What Have You Done - We Can't Lose 9-0 Now
Oh good, Manchester
City. It is not a fair fight.
I should hate Manchester
City more than I do because they sum up the journey the football has been on
since 1992 whereby the rich get richer and the rest of us travel along getting
relatively poorer. To be honest, their journey started much later than 1992
when they had the temerity to get a ridiculously rich owner (after one very
dodgy one), before the time there was any regulation at all and he could throw as
much money at it as possible. What this meant is that they could challenge the
status quo, so the self-proclaimed big four of Manchester United, Liverpool,
Tottenham and Arsenal, suddenly had a gatecrasher to their party and they
didn’t like it, with both City and Chelsea muscling in. The same is now being
seen in Europe with the traditional European big guns like Real Madrid,
Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus not being happy with City coming to join
the party so unsurprisingly, City’s money and the way they put it into the club
is being investigated. The point is not that City haven’t done anything wrong
as I am sure that they have. The point is that every single fucking one of
those other clubs has done similar or worse but because their status is being
challenged, they are now up in arms about it. The higher up you go in football,
the more it stinks.
Anyway, I read it
somewhere that this might be a good time to play City as they have so many
games, what with still being involved in the FA Cup and the Champions League.
It’s never a good time to play City. They have a ridiculous number of top-class
players who they can swap in and out at will and it really makes no difference.
Probably the only two players who they would always pick if they were available
are the goalkeeper Ederson and Kevin De Bruyne. When football was about to
restart, City decided they get better value out of playing a friendly against
themselves, rather than do what everyone else had to do, which was to play
someone else. Let’s face it, if Saints, or almost anyone else for
that matter, put out a B team, it really wouldn’t be very good. In
addition to this, of course we have the new substitute rule and it’s
ridiculousness was illustrated in City’s first game after lockdown when they
brought on Fernandinho, Rodri, Bernardo Silva, Sergio Aguero and Phil Foden and
still had Zinchenko, Otamendi and Sané on the bench. As I’ve said before, the
only thing that is still fair in football is that the game starts with 11
against 11.
The last couple of times
we played City, we have been in damage limitation mode, playing a flat five
across the back with four in midfield just in front of them and hoping that
Nathan Redmond could get forward quick enough to join up with the lone attacker
who was usually Shane Long. The key to playing that way was having three
central defenders which it looks like we may not have with Vestergaard
struggling with a knock. That leaves Ralph with the choice of playing Kevin
Danso, which he has been reluctant to do so far, or playing our normal
formation and just going for it which is what I believe we’ll do. A
ridiculous stat is the City have managed to lose a quarter of their league
games this season which has almost always been down to defensive calamity. They
can be got it but you have to get the ball first.
The BBC have chosen this
game as one of the ones that they are going to broadcast live so they are
clearly hoping that we get absolutely humped. I have my bingo card
at the ready which contains “9-0”, “dismal home record” and “Liverpool”. The
teams are in and we are going for it – 4-2-2-2. The headline news is
that Che Adams gets a start alongside Danny Ings. Our bench contains
Shane Long and a kindergarten with an average age of about 13 – Smallbone,
Ferry, Jankewicz, Obafemi, Gunn, Djenepo, Danso and Vokins. City’s
has Kevin de Bruyne on it. Though they are resting their best
player, the team still contains the attacking talents of David Silva, Bernardo
Silva, Gabriel Jesus, Mahrez and Sterling. Still – it’s a good time
to be playing City allegedly.
Away we go and we are
not sitting back – pressing high and trying to force mistakes. Ings forces a ball through to Adams on the
right and he has a clear sight of goal but shanks it horribly across the face
and it turns into a pass for Redmond who can’t react quick enough. City are of course very easy on the eye when
they begin to move the ball about but we are adopting a ‘dogs of war’ approach
and everyone is at it, swarming all over the City players. Great start.
15 minutes gone and no
alarms and City are casually strolling the ball around the back and Laporte
gives it to Zinchenko who has come in from left back into a kind of central
midfield position. The only trouble with this is that he is not good enough to
do it and he tries to go past Armstrong he gets a foot in and it goes to Adams
who looks up and smashes it first time over Ederson and one bounce into the net
from 40 yards. The crowd go mad – at home. Absolutely
fucking unreal. We’ve obviously been working on getting shots away
quickly if we win the ball higher up the pitch because Ederson does tend to
stand 30 yards out but this has made him and Zinchenko look right mugs and Che
Adams, who has never even really look like scoring for us, has given us the
lead against Manchester City. When you see the replay, the shot has started off
miles outside the right-hand post and curled and dipped into the centre of the
goal. There is a horrifying moment when you think it might bounce over the bar
but no such worries and 1-0. What the fuck happens now that we’ve annoyed them?
The first response is a
searching ball down our right hand side and Cancelo turns Bertrand inside out
before firing the ball across and Gabriel Jesus can only divert it over the bar
with his usual face like he’s chewing a wasp. Next, City build up
down the right and Jesus switches it out to Stirling on the left to bring is a
good save from McCarthy with a blast at the near post. Back come city and KWP
does a decent job to win the ball but then he produces a shit clearance to the
edge of the box and Fernandinho drills it back in and it hits the inside of the
post of pings out to the right hand side again. Cancelo chips it back into the
box and David Silva of all people wins the header and McCarthy is there again
to parry it away to Sterling who curls it wide of the far post. Four efforts on
goal in about 10 seconds and somehow we are still in front.
Saints are playing some
decent football in City’s half when we get up there and from one such move, we
find KWP on the right hand side and he curls a perfect cross inbetween the left
back and behind the centre back which Ings reaches on the stretch and volleys
over the bar. No one could really blame him for this but I feel that Danny will
actually be quite disappointed that he didn’t get that on target.
More City pressure
before half time but we are defending well. Romeu and JWP are really getting
stuck in in midfield and Oriol picks up the obligatory yellow card. I
am swearing at Andre Marriner for that but then they show the replay and you
can’t argue really. All of the back 4 and keeper have all had
excellent first halves and so we reach the break 1-0 in front. Who’d
have thought it. Before we go back to the studio, there’s just time
to mention 9-0 again.
Pep is, let’s face it, a
decent manager and he’s obviously had a word at half time and we are getting a
severe examination here and we are in all sorts of trouble trying to stem the
tide. One shot is blocked by KWP and loops up in the air allowing Gabriel Jesus
to get a header in from point-blank range which McCarthy sticks a right hand
out to push away. City are playing some absolutely wonderful
football as they build up from deep and Zinchenko slides a great ball into
David Silva who produces a ridiculous turn to give him some space before seeing
his low shot blocked by a sprawling McCarthy. Living dangerously again. Every
time a camera picks out Bednarek or Stephens, they are smiling. You
can tell they are really enjoying this.
Round about the hour
mark, Pep decides that it’s time to stop fucking about and so on comes De
Bruyne and Foden to replace Mahrez and Sterling who have both got absolutely
nothing out of Bertrand and KWP. De Bruyne immediately produces a
couple of shit passes which would be funny if he knew he wasn’t going to
totally kill us at some point and to prove that, he volleys a superb cross in
from the left hand side, Jack Stephens makes is one mistake in a and immaculate
performance so far but redeems himself by blocking Bernardo Silva’s shot with
his arse and seeing the ball spin wide for a corner. For the first
time I allow myself to think that we might nick this. We are riding
our luck but we just might.
Che Adams has a chance
to do something else miraculous when he gets a 50-50 ball to compete with with
Ederson but he seems to be blowing a bit as the goalkeeper gets there first.
That’s the cue for the goalscorer to go off to be replaced with the one
experience player that we have on the bench, Shane Long.
Long has obviously been
inspired by all the great players on the pitch and produces a first touch from
McCarthy‘s kick which I didn’t know he possessed and turns and runs at the City
defenders before feeding it infield on the edge of the box. The ball hits the
back of Ings and sits up for Armstrong who hits it first time but Ederson
sticks out a big boot to kick it away.
89, 90, five extra
minutes, fuck off, 91, 92, 93 and Cancelo swings in another cross and McCarthy
comes for it and makes his one mistake of the game in not getting to it and
when the ball comes back in, it hits the retreating Armstrong and goes just wide
of the post for a corner.
We make a pigs ear of
getting the corner away and panic ensues and eventually Armstrong catches David
Silva right on the edge of the box. It’s a clear foul and the correct decision
by Andre Mariner but it doesn’t stop everyone in my house calling him every
name under the sun. Armstrong is substituted at this point with Will
Smallbone so he can go and sit on the bench and think about what he’s done. We’ve
all seen de Bruyne spanking in a freekick against Chelsea a week or so ago and
I have resigned myself to him scoring… fuck off Kevin… fuck off….. bang….and he
dribbles it at waist height into the wall and it runs out to de Bruyne on the
left, Shane Long piles in a whacks it away and Marriner blows the final whistle. Fucking
hell, what a win.
Maldini and Buffon Celebrate the Win
What an unreal
performance that was. It surely is quite something that we had at that level of
commitment for a game that was basically a dead rubber. It was also the most
difficult game we had left on paper so you really could’ve forgiven the players
if they had just put in a normal performance. That was superhuman though. The
commitment levels of every player on that pitch were through the fucking roof. It
was absolutely textbook regarding how you go about playing Manchester City -
you have to take your chances and you have to defend like fucking madman and
also you have to have a little bit of luck. It all fell into place
today and we’ve come away with what was an unbelievable win, probably much to
the disappointment of the BBC who judging by the amount of times they mentioned
it, wanted to see another 0-9 capitulation. The bingo card I had was all crossed
out within a minute of the game starting but never mind, we won.
Where do you start when
it comes to talking about players. Alex McCarthy was absolutely
brilliant aside one little flap at the end and all the defenders put in so many
tackles and blocks and earned the luck that they got when they made a slight
mistake. As I said, McCarthy got away with one, Stephens got away with one and
KWP got away with one but they were isolated mistakes whilst under ridiculous
amounts of pressure. Stephens and Bednarek blocked absolutely
everything and were colossal throughout, marshalling the threat of Gabriel
Jesus and also whatever City player ended up running into the penalty area. The
only surprise is that you don’t get the goalkeeper out there because their movement
off the ball is ridiculous. KWP put in another absolutely superb
performance at right back and like his performance against Watford, it’s one to
change the mind of people who weren’t that fussed if we signed him or not.
There is still a long way to go on that score because it means dealing with
Daniel Levy.
It was a good day to
have Oriol Romeu in midfield, snapping into challenges and again, when it was
permitted, showing a willingness to move the ball more quickly than usual. JWP
was excellent as usual and Armstrong was absolutely blowing out of his arse at
the end of the match after another high quality performance. It seems churlish
to complain about anyone but I found Redmond’s performance slightly frustrating
at times as he had one of those games were he often seemed to take the wrong
option and lose the ball. We needed him to go past a player and actually give
us some time to get up the pitch a little bit more but I will say that he never
stop running from first to last and did a really good job helping out Ryan
Bertrand with the marauding Cancelo from right back. Danny Ings again showed
that his all-round game is so much better than a lot of those strikers who play
for the top six who will be ahead of him in the England pecking order next
season. His defensive work is better than most defenders.
Despite all the
defensive heroics though, the day will belong to Che Adams. At times, he has
really not looked interested in buying into the way that Ralph wants our
strikers to play but today, following his decent cameo against Watford, he
looked really up for it. That was an absolutely brilliant goal and it will be
really interesting to see if he takes the confidence from that into the next
few matches. The reaction from the rest of the team showed that they
we so pleased for him.
Ralph, once again got it
spot-on. Maybe the enforced change with Vestergaard being injured played into
his hands because there was no way he could play five at the back as he has
done previously against City. In the first half in particular, we took the game
to them and pressed high and got our reward. I’m sure that he would’ve liked to
bring on some more fresh legs as the second half wore on but once Shane Long
had come on, the experienced outfield options on the bench numbered zero, so
with us desperately hanging on to the 1-0 lead, it was not surprising that he
decided to leave things as they were.
With the game being on
the BBC, there was the opportunity for us to make complete fools of ourselves
in front of a huge national audience but we did the opposite. The amount of
effort that we put into that game, bearing in mind that we have nothing much to
play for and that there were no fans in the stadium, was quite incredible. It
is actually the sort of game that neutrals watch and then pick Southampton as
their team to follow. Anyone who does that will of course regret it further
down the line but the players and the manager have to be very very proud of
their performance. It actually annoys me in a way that the BBC got
such a great game out of it and it was a much better game than it would have
been if we’d got hammered, which is what the BBC were hoping for. As
mentioned, the commentary was ok but the summariser was Danny Murphy who speaks
with the enthusiasm of someone on death row.... 9-0.... blah.... poor home
record.... blah... then you had the ususal BBC in the studio with Lineker and
Shearer being solid and fair in their praise of Saints and Micah Richards who
is of course ex-City.... but he was very good, with and enthusiasm and
likeability that puts a lot of the 'superstar' pundits to shame.
Anyhow - next up, we
move on to Everton away which is traditionally a bit of a graveyard ground for
us. However, we seem to like this empty ground malarkey... so bring it on.
PS - It has come to my
attention that in between the CIty game and me writing this, Portsmouth had a
promotion play-off semi-final against Oxford which they lost on penalties. This
means that their season will be remembered for failing to get promoted from
League 1 and for getting thrashed 4-0 by The Scummers in their own back
yard without putting up a fight. Own it.
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