooker position to stop the other two getting blown over. Upon arrival at the ground, of course it’s Sky and it’s under the lights so we have all the usual bollocks with flashing floodlights for the epileptics amongst us and though I cringed when it started, the performance by the two young rappers, despite not being my genre of music, was decent.
Away we go and it begins to look slightly worrying after a couple of minutes. Leicester have the ball and look incredibly threatening straightaway. If Saints do win the ball then we don’t get any further than the midfield before we lose it again. Occasionally we get a ball up to Redmond or Ings but the midfield are concentrating on defending and not getting forward to support at all so we immediately lose the ball again and here come Leicester.
It starts on our left with Bertrand hacking Pérez over but the ball bounces to Ndidi who feeds Chilwell on the left. He tried some sort of shit shot which is a mis-hit but it find Barnes who hits it, Gunn pushes it out back into play, straight to Chilwell who side foots it into the net as simply as you like. 10 minutes gone and that goal has been coming, for 10 minutes. Whilst the celebration is going on, it flashes up on the screen that a V AR check is going on for a potential red card. Fucks sake… And it’s a red card for Ryan Bertrand. They do actually show the tackle for about half a second on the big screen and it looks like he’s taken him out just below the knee so you can see why he has had to walk. It’s a bit strange that no one from Leicester appealed for the free-kick and the referee and linesman didn’t see it despite being right next to it but there you go. So, 1-0 down and 80 minutes left with 10 men when we were already getting battered with 11. Fucking awesome.
Ralph’s response to the red card is to take JWP out of midfield and stick him at left-wing back. What the fuck? Now we are surrendering the midfield even more and now we have three centre backs marking Jamie Vardy. I don’t understand this at all and nor did the players as Barnes pisses past Valery and Romeu on our right and tries to knock it inside but it’s not going anywhere until Valery tries to intercept it and succeeds only in passing it to Tielemans who shoots on the edge of the box and sscores virtually in the middle of the goal past the presumably unsighted Gunn.
A few minutes later and Pérez, who hasn’t scored all season of until tonight, bundles through our kind of non-existent left hand side, totally unimpeded by JWP or Vestergaard or any other players should be over there and shoots straight through a gap between Gunn and the near post. This is 10-year-olds defending and goalkeeping. Absolutely fucking useless and we might as well all fucking go home. On that note, some people decide that evening will be better off spent at home or in the pub and start to leave and I can’t blame them. The boos ring out.
18 minutes gone and this is fucking ridiculous. Another formation change and I don’t really know what’s going on and it’s clear the players don’t really know either but it appears that Valery has now gone to left back And possibly Bednarek to right back or maybe there is absolutely no one at right back. JWP is kind of over there but he seems to have reverted to his normal position on the right of the midfield three. Ings is playing on the left wing and Redmond has the fun job of running around upfront on his own with no one within 40 yards of him.
Even with two and a half central defenders, we are not marking any of the players and when the next cross comes over from Chilwell, it floats over the embarrassing arseholes at the back and Valery has not tracked Perez who meets it on the volley and buries it for 4-0.
My mood is now leaving the realm of anger and entering the realm of finding it amusing. I’m sure it will switch back and forth a few more times as the game goes on. Still we’ve nearly reach half-time only 4-0 down and oh fuck me, another goal as Chilwell tries a sort of cushion volley cross which isn’t really going anywhere until JWP flicks it over Vestergaard who was stood there going “I am Groot“ and it falls to Vardy who holds off Yoshida as you would a three-year-old child who was trying to hit you and smashes it into the empty net. I think Gunn may have actually been in the goal but he might as well not have been.
Half time. 0-5. Believe. When the saints go marching in. The Southampton Way… We March On etc. Fuck off. Useless cunts.
I had soup at half time.
Highlight of the game.
Leicester are out on the pitch for a good three minutes waiting for our shambles to emerge. Could it be that no one wants to actually play the second half and we are going to concede and fuck off home? Oh shit, here we come, well eight of us anyway and there are two subs on the line waiting to come on. Jack Stephens, just the player you want when you are looking to shore things up, is coming on and so is Kevin Danso who Ralph clearly doesn’t rate. The lucky two are Danny Ings and Vestergaard who have been taken off for different reasons I assume. For Ings it will be because he is our best player and there is absolutely no point in flogging him today running around chasing lost causes. For Vestergaard it will be because he is fucking embarrassing and maybe because there is a light bulb that needs changing in one of the high ceilings in one of the changing rooms and they couldn’t find a fucking ladder. From the positions the players stand in before kick-off, it becomes apparent that the two central defenders who have come on are our new full backs with Stephens on the right and Danso on the left. Hojbjerg is on the left of midfield with Valery on the right and Redmond is given the thankless task of running round in the middle of a Rondo training drill for the next 45 minutes. There were some other changes at half-time in that about 10,000 fans went for a piss at half-time and kept on walking.
For about 15 minutes we are relatively solid but then Leicester decide that there may be some records to be made so they start attacking again. Barnes chips one in from the Leicester left and I have no idea where Bednarek is but Yoshida has two men and he picks up neither of them. Danso does absolutely nothing and Pérez runs off the back of Yoshida, takes the ball down, changes his boots, changes his shirt, put it on inside out by accident and still has time to put it on the right way and smash the ball past Gunn for number six.
Super Jack Stephens is now right back and of course, Ben Chilwell is absolutely taking the piss. Stop the cross stop the cross, okay, don’t even fucking bother to try and over comes a cross from Chilwell, Yoshida completely misses it and Jamie Vardy is all alone in front of goal about 6 yards out. He doesn’t miss many of those and he doesn’t miss this one. Seven fucking nil.
I think that it’s at this point that Stuart Armstrong gets told to warm up and come on to replace Valery. As a substitute, in the pissing rain, I would not have been terribly happy about being asked to come home at 7-0 down. On comes Armstrong and dribbles past a player, therefore instantly having done more than JWP has done.
We do manage to equal the record as Leicester win a free-kick on the edge of the box and James Maddison flips it over an absolute shambles of a defensive wall which Gunn is standing behind and into the net for number eight. I believe we lost 8-0 to Everton in the early 70s So I feel somewhat privileged to be in attendance for history being equalled.
Can we beat it though as we reach the 90th minute… of course we fucking can. There’s still time for more as yet another ball dissects the defence and Vardy is through and Bednarek makes an attempt to win the ball that he has absolutely no chance of pulling off and trashes Vardy. It’s a clear and obvious yellow card but Andre Marriner can’t be arsed to book Bednarek and so all the little kids in the family stand get to watch Jamie Vardy smashing the 9th goal to complete his hat-trick and then give it the big one to supporters. Can’t really blame him. I was pleased he scored because I’ve got him in my fantasy team. That’s how bad it was today, I found myself thinking about my fantasy football team by way of consolation and my desperate search for a positive.
Nine fucking nil at home. Nine fucking nil.
Leicester are out on the pitch for a good three minutes waiting for our shambles to emerge. Could it be that no one wants to actually play the second half and we are going to concede and fuck off home? Oh shit, here we come, well eight of us anyway and there are two subs on the line waiting to come on. Jack Stephens, just the player you want when you are looking to shore things up, is coming on and so is Kevin Danso who Ralph clearly doesn’t rate. The lucky two are Danny Ings and Vestergaard who have been taken off for different reasons I assume. For Ings it will be because he is our best player and there is absolutely no point in flogging him today running around chasing lost causes. For Vestergaard it will be because he is fucking embarrassing and maybe because there is a light bulb that needs changing in one of the high ceilings in one of the changing rooms and they couldn’t find a fucking ladder. From the positions the players stand in before kick-off, it becomes apparent that the two central defenders who have come on are our new full backs with Stephens on the right and Danso on the left. Hojbjerg is on the left of midfield with Valery on the right and Redmond is given the thankless task of running round in the middle of a Rondo training drill for the next 45 minutes. There were some other changes at half-time in that about 10,000 fans went for a piss at half-time and kept on walking.
For about 15 minutes we are relatively solid but then Leicester decide that there may be some records to be made so they start attacking again. Barnes chips one in from the Leicester left and I have no idea where Bednarek is but Yoshida has two men and he picks up neither of them. Danso does absolutely nothing and Pérez runs off the back of Yoshida, takes the ball down, changes his boots, changes his shirt, put it on inside out by accident and still has time to put it on the right way and smash the ball past Gunn for number six.
Super Jack Stephens is now right back and of course, Ben Chilwell is absolutely taking the piss. Stop the cross stop the cross, okay, don’t even fucking bother to try and over comes a cross from Chilwell, Yoshida completely misses it and Jamie Vardy is all alone in front of goal about 6 yards out. He doesn’t miss many of those and he doesn’t miss this one. Seven fucking nil.
I think that it’s at this point that Stuart Armstrong gets told to warm up and come on to replace Valery. As a substitute, in the pissing rain, I would not have been terribly happy about being asked to come home at 7-0 down. On comes Armstrong and dribbles past a player, therefore instantly having done more than JWP has done.
We do manage to equal the record as Leicester win a free-kick on the edge of the box and James Maddison flips it over an absolute shambles of a defensive wall which Gunn is standing behind and into the net for number eight. I believe we lost 8-0 to Everton in the early 70s So I feel somewhat privileged to be in attendance for history being equalled.
Can we beat it though as we reach the 90th minute… of course we fucking can. There’s still time for more as yet another ball dissects the defence and Vardy is through and Bednarek makes an attempt to win the ball that he has absolutely no chance of pulling off and trashes Vardy. It’s a clear and obvious yellow card but Andre Marriner can’t be arsed to book Bednarek and so all the little kids in the family stand get to watch Jamie Vardy smashing the 9th goal to complete his hat-trick and then give it the big one to supporters. Can’t really blame him. I was pleased he scored because I’ve got him in my fantasy team. That’s how bad it was today, I found myself thinking about my fantasy football team by way of consolation and my desperate search for a positive.
Nine fucking nil at home. Nine fucking nil.
So, how am I feeling right now? Well from about 4-0 onwards I was just finding it funny. It’s not funny of course bearing in mind all the money that people shell out to come and watch but it was funny in that it was so abysmally shit. I will be laughing my head off it was anyone else but it was us. We were shit. We went to shit, we were gutless, hopeless, rudderless. We were an embarrassment, we were a disgrace. Those players were a disgrace to the fans, the club, the city and to themselves. Useless fucking wankers.
The spotlight will ultimately fall on Ralph as the manager and he should cop some heat, obviously – but solely blaming him is ridiculous. In my opinion, we are lucky to have him. He’s managed a far higher level than we will ever get to and sure, he has made some strange decisions, including today but I’m not remotely surprised given the absolute shower of shit he has to work with. These are basically the same set of players that the last four managers have had and no one has been able to get a tune out of them for anything like a sustained period of time. Basically, the vast majority of them are third rate and are simply not good enough.
A manager can be tactically perfect and can get his team selection spot on in the eyes of a vast majority of people and the players can be as well prepared physically and as well-prepared about the opposition as they can possibly be. Once you step over that white line, it comes down to what’s in your heart and if you haven’t got it in you to run for 90 minutes to support your team mates and play for the badge and the supporters then there really is absolutely no hope and there is nothing any manager can do.
Ralph's Getting Good At His "What the Actual Fuck?" Face
Today, Ralph’s major fuck up was in the aftermath of the first goal and the red card. At that point you have to go 4-4-1 and just try and keep it tight until half-time so what we should’ve done was moved Yoshida to left back and tried to get to half-time without too much damage and stayed in the game. In the event, within five minutes we were 3-0 down and completely fucked because he tried to keep five at the back for some reason and we had JWP slotting in at left back which basically meant we surrendered midfield and even though they only one striker to mark, our three central defenders just didn’t defend. After that we basically gave up for the rest of the first half.
Post substitutions at half time we had a 10 minute spell where
we looked relatively solid when the 6th goal went in we gave up
again. Utterly fucking gutless. What summed it up for me on tap for me was the
8th goal which was Maddison’s free-kick from the edge of the box. Free kicks
from right on the edge of the box actually quite difficult to score but the way
we lined up the wall and the way Gunn stood behind it made it an absolute formality
that Maddison was going to score. Our wall looked like it couldn’t be less
interested and despite the fact there were about five players in it, it looked
really really small. Weird.
The way a manager should be judged is if he gets the most out of the resources at his disposal. This is where, in my opinion, Ralph has to wake up and smell the coffee about a few of these players. Angus Gunn is shot to shit and he should have come out of the team weeks ago. I am tired of saying that McCarthy is our best goalkeeper and it gets proven with virtually every passing game. Vestergaard is shit. I’m beginning to think he is actually worse than Wesley Hoedt. This is not much of an achievement but at least Wesley would smash into a tackle occasionally and remind strikers that he was about. Strikers only notice Vestergaard if they accidentally run into the big bollocks. Yoshida will have one good game in five and if he is starting regularly then you have absolutely no chance. He is supposed to be the calm head and the organiser back there. Fucks sake. The only two centre backs we have who haven’t proved themselves to be not good enough yet are Bednarek and Danso but Bednarek is getting worse and Ralph clearly doesn’t rate Danso.
The way a manager should be judged is if he gets the most out of the resources at his disposal. This is where, in my opinion, Ralph has to wake up and smell the coffee about a few of these players. Angus Gunn is shot to shit and he should have come out of the team weeks ago. I am tired of saying that McCarthy is our best goalkeeper and it gets proven with virtually every passing game. Vestergaard is shit. I’m beginning to think he is actually worse than Wesley Hoedt. This is not much of an achievement but at least Wesley would smash into a tackle occasionally and remind strikers that he was about. Strikers only notice Vestergaard if they accidentally run into the big bollocks. Yoshida will have one good game in five and if he is starting regularly then you have absolutely no chance. He is supposed to be the calm head and the organiser back there. Fucks sake. The only two centre backs we have who haven’t proved themselves to be not good enough yet are Bednarek and Danso but Bednarek is getting worse and Ralph clearly doesn’t rate Danso.
Vestergaard Action Figure
The three players in midfield are so similar in terms of pace and passing ability that all three of them in there is never going to work. None out of Hojbjerg, Romeu and JWP are bad players but all three of them on the pitch at the same time just doesn’t work. This area really needs to be freshened up with either giving Stuart Armstrong are run in the team so we at least have a midfielder who might get forward and support the attack or bringing Callum Slattery into the first team squad. Neither of those could make the situation worse but I’m not for one second suggesting that bringing either of those two in will be significantly better.
As I said though, the bottom line is I don’t think it matters who the manager is as the squad is shit. We still have Shane Long on the bench and today we got treated to Jack Stephens coming on to try and shore things up. Fucking hell. We have one left back because someone at board level throught we’d be better off with some money, rather than having a reserve left back and the first choice is suspended for the next three games now.
I’m not gonna waste any more time talking about those gutless sacks of shit but I did spend a bit of time during the game looking round the Family Stand at the next generation of Southampton supporters. I saw one small kid crying as the second-half went on and his dad decided it about 6-0 that he would spare him any more. There was one woman I could see with two kids sat either side of her and his two kids were just throwing sweets at each other having completely lost interest in the shambles in front of them. The bloke and his wife who sit directly in front of me who usually stay right to the very end, decided that they had had enough on about the hour mark and got up and left. He almost apologised as he went saying “there’s only so much I can take”.
On the other side of the coin, there was more vocal support in St Mary’s than there has been for some time. Why do we need adversity to bring out the best in people at times? The noise around the ground and the black humour was great because it showed the gutless sacks of shit on the pitch that we still fucking care. You’ve humiliated us and we’ve had to resort to taking the piss out of ourselves but we still fucking care. The fans that stayed to the end but the players could barely look them in the eye at the final whistle showed the players that we still fucking care and in some way, everyone that fucked off show that we still fucking care as well. For the second home game in a row, I can’t get angry about people who left early. I love it that those useless cunts saw a half empty stadium and those that we left were taking the piss out of them. If that doesn’t hit home I don’t know what will.
It was tough but we stayed to the end to the end. We stayed to the end to beat the traffic and then I walked home across the Itchen Bridge and got fucking soaked a second time. My dad once again repeated that this is probably going to be his last season as a season ticket holder. This time I genuinely believe him.
I’m looking forward to an email from the Saints marketing team asking me if I enjoyed my match day experience. Now would not be a good time to receive an email about artisan burgers and/or corporate fine dining.
Next up, Manchester City – we’re coming for you!
Up the fucking Saints.
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