Alex Kicks the Ball Very Hard - Shame He Didn't Earlier
An empty St Mary’s for the first time as we take on Arsenal.
Due to the fact that Arsenal are used to playing in front of
complete silence, you would’ve been expected them to be one of the teams that
adapted well to having no fans on the ground but the opposite has been true. They
didn’t put up much of a battle and defeat against Manchester City and suffered
another loss to Brighton conceding two late goals.
This was all too much the Matteo Guendouzi who completely
lost his shit and tried to throttle a Brighton player after the final whistle.
This was missed by the referee but picked up by VAR. So, VAR did its job and identified the thing
that the referee missed but the powers that be let everybody down by being
complete wankers and letting Guendouzi off. Consequently, he will be playing
against us tonight. It also emerged that he had been bragging about how much he
earned to a Brighton player. Arsenal fans seem to have taken this as
shithousery that they can get behind but in any walk of life, when you try and
score points based on how much you earn, it just makes you look like a colossal
fucking twat.
The incident that ignited everybody in that game was the nothing sort of challenge by Brighton forward Maupay against Bernt Leno which unfortunately, ended Leno’s season with a knee injury picked up as he landed awkwardly. He joins an ever-growing Arsenal injury list but we shouldn’t feel sorry for them at all as they are after all, one of the big clubs with the most money. When they list the number of players that they’ve got missing, it is worth remembering that some of them actually aren’t very good like Sokratis and Chambers. Also injured in the City game was Granit Xhaka who was the player that everybody with an Arsenal persuasion wanted to die about a year ago. You can’t mention Arsenal these days without mentioning Arsenal Fan TV. It was quite good a while ago but as they have now become a bit of an also-ran club, it’s just demonstrated the entitlement that their fans seem to have. Mind you, I can’t imagine many right-thinking Arsenal fans would say that that lot truly reflect their views.
Arsenal have been a wonderful club over the years and have had some amazing players that I have enjoyed watching as a fan of an opposition club. The likes of Wright, Bergkamp, Adams, Van Persie, Overmars, Henry, Petit, Vieira… there are fucking loads of them. The current squad, with the exception of Aubameyang, is pretty average though it’s still a major scalp if you can get anything of them. Gone are the days when you knew what Arsenal starting line-up was going to be and you knew everything about every player. They are a real crossroads at the moment trying to bring in, in my opinion, too many youngsters at the same time and none of them look quite good enough, yet to be in a side that is going to be challenging at the top of the league and that their supporters expect to be challenging at the top of the league.
Saints are going to this game in good shape with Shane Long having recovered from his knock that kept him out of the Norwich game. We have to avoid getting carried away because after all, it was only Norwich, no matter how good we looked in that game. Arsenal are there for the taking at the moment so if we start the game well and keep the foot on the gas throughout and most importantly, don’t give them any encouragement or gifts, we should be okay but there is always the threat that Aubameyang and on their day, Lacazette and Pepe pose.
The teams are announced and we are completely unchanged from Norwich, which is not altogether a surprise. There’s a couple of changes on the bench with Shane Long coming in for Sofiane Boufal who is inhjured and Kevin Danso making way for Sam Vokins. In the event, it looks like Arteta has decided that Guendouzi is a prick and shouldn’t play anyway because he’s left out of the 18 altogether. There are potential weak links all over the Arsenal side with Martinez in goal, Mustafi and Holding at centre back and a midfield consisting of Xhaka, the underwhelming Ceballos and the promising youngster Saka. Upfront, Pepe and Aubameyang are joined by Nketiah, who was on loan at Leeds at the start of the season in but has a good reputation and is lightning quick. Come on lads, we can fucking beat these.
We start well and a cross from Bertrand causes a bit of concern in the Arsenal defence as Ings takes a swing but they get it clear. Arsenal have lined up with Aubameyang on the left and the intention is clear – attack that side as everyone knows it’s our weakness. Not our only weakness but our biggest one. Down the left they go with Saka playing a 1-2 with Aubameyang and crossing for Nketiah to tap in but the flag is us. It’s a long way offside but alarming how easy it was for them to play through that channel.
The incident that ignited everybody in that game was the nothing sort of challenge by Brighton forward Maupay against Bernt Leno which unfortunately, ended Leno’s season with a knee injury picked up as he landed awkwardly. He joins an ever-growing Arsenal injury list but we shouldn’t feel sorry for them at all as they are after all, one of the big clubs with the most money. When they list the number of players that they’ve got missing, it is worth remembering that some of them actually aren’t very good like Sokratis and Chambers. Also injured in the City game was Granit Xhaka who was the player that everybody with an Arsenal persuasion wanted to die about a year ago. You can’t mention Arsenal these days without mentioning Arsenal Fan TV. It was quite good a while ago but as they have now become a bit of an also-ran club, it’s just demonstrated the entitlement that their fans seem to have. Mind you, I can’t imagine many right-thinking Arsenal fans would say that that lot truly reflect their views.
Arsenal have been a wonderful club over the years and have had some amazing players that I have enjoyed watching as a fan of an opposition club. The likes of Wright, Bergkamp, Adams, Van Persie, Overmars, Henry, Petit, Vieira… there are fucking loads of them. The current squad, with the exception of Aubameyang, is pretty average though it’s still a major scalp if you can get anything of them. Gone are the days when you knew what Arsenal starting line-up was going to be and you knew everything about every player. They are a real crossroads at the moment trying to bring in, in my opinion, too many youngsters at the same time and none of them look quite good enough, yet to be in a side that is going to be challenging at the top of the league and that their supporters expect to be challenging at the top of the league.
Saints are going to this game in good shape with Shane Long having recovered from his knock that kept him out of the Norwich game. We have to avoid getting carried away because after all, it was only Norwich, no matter how good we looked in that game. Arsenal are there for the taking at the moment so if we start the game well and keep the foot on the gas throughout and most importantly, don’t give them any encouragement or gifts, we should be okay but there is always the threat that Aubameyang and on their day, Lacazette and Pepe pose.
The teams are announced and we are completely unchanged from Norwich, which is not altogether a surprise. There’s a couple of changes on the bench with Shane Long coming in for Sofiane Boufal who is inhjured and Kevin Danso making way for Sam Vokins. In the event, it looks like Arteta has decided that Guendouzi is a prick and shouldn’t play anyway because he’s left out of the 18 altogether. There are potential weak links all over the Arsenal side with Martinez in goal, Mustafi and Holding at centre back and a midfield consisting of Xhaka, the underwhelming Ceballos and the promising youngster Saka. Upfront, Pepe and Aubameyang are joined by Nketiah, who was on loan at Leeds at the start of the season in but has a good reputation and is lightning quick. Come on lads, we can fucking beat these.
We start well and a cross from Bertrand causes a bit of concern in the Arsenal defence as Ings takes a swing but they get it clear. Arsenal have lined up with Aubameyang on the left and the intention is clear – attack that side as everyone knows it’s our weakness. Not our only weakness but our biggest one. Down the left they go with Saka playing a 1-2 with Aubameyang and crossing for Nketiah to tap in but the flag is us. It’s a long way offside but alarming how easy it was for them to play through that channel.
On 10 minutes, a long ball from Tierney down the left
catches Stephens asleep and Aubameyang bears down on goal, cuts inside and hits
it over McCarthy and we get lucky as it hits the bar and bounces out. So, so, easy.
Aubameyang is clever and takes up good positions but Stephens has either
got to go with him or get Valery to do it – not stand in no mans land.
Ur plan as ever is to win the ball in their half and
Bertrand does that and finds Hojbjerg. Hojbjerg
can go forwards as he’s unmarked but he doesn’t, he just plays it back to
Bednarek, back to Hojbjerg again and again he just plays straight backwards to
the centre half with no thought of going forward and Bednarek knocks it back to
McCarthy. McCarthy has the choice of
right or left as Bednarek has made an angle one way and Stephens the other. Straight on is not on as Nketiah is there…. I
said STRAIGHT ON IS NOT ON!!! Fucking hell, straight to him and he walks it
into the net for 1-0 and 30,000 empty seats groan in unison.
As tends to happen when you concede such a monumentally shit
goal, it knocks the stuffing out of the side a bit and we kind of sleepwalk to
half time. We create one opening as
Stephens’ straight ball is brilliantly controlled by Ings and Bertrand’s cross
is just too far ahead of the lunging Armstrong.
Half time - Well that was shit. I mean, it would be 0-0 but for the
catastrophic fuck up by McCarthy but it would still be shit. We’ve not forced their keeper intoa save and it’s been so easy for Arsenal to
defend against us and they’re dictating the pace of the game. At the very minimum we have to get Obafemi
off as he is adding nothing at all. Guy
looks like someone’s dug two holes in the ground and planted his feet in them.
KWP and Long are on for the no doubt relieved Valery and
Obafemi and KWP’s first involvement is to be on the wrong end of a shit
challenge from Saka which catches him exactly where you don’t want to be caught.
Yellow card for Saka but why no review
as to it being a potential red? It’s
miles off the ground and dangerous so why no review? More understandable was no mention of it on
Arsenal Fan Sky Sports TV from Alan Smith.
One lesson we have not heeded from the first half is the
long ball to Aubameyang on the left. Goalkeeper
Martinez this time and again Stephens is in no mans land and no one is marking
one of the best forwards in the Premier League and only a superb intervention
by the sliding Bednarek stops Aubameyang’s pass reaching Nketiah in the middle.
We are playing better since half time , without particularly
looking like scoring. A JWP cross is
flicked on by an Arsenal player to Redmond at the back post and he crashes it
into the side netting. Should do better
really and it’s missed the near post by quite a way, again not forcing a save from
the keeper. We do eventually force
Martinez to earn his money as a good ball from Stephens finds Long who has
peeled off of Mustafi. Shane controls
well and hits it across Martinez who makes a really good block and gets to the
rebound before Armstrong.
Arsenal are suddenly not doing much in attack and I have the
feeling that if we get one and then we can go on and win this. All that is extinguished though as Grejbjoh is
needless playing the wrong fucking way again and plays a monumentally shit pass
behind Stephens to Aubameyang. Stephens
slides in, misses the ball and over he goes. To be fair to the striker, he’s up and wanting
to go on but the ref’s already blown and off goes Jack.
Taking on for the team to prevent a goal didn’t work out to
well for us as Lacazette’s initial shit free kick cames back to him and he
hammers it goalwards, McCarthy parries and Willock taps in to kill us off if we
weren’t dead already. There’s 10 to go
but we do nothing. Vestergaard and Romeu
come on to give them a few minutes practice for playing against Watford as Grejbjoh
hobbles off, backwards, probably.
Well that was fucking dreadful. If I hear one more twat blame the fans for us having a crap home record.... let’s get this right, Arsenal were bang average and we have absolutely no fucking idea of how to attack a team at home that doesn’t push up to the halfway line. Back and across, back and across, full back, cross, cleared…. Change the fucking record. Even with defenders as limited as Holding and Mustafi, we created next to nothing in 90 minutes. The lack of a Plan B is something Ralph is really going to have to sort out. Trying to play high-pressing game in that heat was always going to be difficult but we looked leggy and completely and utterly clueless. Plan A doesn’t work so what else have we got? Nothing.
To be fair, the second half was much better and we did at least create a few chances but I never really felt that we put the very average Arsenal defence under much pressure and the lack of movement in the front third meant that for most of the game, Arsenal could just keep us in front of them without too much danger. Ings tries to make things happen constantly but Obafemi just chases situations and today, Obafemi could barely raise a jog.
Of course we were playing Arsenal at a good time, when they were fragile in confidence so the game plan should have included not giving them any freebies and making it as difficult as we could for them. There is no explanation or excuse for what McCarthy did. He had a go at getting caught just before that but that mistake is just fucking horrific. As was said last week with Valery, just put your fucking foot through it. Your job is to stop them scoring – that’s it. If it’s 70 yards away, they’re not scoring, fuck it up 20 yards out and they are.
Having gifted them a goal, we allowed Arsenal to play at whatever pace they wanted to play at and it was a very comfortable, routine win for them, capped off with another fucking horrendous mistake, this time from Grejbjoh who played the ball behind Stephens and after he trashed Aubameyang, there was only ever going to be one result.
There is a lot about the second goal which sums up our troubles at home. With 10 minutes to go and 1-0 down, why was Grejbjoh even looking to pass backwards at that point? Our midfielders have to pass it backwards half the time because there is very little movement in front of them and they don’t have the pace or ability to take a player on themselves. Grejbjoh turns and plays a shit pass and totally saws off Stephens who takes the red card for the team, only we didn’t get away with it because the free-kick ended up in our net eventually anyway.
So many players were average today. It’s really hard to pick a man of the match for us because you just picking someone who wasn’t bad rather than picking anyone who was any good. The centre backs were dodgy with Stephens in particular being half asleep. JWP did alright in midfield but Grejbjoh seemed to spend the whole game facing the wrong way, capped off with a red card he got for Stephens. Ings worked hard upfront but the little reward and KWP showed that he should definitely be starting as Valery struggled again. In defence of Valery though and in hindsight, playing him against Aubameyang and Saka on that wing was a bit like going to a gun fight and all you’ve got is pea-shooter. Hindsight is 20/20 but it’s a bit of a mystery why KWP didn’t start. We need to see if he can handle it by the end of the season and so to come up against Aubameyang would’ve been a perfect way to judge. Instead, all that happened was that Valery’s confidence got torn to shreds again. KWP did ok in the 2nd half.
I don’t have a Sky Sports subscription anymore so I took advantage of the pass that was given to me by the club, which I thought was a nice gesture at the time. Thanks everyone. Aside from a shit performance, I got to listen to the great and the good of Sky, namely Alan Smith, wanking off about Arsenal for the entire 95 minutes. Afterwards, back in the studio we had to listen to Sol Campbell. Was Jamie Redknapp supposed to be providing the Saints representation as he played for us for about half an hour? Don’t Benali and Le Tissier work for Sky? Surely it wouldn’t have been too much to ask to get one of those in there just for balance.
I would however like to commend Arteta for the way he handled the Guendouzi situation. He is basically left him out for being a prick which has told him but he’s not so good that he gets picked no matter what. Winning the game as well also means that he can go to my training and say I told you so. Fair play, good management. As for Ralph – he didn’t have a good day. Another day of beating his head against the wall and wondering why it hurts. Not his fault that we made two horrific individual mistakes for the goals but another game where we are no nearer to solving the issues we have with breaking down teams who defend deep at St.Marys.
The Watford game coming up this weekend has now become more interesting because Watford lost tonight against Burnley and so are still down amongst the dead men. I would anticipate at least four changes to our team with Vestergaard certain to play and Romeu, KWP and Long also likely to start. Watford will be nervous and will certainly be seeing this as a game they can win. Once again it’s up to us not to fucking give them anything and to play with the freedom that we usually play with away from home.
So we are still no closer to solving the mystery of why we are shit at St Mary’s. At least we know now that it’s not the fans fault.
Well that was fucking dreadful. If I hear one more twat blame the fans for us having a crap home record.... let’s get this right, Arsenal were bang average and we have absolutely no fucking idea of how to attack a team at home that doesn’t push up to the halfway line. Back and across, back and across, full back, cross, cleared…. Change the fucking record. Even with defenders as limited as Holding and Mustafi, we created next to nothing in 90 minutes. The lack of a Plan B is something Ralph is really going to have to sort out. Trying to play high-pressing game in that heat was always going to be difficult but we looked leggy and completely and utterly clueless. Plan A doesn’t work so what else have we got? Nothing.
To be fair, the second half was much better and we did at least create a few chances but I never really felt that we put the very average Arsenal defence under much pressure and the lack of movement in the front third meant that for most of the game, Arsenal could just keep us in front of them without too much danger. Ings tries to make things happen constantly but Obafemi just chases situations and today, Obafemi could barely raise a jog.
Of course we were playing Arsenal at a good time, when they were fragile in confidence so the game plan should have included not giving them any freebies and making it as difficult as we could for them. There is no explanation or excuse for what McCarthy did. He had a go at getting caught just before that but that mistake is just fucking horrific. As was said last week with Valery, just put your fucking foot through it. Your job is to stop them scoring – that’s it. If it’s 70 yards away, they’re not scoring, fuck it up 20 yards out and they are.
Having gifted them a goal, we allowed Arsenal to play at whatever pace they wanted to play at and it was a very comfortable, routine win for them, capped off with another fucking horrendous mistake, this time from Grejbjoh who played the ball behind Stephens and after he trashed Aubameyang, there was only ever going to be one result.
There is a lot about the second goal which sums up our troubles at home. With 10 minutes to go and 1-0 down, why was Grejbjoh even looking to pass backwards at that point? Our midfielders have to pass it backwards half the time because there is very little movement in front of them and they don’t have the pace or ability to take a player on themselves. Grejbjoh turns and plays a shit pass and totally saws off Stephens who takes the red card for the team, only we didn’t get away with it because the free-kick ended up in our net eventually anyway.
So many players were average today. It’s really hard to pick a man of the match for us because you just picking someone who wasn’t bad rather than picking anyone who was any good. The centre backs were dodgy with Stephens in particular being half asleep. JWP did alright in midfield but Grejbjoh seemed to spend the whole game facing the wrong way, capped off with a red card he got for Stephens. Ings worked hard upfront but the little reward and KWP showed that he should definitely be starting as Valery struggled again. In defence of Valery though and in hindsight, playing him against Aubameyang and Saka on that wing was a bit like going to a gun fight and all you’ve got is pea-shooter. Hindsight is 20/20 but it’s a bit of a mystery why KWP didn’t start. We need to see if he can handle it by the end of the season and so to come up against Aubameyang would’ve been a perfect way to judge. Instead, all that happened was that Valery’s confidence got torn to shreds again. KWP did ok in the 2nd half.
I don’t have a Sky Sports subscription anymore so I took advantage of the pass that was given to me by the club, which I thought was a nice gesture at the time. Thanks everyone. Aside from a shit performance, I got to listen to the great and the good of Sky, namely Alan Smith, wanking off about Arsenal for the entire 95 minutes. Afterwards, back in the studio we had to listen to Sol Campbell. Was Jamie Redknapp supposed to be providing the Saints representation as he played for us for about half an hour? Don’t Benali and Le Tissier work for Sky? Surely it wouldn’t have been too much to ask to get one of those in there just for balance.
I would however like to commend Arteta for the way he handled the Guendouzi situation. He is basically left him out for being a prick which has told him but he’s not so good that he gets picked no matter what. Winning the game as well also means that he can go to my training and say I told you so. Fair play, good management. As for Ralph – he didn’t have a good day. Another day of beating his head against the wall and wondering why it hurts. Not his fault that we made two horrific individual mistakes for the goals but another game where we are no nearer to solving the issues we have with breaking down teams who defend deep at St.Marys.
The Watford game coming up this weekend has now become more interesting because Watford lost tonight against Burnley and so are still down amongst the dead men. I would anticipate at least four changes to our team with Vestergaard certain to play and Romeu, KWP and Long also likely to start. Watford will be nervous and will certainly be seeing this as a game they can win. Once again it’s up to us not to fucking give them anything and to play with the freedom that we usually play with away from home.
So we are still no closer to solving the mystery of why we are shit at St Mary’s. At least we know now that it’s not the fans fault.
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