Fucks Sake
To the Dildo Bowl at the expense of the Great British
taxpayer. Yes it’s time for another trip to East London and the London Stadium,
built on the ashes of Bobby Moore, Trevor Brooking, Billy Bonds and West Ham
United as was. A club completely
sacrificed at the altar of corporate greed. It was a good con though, carried
out by Gold, Sullivan and Brady - convince the fan base for the club will be
going up a level, to Champions League level and then, once the virtually free
ground was secured, sell off the Boleyn Ground and carry on as normal with no
discernible plan. They had a manager at the start of the season who had
operated at that higher level in Manuel Pellegrini but because, I assume, he wasn’t challenging at the top end of the
league they got rid of him and replaced him with David fucking Moyes and shock
of shocks, they are now in the relegation zone. With the squad that they’ve got
it is hard to imagine them actually getting relegated but stranger things have
happened. There is just something distinctly unpleasant about West Ham and it’s
nothing to do with how the owners made their money. The whole move to the
London Stadium sums up a lot of what is wrong with modern football. The stadium
is fucking crap for watching football but it looks good from the outside and
that says it all really, it’s all about style over substance.
Whilst we’re on the subject of modern football, I see the Premier League have spent this week addressing the key issues in the game, namely VAR and incompetent referees. Oh no they haven’t, they have announced the much more important fact that they are introducing a Hall of Fame for past Premier League players and managers. More Americanised bollocks that no one needs. It will generate a lot of discussion and a lot of comment pieces in the press and heated debates on Twitter between a load of people who probably know fuck all about anything. I am firmly of the opinion that any individual award in what is a team sport is completely shallow and pretty meaningless. And you just know that the whole Hall of Fame thing will be about 1992 onwards as the airbrushing from history of everything before that gathers pace. I nominate Roy Keane so he can say it's all a load of shite.
West Ham always seem to roll us over recently, mainly using the physicality of players like Rice, Antonio, Ogbonna and Diop. They’ve outrun us and outfought us and generally been more athletic around the park than we have been and our last two performances at the Dildo Bowl have been excruciatingly bad. Players like Mario Lemina and Wesley Hoedt have shown their true colours here and been absolutely dreadful. Bearing in mind that we have an effective way of playing away games now, this should be a decent chance for us to give them a better game than we have done recently and maybe even come away with three points. Let’s face it, the toxicity of the situation is never far beneath the surface here, so a good start with an early goal could really put the cat about the pigeons here. However, we have to deal with the long ball bombardment that will no doubt come our way. Today’s referee has been announced and it’s Mark Noble, same as the last seven fixtures against West Ham.
West Ham are coming into this game after a creditable performance at Anfield when they lost 3-2, courtesy of a horrific mistake by the usually reliable Lukas Fabianski. Hopefully their eventual defeat took some of the wind out of their sales but this is one game where for once, the result is a far more important to the opposition than it is to us. I can’t imagine that when West Ham had the Champions League aspirations at the start of the season, they ever considered that at any point of the season they’d be 10 points behind Southampton.
Look at that Squad that Lawrie Built
A bit of news from Saints was that Lawrie McMenemy has been made a Club Ambassador. I have to admit that I thought he already was but either way, it's richly deserved. He was the manager when I first became interested in football and he gave us the greatest day in our history, followed by promotion to Division 1 and regularly being right up near the top of the table, finishing 2nd one year. He's a great man as far as I'm concerned and so any honour given to him is richly deserved. So from one story from when football was great, we now move to the present day and the news that Pierre Hojbjerg has announced he has a new agent in 'super' agent Pini Zahavi. Zahavi is one of those agents you've heard of, which means he's not to be trusted along with the Mino Raiola's and Kia Joorabchian's of this world. To me this only means one thing and that's that we'll be looking to replace the skipper in the summer. This fills me with dread, not because he's irreplaceable but because we have yet to prove that we're not still monumentally shit at replacing first team players, given Gao's financial straitjacket and the ZX Spectrum engine in the black box.
It looks like KWP will be fit for us today which should allow JWP to be
deployed in his correct position. Moussa Djenepo though may miss the game
because of the very sad passing of his mother but if he does miss the game, Boufal
was on the bench last week so will hopefully be fit enough to play. Then the reality…. Ralph has got me some scratching my head with the line-up. I’m not altogether
surprised the JWP is at right back with KWP coming back from injury and Valery
clearly not trusted but I am amazed that Smallbone is in the centre of midfield
instead of Romeu. Another issue is that Ings is only on the bench and his place
goes to Michael Obafemi as it turns out that Danny has only trained once this
week as he’s had a small niggle. West Ham have lined up with both Antonio and
Haller in the side so you know it’s going to be two up front and long ball from
the off.
As the players come out I noticed they have they crushingly embarrassing “The Academy of Football“ slogan emblazoned on the fucking massive carpet they have around the pitch on the 400 metre track and the water jump for the steeplechase. I’m glad that we don’t have “The Southampton Way“ written anywhere at St Mary‘s… well I hope we fucking don’t anyway. How can you call yourself The Academy of Football when your Manager is David Moyes and your game plan is going to be to bang it up the pitch to the big guys.
We start the game reasonably well with a little bit of possession and Armstrong goes up for a header and gets a forearm smash/elbow in the back of the head from Aaron Cresswell. Fucks sake, that’s got to be a yellow card at least but we just seem to stroll around accepting it and the referee does nothing about it and all we get is a free-kick.
Nothing much happens for 10 minutes or so but then West Ham attack and it’s a long diagonal ball from right to left which JWP deals with and knocks it to McCarthy who gives it back to him. I don’t know if JWP is trying to clear the ball or drop it into the feet of a midfielder but either way, it’s shit and he just gives it to Declan Rice. On it goes to Fornals and he plays a simple pass into the penalty area where Bowen has come in untracked from the right wing and he slots it past McCarthy with ease as Bednarek stands there with his mouth open, seemingly surprised that anyone has made a run. Fucks sake. What an utterly preventable goal and 1-0 down.
It’s not looking good as you can already see that we have no way of dealing with Antonio as he burst past a lightweight Smallbone challenge and then outpaces JWP down the left wing before crossing and Haller shows why he’s been somewhat disappointing for the £40 million that West Ham paid for him and heads it straight at McCarthy.
Its looking like a long afternoon and then Bertrand chips a ball down the left wing to Long who surprisingly controls it and feeds inside to Hojbjerg and we have a promising looking break as Armstrong carries forward and finds JWP on the right. His cutback finds Obafemi on the penalty spot and he, maybe by accident or maybe by design, lofts it over Fabianski and into the roof of the net.. Either way, it’s a brilliant team goal and stick that in your Academy of football. 1-1.
West Ham really should go back in front pretty soon afterwards as they win a corner in Cresswell’s delivery from the right is met by Diop with a free header from about 5 yards but it’s skimmed off his head and goes wide. It was going wide anyway but the ref didn’t spot it hit JWP on the way out so we got lucky in not having to face another corner with all of West Ham is 6 foot 4 giants piling in on the goal.
Long ball, headed away by Stephens and then another long ball which is not dealt with by Bednarek and it drops down to Antonio on the left hand side of the penalty area and he hooks and across, high and handsome. It looks harmless enough but McCarthy, for reasons only known to himself, doesn’t get off the fucking ground and actually gets out jumped by Haller who then manages to force into the net from an narrow angle. Fuck me, another absolutely shit goal.
Half time And I’m not confident of getting back into this. We just don’t look ready for the battle today.
We start the second half really well and pin West Ham back with Bertrand getting down the left and whipping in a superb crossing between the goalkeeper in the defenders but Shane Long shows all the strikers instincts he hasn’t got to not get on the end of it. The ball gets returned into the penalty area by Hojbjerg and Obafemi misses the ball when unmarked. Bertrand tried again after picked it up and it flies across the face of the goal again without any of our strikers being anywhere near it and the fourth cross of the move is easily caught by Fabianski. I’m just feeling that in a relatively open game like this one, there is no way that we are going to outscore the opposition.
Like Burnley did a few weeks ago, West Ham are literally just creaming the ball up the middle towards their strikers and whether we head it all they head it, they are picking up all the balls in midfield in that large Romeu shaped hole in between our midfield and defence. Fornals is the latest recipient of the benefits of this manoeuvre and wastes an opening from the left hand side by drilling it straight at the goalkeeper.
Just before the hour mark, we make our first change with Danny Ings coming on for Boufal who to be fair, has been pretty hopeless. Whilst we’re wondering who’s gonna go out the left wing, it’s another long ball creamed down the middle towards Haller and the ball drops to Fornals who chips over the flat-footed Bednarek and Antonio is clean through and from the penalty spot makes no mistakes whatsoever. That is absolute fucking gash from us. Hopeless.
We respond with some pretty football that doesn’t go anywhere and when that breaks down one pass along the ground to Haller in the centre circle and he pulls out a ridiculous rabona flick to put Antonio clean through and this time, McCarthy stands up well to deflect it wide and stop us going 4-1 down.
Shane Long bursts away down the right hand side and Cresswell pulls out some sort of hybrid rugby/MMA tackle to get the booking to add to the yellow/red that he should’ve got after 30 seconds. In comes the free kick from JWP and it breaks to Bertrand whose shot is on target, only our second one but Fabianski saves it easily.
Ralph makes a change with Vestergaard coming on in place of Obafemi and we go to 3 at the back and surprise surprise, we start winning headers at the back. Romeu eventually comes on for Smallbone with about 10 minutes to go and we now have a team on the pitch to deal with the opposition that we are playing. A bit too fucking late really. Full time and what a load of shit.
Well that was fucking predictable crap. West Ham basically played the same tactics as they played at St Mary’s and we responded by playing exactly the same way as we did at St Mary’s by making it so incredibly fucking easy for them to do what they wanted.
So, bearing in mind that West Ham employed exactly the same tactics as they had at St Mary‘s, it was always going to be a physical battle and there is no getting away from this, Ralph fucked up. Smallbone was always going to get found wanting defensively against this West Ham midfield and so it proved. He was once again, neat and tidy on the ball and one of our best players in possession but out of possession he may as well not have been there. He was better than Hojbjerg though, who made his new agents job very difficult today. If JWP was forced to play right back then if ever there was a day for Romeu to play then it was today. But whilst Ralph can be blamed for not putting JWP or Romeu in midfield, he can’t be blamed for the central defenders who were absolutely dreadful. Surely KWP and Valery could have managed the game between them. Start one and bring the other one on?
Ralph’s in play substitutions weren’t too bad in my opinion. Boufal had to come off because he was pretty useless and the switch to 3 central defenders possibly provided the blueprint of how we should play against teams like West Ham and Burnley. As soon as Vestergaard came on, we started winning some aerial challenges which Stephens and Bednarek did not do all game up until that point. It also gave us a spare man if we didn’t win the initial challenge. I do think that Ralph left it too late though. There should’ve been a change made at half-time because West Ham were finding it so easy to break through us and we were continually playing right into their hands.
All three goals that we conceded are appalling and even Ralph described it as an absolute joke. The first goal stems with us having the ball in the right back spot and JWP not getting any distance on a clearance. Bednarek is then caught ball watching as Bowen nips in front of him to score. For the second goal, someone has clearly dug two big holes in the penalty area and put the dirt back in on top of Alex McCarthy‘s feet because he just didn’t get off the ground and it’s an embarrassing goal for a goalkeeper to concede, especially one who is 6 foot 4. The third goal is an under 12’s goal. Long ball, we don’t win the header, chipped ball over the last defender, more ball watching from Bednarek, goal. Easy and pathetic in equal measure.
Tactically today, Ralph was done by David fucking Moyes – who admitted that he got today’s tactics from what the players said about the St.Mary’s game. Defend deep, hit it long and compete with the Southampton central defenders, pick up the 2nd balls. Must’ve taken him all week to dream that up. Not exactly rocket science but we had no answer - again. In Ralph’s defence, he said he knew how West Ham were going to play and we prepared or wait for it but the players didn’t execute whatever was practiced.
Up front we were pretty clueless with Shane Long having one of those games where you despair at the fact that he is in our first choice starting at 11. We had loads of possession and only mustered two shots on target which kind of tells you all you need to know. Yet again, we have one way of playing and if a team doesn’t give us space then we are really going to struggle.
We were lightweight today and once it went 3-1 we never remotely look like getting back into it even though there was half an hour to go. A disappointing performance all round from the team selection to the final whistle. We just didn’t look up for it as much as West Ham did.
The warning signs were there for me from the first minute when Cresswell deliberately threw his elbow into the back of Armstrong‘s head. Why the fuck are we not all round the referee trying to get the West Ham player sent off. I’ve seen a player sent off for that challenge before so why not stop being so fucking nice about everything and make the referee make a decision. Maybe he goes and checks the challenge on the pitch side monitor, or maybe he actually asks the VAR fuckwit room if there is any serious foul play. Likewise on the second goal, where you can at least look annoyed and try and plant a seed of doubt in the referees mind that McCarthy might of been fouled. I mean, he wasn’t but you could at least make the referee think that there might have been an issue and you never know, the way things are this season, that might actually get disallowed. Instead of that though we just do fuck all and go back to the centre circle to kick off again.
It was a real nothing performance from us today and we deserve to lose. It seems that we went there expecting to lose and we created a scenario where the only result was that we were going to lose. Quite frankly, it was bollocks. I have no complaints about the referee or VAR or the way West Ham played. They played exactly how we suspected they were going to play. The are seriously in a relegation battle and sod pretty football, they need the points. I have complaints about Southampton though because we were fucking awful. Ralph is in danger of overthinking things again as there was no question that the ghost of George Burley had appeared again today with two right backs on the bench and our best midfielder playing at right back. Pick a right back to play at right back, even if they can only play half a game each and go from there.
Next time we have another limited, physical team in Newcastle visiting St Mary’s. If you think that they’re going to be open and leave us with lots of space then you are mad. A bit like Sebastian Haller, they haven’t scored a goal for months so they will certainly be looking forward to playing us.
As the players come out I noticed they have they crushingly embarrassing “The Academy of Football“ slogan emblazoned on the fucking massive carpet they have around the pitch on the 400 metre track and the water jump for the steeplechase. I’m glad that we don’t have “The Southampton Way“ written anywhere at St Mary‘s… well I hope we fucking don’t anyway. How can you call yourself The Academy of Football when your Manager is David Moyes and your game plan is going to be to bang it up the pitch to the big guys.
We start the game reasonably well with a little bit of possession and Armstrong goes up for a header and gets a forearm smash/elbow in the back of the head from Aaron Cresswell. Fucks sake, that’s got to be a yellow card at least but we just seem to stroll around accepting it and the referee does nothing about it and all we get is a free-kick.
Nothing much happens for 10 minutes or so but then West Ham attack and it’s a long diagonal ball from right to left which JWP deals with and knocks it to McCarthy who gives it back to him. I don’t know if JWP is trying to clear the ball or drop it into the feet of a midfielder but either way, it’s shit and he just gives it to Declan Rice. On it goes to Fornals and he plays a simple pass into the penalty area where Bowen has come in untracked from the right wing and he slots it past McCarthy with ease as Bednarek stands there with his mouth open, seemingly surprised that anyone has made a run. Fucks sake. What an utterly preventable goal and 1-0 down.
It’s not looking good as you can already see that we have no way of dealing with Antonio as he burst past a lightweight Smallbone challenge and then outpaces JWP down the left wing before crossing and Haller shows why he’s been somewhat disappointing for the £40 million that West Ham paid for him and heads it straight at McCarthy.
Its looking like a long afternoon and then Bertrand chips a ball down the left wing to Long who surprisingly controls it and feeds inside to Hojbjerg and we have a promising looking break as Armstrong carries forward and finds JWP on the right. His cutback finds Obafemi on the penalty spot and he, maybe by accident or maybe by design, lofts it over Fabianski and into the roof of the net.. Either way, it’s a brilliant team goal and stick that in your Academy of football. 1-1.
West Ham really should go back in front pretty soon afterwards as they win a corner in Cresswell’s delivery from the right is met by Diop with a free header from about 5 yards but it’s skimmed off his head and goes wide. It was going wide anyway but the ref didn’t spot it hit JWP on the way out so we got lucky in not having to face another corner with all of West Ham is 6 foot 4 giants piling in on the goal.
Long ball, headed away by Stephens and then another long ball which is not dealt with by Bednarek and it drops down to Antonio on the left hand side of the penalty area and he hooks and across, high and handsome. It looks harmless enough but McCarthy, for reasons only known to himself, doesn’t get off the fucking ground and actually gets out jumped by Haller who then manages to force into the net from an narrow angle. Fuck me, another absolutely shit goal.
Haller Scores, McCarthy Out of Shot
Half time And I’m not confident of getting back into this. We just don’t look ready for the battle today.
We start the second half really well and pin West Ham back with Bertrand getting down the left and whipping in a superb crossing between the goalkeeper in the defenders but Shane Long shows all the strikers instincts he hasn’t got to not get on the end of it. The ball gets returned into the penalty area by Hojbjerg and Obafemi misses the ball when unmarked. Bertrand tried again after picked it up and it flies across the face of the goal again without any of our strikers being anywhere near it and the fourth cross of the move is easily caught by Fabianski. I’m just feeling that in a relatively open game like this one, there is no way that we are going to outscore the opposition.
Like Burnley did a few weeks ago, West Ham are literally just creaming the ball up the middle towards their strikers and whether we head it all they head it, they are picking up all the balls in midfield in that large Romeu shaped hole in between our midfield and defence. Fornals is the latest recipient of the benefits of this manoeuvre and wastes an opening from the left hand side by drilling it straight at the goalkeeper.
Just before the hour mark, we make our first change with Danny Ings coming on for Boufal who to be fair, has been pretty hopeless. Whilst we’re wondering who’s gonna go out the left wing, it’s another long ball creamed down the middle towards Haller and the ball drops to Fornals who chips over the flat-footed Bednarek and Antonio is clean through and from the penalty spot makes no mistakes whatsoever. That is absolute fucking gash from us. Hopeless.
We respond with some pretty football that doesn’t go anywhere and when that breaks down one pass along the ground to Haller in the centre circle and he pulls out a ridiculous rabona flick to put Antonio clean through and this time, McCarthy stands up well to deflect it wide and stop us going 4-1 down.
Shane Long bursts away down the right hand side and Cresswell pulls out some sort of hybrid rugby/MMA tackle to get the booking to add to the yellow/red that he should’ve got after 30 seconds. In comes the free kick from JWP and it breaks to Bertrand whose shot is on target, only our second one but Fabianski saves it easily.
Ralph makes a change with Vestergaard coming on in place of Obafemi and we go to 3 at the back and surprise surprise, we start winning headers at the back. Romeu eventually comes on for Smallbone with about 10 minutes to go and we now have a team on the pitch to deal with the opposition that we are playing. A bit too fucking late really. Full time and what a load of shit.
Well that was fucking predictable crap. West Ham basically played the same tactics as they played at St Mary’s and we responded by playing exactly the same way as we did at St Mary’s by making it so incredibly fucking easy for them to do what they wanted.
So, bearing in mind that West Ham employed exactly the same tactics as they had at St Mary‘s, it was always going to be a physical battle and there is no getting away from this, Ralph fucked up. Smallbone was always going to get found wanting defensively against this West Ham midfield and so it proved. He was once again, neat and tidy on the ball and one of our best players in possession but out of possession he may as well not have been there. He was better than Hojbjerg though, who made his new agents job very difficult today. If JWP was forced to play right back then if ever there was a day for Romeu to play then it was today. But whilst Ralph can be blamed for not putting JWP or Romeu in midfield, he can’t be blamed for the central defenders who were absolutely dreadful. Surely KWP and Valery could have managed the game between them. Start one and bring the other one on?
Ralph’s in play substitutions weren’t too bad in my opinion. Boufal had to come off because he was pretty useless and the switch to 3 central defenders possibly provided the blueprint of how we should play against teams like West Ham and Burnley. As soon as Vestergaard came on, we started winning some aerial challenges which Stephens and Bednarek did not do all game up until that point. It also gave us a spare man if we didn’t win the initial challenge. I do think that Ralph left it too late though. There should’ve been a change made at half-time because West Ham were finding it so easy to break through us and we were continually playing right into their hands.
All three goals that we conceded are appalling and even Ralph described it as an absolute joke. The first goal stems with us having the ball in the right back spot and JWP not getting any distance on a clearance. Bednarek is then caught ball watching as Bowen nips in front of him to score. For the second goal, someone has clearly dug two big holes in the penalty area and put the dirt back in on top of Alex McCarthy‘s feet because he just didn’t get off the ground and it’s an embarrassing goal for a goalkeeper to concede, especially one who is 6 foot 4. The third goal is an under 12’s goal. Long ball, we don’t win the header, chipped ball over the last defender, more ball watching from Bednarek, goal. Easy and pathetic in equal measure.
Tactically today, Ralph was done by David fucking Moyes – who admitted that he got today’s tactics from what the players said about the St.Mary’s game. Defend deep, hit it long and compete with the Southampton central defenders, pick up the 2nd balls. Must’ve taken him all week to dream that up. Not exactly rocket science but we had no answer - again. In Ralph’s defence, he said he knew how West Ham were going to play and we prepared or wait for it but the players didn’t execute whatever was practiced.
Up front we were pretty clueless with Shane Long having one of those games where you despair at the fact that he is in our first choice starting at 11. We had loads of possession and only mustered two shots on target which kind of tells you all you need to know. Yet again, we have one way of playing and if a team doesn’t give us space then we are really going to struggle.
We were lightweight today and once it went 3-1 we never remotely look like getting back into it even though there was half an hour to go. A disappointing performance all round from the team selection to the final whistle. We just didn’t look up for it as much as West Ham did.
The warning signs were there for me from the first minute when Cresswell deliberately threw his elbow into the back of Armstrong‘s head. Why the fuck are we not all round the referee trying to get the West Ham player sent off. I’ve seen a player sent off for that challenge before so why not stop being so fucking nice about everything and make the referee make a decision. Maybe he goes and checks the challenge on the pitch side monitor, or maybe he actually asks the VAR fuckwit room if there is any serious foul play. Likewise on the second goal, where you can at least look annoyed and try and plant a seed of doubt in the referees mind that McCarthy might of been fouled. I mean, he wasn’t but you could at least make the referee think that there might have been an issue and you never know, the way things are this season, that might actually get disallowed. Instead of that though we just do fuck all and go back to the centre circle to kick off again.
It was a real nothing performance from us today and we deserve to lose. It seems that we went there expecting to lose and we created a scenario where the only result was that we were going to lose. Quite frankly, it was bollocks. I have no complaints about the referee or VAR or the way West Ham played. They played exactly how we suspected they were going to play. The are seriously in a relegation battle and sod pretty football, they need the points. I have complaints about Southampton though because we were fucking awful. Ralph is in danger of overthinking things again as there was no question that the ghost of George Burley had appeared again today with two right backs on the bench and our best midfielder playing at right back. Pick a right back to play at right back, even if they can only play half a game each and go from there.
Next time we have another limited, physical team in Newcastle visiting St Mary’s. If you think that they’re going to be open and leave us with lots of space then you are mad. A bit like Sebastian Haller, they haven’t scored a goal for months so they will certainly be looking forward to playing us.
I have just come across your blog in the last few weeks and thoroughly enjoy reading it. Pretty much echoes my thoughts on each match, Great stuff.
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