Bertrand Moves in and Makes Sure He Kicks the Hairband Kid
Norwich at home and another game that we really need to win
against the team who are near us now and who will be near us at the end of the
season near the bottom of the table. To be honest, I expected Norwich to become
adrift by now on about two points but they have done pretty well this season
and got some remarkable results including a ridiculous 3--2 home win against
Manchester City. The reason they have done pretty well this season is in the
main down to having a goal scorer in the Finn, Teemu Pukki who, like Danny Ings
with ourselves, has scored the goals to keep their heads just about above
water. Todd Cantwell in midfield is another one that we are going to have to
watch today as he has shown a real talent for breaking forward and arriving in
the box at the right times. Other notable players include Tim Krul in goal who
has always been one of the more reliable Premier League goalkeepers. The manager is Daniel Farke who has a name
which is a headline writers dream. He
was by all accounts, going to be sacked halfway through last season but
survived and ended up winning the Championship.
This demands respect in the same way that his hairstyle doesn’t.
I’m not expecting too many team changes – the obvious one is
Long in for Obafemi. Boufal is only fit for
the bench which doesn’t contain Yan Valery so we’re going to have to put up
with Tight-Shirted No Socks Boyband Wannabe Bollocks at right back with Norwich
doing all their attacking down that side.
Norwich are playing in a dark grey kit and they’re not the only ones who
do this but I’m going to bring it up today… why do teams change colours from
their home kit, which will be in their traditional colours, when there is no
need to do so and especially, when it is more of a colour clash than the home
kit?
We make a decent start and almost immediately look by far
the more energetic side. Norwich remind me very much of what we were like
against Everton in the first half and that they were incredibly passive and
just let us play. We had obviously marked out Cantwell as one to watch because
every time he got the ball he got completely hammered, usually with someone
leaving a bit of afters on him. Ryan Bertrand was in his best shithousing mode,
with lots of little nudges and throwing the ball away and all that sort of
stuff but not enough to get himself booked. Cantwell was losing his rag from
the first couple of minutes which was actually quite funny to see a grown man
in an alice band throwing his arms around.
Cantwell is clearly still wound up after a clattering JWP challenge and decides to try wrestling with the same player when JWP receives a throw-in from Bertrand giving us a free kick about 10 yards from the by line, out on the left hand side. It’s too far out the JWP to shoot but he does the next best thing and curls across into the middle where who else, Danny Ings gets in between two players to flick a header past Krul into the net for his ninth goal in 10 matches.
We stay on the front foot and carry on creating chances which is definitely the way to go in this game. Djenepo comes in off the right wing and has a swing with the left foot which I didn’t know he possessed which flies about a foot over the bar. Ings then passes at the chance to play Djenepo in and sees his own shot deflected for a corner. JWP swings over the corner, flicked on by Shane Long and there is Ryan Bertrand 5 yards out and all he has to do is make a connection which he duly does to put us 2–0 up. This all seems ridiculously easy at the moment.
There’s yet more attacking play looking for a third as Redmond goes on a run and beats a few players and only stops when he gets tackled as usual. Another corner is knocked in by JWP and it comes back out to him and JWP does something that I’ve never actually seen him do before and takes on a defender for pace and wins another corner which is eventually cleared as far as Hojbjerg who absolutely drills in the shot which Krul has to spectacularly tip over the bar.
Half time and we’ve been excellent and I can’t believe how about bad Norwich have been. We really have got to be winning this from this position but there is no way that Norwich are going to be as bad in the second half so we have to be a little bit careful.
Sure enough, within 30 seconds of the restart, Norwich have put together a piece of play which was better than anything they managed in the first 45 minutes and ends with Pukki blasting it a shot that McCarthy comfortably shovels over the bar. It’s a warning and maybe a sign that today is not going to be the day that we have a nice comfortable win and no one is stressed. Some chance of that ever happening. The next goal is certainly going to be key.
And we should have a chance to get that third goal but Kevin Friend is a fucking useless cock. A ball is played up to Shane long and he’s about two yards inside the Norwich penalty area and Godfrey the centre back, puts two hands in the middle of his back and shoves him over. Friend is about 5 yards away in looking straight at it and the linesman would’ve had a clear view from the left back position but nothing gets given and it doesn’t go to VAR. It’s fucking ridiculous. Clear penalty not given. VAR is supposed to eliminate the ‘howler’ yet here we are.
We have another go on a long ball out of defence by Bednarek is brought down by Redmond and eventually pops up to Ings who controls, swivels and shoots magnificently in one movement and sees the ball fly a foot wide of the far post.
So after this near miss and the display of Kevin Friend’s complete incompetence - guess what happens? The ball gets slotted straight through the Cedric And Stephens Corridor of Uncertainty and Pukki runs on and smashes it past McCarthy. Defensively this goal is fucking awful because Cedric is too wide, Stephens is in no mans land and Bednarek is too deep playing everybody on side. Here we go, just one goal in front in a game where we should be out of sight.
Saints are still attacking now and Cedric tries to make up for his part in the goal by latching onto Ings square pass about 20 yards out and letting fly but Krul saves relatively comfortably. Cedric’s responds by planning another photo shoot with an ultra tight shirt and no socks.
The rest of the game played out in relative comfort for us as Norwich have the majority of possession but don’t create anything. Ralph empties the bench and it’s quite unlike what he’s done the last few weeks and that he has gone defensive with firstly Romeu coming on for Djenepo, then Adams for the clearly knackered Ings before we go to the five at the back for the last few minutes with Yoshida coming on For Shane long.
There are no real alarms until the 93rd minute when Cedric, yes, Euro 2016 winning full-back, has the ball on the right hand side of the pitch and all he had to do was keep it there and maybe run into a corner but instead of that, with zero composure it is battered across the pitch to where Saints have absolutely no players and so will give the ball away again. Norwich attack and it comes down our right hand side with Fernandez so now Cedric has to defend and he just falls on his arse, allows a free cross which is half cleared as far as Byram, who mercifully can’t keep a shot on target and fires it over the bar.
Cantwell is clearly still wound up after a clattering JWP challenge and decides to try wrestling with the same player when JWP receives a throw-in from Bertrand giving us a free kick about 10 yards from the by line, out on the left hand side. It’s too far out the JWP to shoot but he does the next best thing and curls across into the middle where who else, Danny Ings gets in between two players to flick a header past Krul into the net for his ninth goal in 10 matches.
We stay on the front foot and carry on creating chances which is definitely the way to go in this game. Djenepo comes in off the right wing and has a swing with the left foot which I didn’t know he possessed which flies about a foot over the bar. Ings then passes at the chance to play Djenepo in and sees his own shot deflected for a corner. JWP swings over the corner, flicked on by Shane Long and there is Ryan Bertrand 5 yards out and all he has to do is make a connection which he duly does to put us 2–0 up. This all seems ridiculously easy at the moment.
There’s yet more attacking play looking for a third as Redmond goes on a run and beats a few players and only stops when he gets tackled as usual. Another corner is knocked in by JWP and it comes back out to him and JWP does something that I’ve never actually seen him do before and takes on a defender for pace and wins another corner which is eventually cleared as far as Hojbjerg who absolutely drills in the shot which Krul has to spectacularly tip over the bar.
Half time and we’ve been excellent and I can’t believe how about bad Norwich have been. We really have got to be winning this from this position but there is no way that Norwich are going to be as bad in the second half so we have to be a little bit careful.
Sure enough, within 30 seconds of the restart, Norwich have put together a piece of play which was better than anything they managed in the first 45 minutes and ends with Pukki blasting it a shot that McCarthy comfortably shovels over the bar. It’s a warning and maybe a sign that today is not going to be the day that we have a nice comfortable win and no one is stressed. Some chance of that ever happening. The next goal is certainly going to be key.
And we should have a chance to get that third goal but Kevin Friend is a fucking useless cock. A ball is played up to Shane long and he’s about two yards inside the Norwich penalty area and Godfrey the centre back, puts two hands in the middle of his back and shoves him over. Friend is about 5 yards away in looking straight at it and the linesman would’ve had a clear view from the left back position but nothing gets given and it doesn’t go to VAR. It’s fucking ridiculous. Clear penalty not given. VAR is supposed to eliminate the ‘howler’ yet here we are.
We have another go on a long ball out of defence by Bednarek is brought down by Redmond and eventually pops up to Ings who controls, swivels and shoots magnificently in one movement and sees the ball fly a foot wide of the far post.
So after this near miss and the display of Kevin Friend’s complete incompetence - guess what happens? The ball gets slotted straight through the Cedric And Stephens Corridor of Uncertainty and Pukki runs on and smashes it past McCarthy. Defensively this goal is fucking awful because Cedric is too wide, Stephens is in no mans land and Bednarek is too deep playing everybody on side. Here we go, just one goal in front in a game where we should be out of sight.
Saints are still attacking now and Cedric tries to make up for his part in the goal by latching onto Ings square pass about 20 yards out and letting fly but Krul saves relatively comfortably. Cedric’s responds by planning another photo shoot with an ultra tight shirt and no socks.
The rest of the game played out in relative comfort for us as Norwich have the majority of possession but don’t create anything. Ralph empties the bench and it’s quite unlike what he’s done the last few weeks and that he has gone defensive with firstly Romeu coming on for Djenepo, then Adams for the clearly knackered Ings before we go to the five at the back for the last few minutes with Yoshida coming on For Shane long.
There are no real alarms until the 93rd minute when Cedric, yes, Euro 2016 winning full-back, has the ball on the right hand side of the pitch and all he had to do was keep it there and maybe run into a corner but instead of that, with zero composure it is battered across the pitch to where Saints have absolutely no players and so will give the ball away again. Norwich attack and it comes down our right hand side with Fernandez so now Cedric has to defend and he just falls on his arse, allows a free cross which is half cleared as far as Byram, who mercifully can’t keep a shot on target and fires it over the bar.
And again. Two wins in five days at St Mary‘s. What sorcery
is this?. We made ridiculously hard work for winning this game against what was
a diabolical Norwich side. Their first half was as bad as our first half
against Everton and that really is saying something. The old saying of goals
change games was never more true than in this game. At 2-0 we were cruising and
Danny Ings had that shot that just went wide of the post and we had the push on
Long. 3-0 and the game is completely
dead but Norwich score and suddenly it becomes a very very different prospect.
"Not a Penalty" - according to Kevin Friend
Saints were actually pretty streetwise throughout I thought and look like they had a measure of Norwich. They clearly identified Cantwell as a target and he got kicked a few times which is what you deserve if you play the game in an alice band. He didn’t react well either, giving away the free-kick for our first goal and generally allowing himself to be distracted. Norwich Manager Daniel Farke said afterwards that he thought Norwich deserved a point from the game. Bullshit. They literally only played for about 15 minutes and how many saves did McCarthy have to make after Pukki’s goal? Answer, none.
All the combinations seem to work for Saints today. Ings and Long were a complete handful upfront and JWP and Hojbjerg ruled the midfield until the last 10 minutes when Hojbjerg was clearly blowing out of his arse. Playing this formation, the central midfield to have to work ridiculously hard and that’s why it was no surprised to me when Ralph brought Romeu on for the last 10 minutes to try and shore things up. It was another good game for Stephens and Bednarek in central defence, keeping Pukki down to just one chance which of course, he stuck in the net.
The weakness for us was on the right hand side of the
defence and no surprise there. If Cedric had 10 choices and only one of them
was a bad one then he would pick that one, every fucking time. The guy could
fall in a bucket full of tits and come up sucking his thumb…. by choice. The
absolute classic was in the last minute when we were holding on to what we had
and he had the ball on the right hand side and he just aimlessly blasted it
over the other side of the pitch where we didn’t have a single player. Bizarre
to say the least. Then he compounded that by ending up on his arse in Norwich’s
next attack. The goal of course came down that side as Norwich exploited the
famous Cedric and Stephens corridor of uncertainty. I have no real issue with
Jack though as he hasn’t released a newspaper article telling everybody how
good he is.
Djenepo and Redmond both showed flashes of good play but Redmond in particular was frustrating, carrying on his recent trend of dribbling until he loses the ball and never releasing it at the right time..
It wouldn’t be Saints if everything was perfect but today, the end justifies the means. Ralph bucked his recent trend of making very attacking substitutions and tried to shore things up today and although I wasn’t sure of the time, it got the job done and also, we managed to win the game without Boufal having to play and aggravate is injury which will hopefully be better but the Newcastle game at the weekend which will be a lot harder than this one.
As an added bonus, Everton losing predictably at Anfield means that we are actually out of the bottom three and dare I say it, you can look upwards and there are a number of teams coming into range now including a couple who are in very poor form like Bournemouth. If we carry on picking up points over the next few games then you never know, they may be a bit of daylight between us and the line.
So we won two games in a row but we can’t get too carried away because the two teams that we have beaten are, as evidenced by the league table, crap. It will be interesting from that point of you to see how we get on against Newcastle on Sunday because they are a step up from Watford and Norwich. The good news is that we go into this game with confidence so bring it on.
Djenepo and Redmond both showed flashes of good play but Redmond in particular was frustrating, carrying on his recent trend of dribbling until he loses the ball and never releasing it at the right time..
It wouldn’t be Saints if everything was perfect but today, the end justifies the means. Ralph bucked his recent trend of making very attacking substitutions and tried to shore things up today and although I wasn’t sure of the time, it got the job done and also, we managed to win the game without Boufal having to play and aggravate is injury which will hopefully be better but the Newcastle game at the weekend which will be a lot harder than this one.
As an added bonus, Everton losing predictably at Anfield means that we are actually out of the bottom three and dare I say it, you can look upwards and there are a number of teams coming into range now including a couple who are in very poor form like Bournemouth. If we carry on picking up points over the next few games then you never know, they may be a bit of daylight between us and the line.
So we won two games in a row but we can’t get too carried away because the two teams that we have beaten are, as evidenced by the league table, crap. It will be interesting from that point of you to see how we get on against Newcastle on Sunday because they are a step up from Watford and Norwich. The good news is that we go into this game with confidence so bring it on.
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