Friday, July 17, 2020

Premier League Match 36 - Southampton 1 Brighton 1



How the Fuck Did He Save That?

Just three days after the United game and here we are at St Mary‘s to play Brighton who incidentally, have had an extra couple of days rest. If it sounds like I’m getting my excuses in early, then I probably am.  Brighton’s last game incidentally, was a 5-0 shafting by Manchester City.

Brighton have been a side that have kind of passed me by this season. I reckon I’ve always fallen asleep by the time they get shown on Match of the Day and there is a reason they usually on near the end and that’s because they are not a particularly entertaining side, barely managing one goal a game. They are better under Graham Potter than they were under Chris Hughton, who used to favour the 9-0-50 yards-Glenn Murray formation. This year they are trying to play in a more expensive style and have done well to keep their heads above water, given that they are quite limited.  I think that Potter would’ve settled for being mid-table nonentities at the start of the season. There is still an outside chance that they could get relegated but they would probably have to lose all of the three remaining matches and then Bournemouth and Villa pull off miracles over their remaining games, which they do not remotely look capable of.

Given the short turnaround, there is absolutely no way that Saints are going to go to be able to put out the usual team today. Ralph has hinted at changes in his press conference and so it comes to pass with five players are given a rest including both full-backs, Armstrong, Adams and Stephens. In comes Jake Vokins for his first Premier League appearance, alongside Smallbone, Obafemi, Vestergaard and at right back, Pierre Hojbjerg. He may have lost the captaincy to JWP but in return, JWP has given him the ‘player who gets shafted when we need an emergency right back’ award.  I don’t like the look of the defence… the rest should be ok-ish.

The referee today is Andre Marriner  who refereed us against City the other day and his first action is to watch Obafemi get wrestled to the ground by Lewis Dunk, both arms wrapped round in very obvious fashion, and give absolutely nothing.  Next up, Romeu hammers into Solly March, wins the ball but March takes off with a triple somersault and pike and so Romeu gets booked which is probably the referees union making up for the one that was missed our game at Old Trafford the other day.

We unsurprisingly don’t have our usual zip but the first chance comes when Romeu switches well to the right where Hojbjerg is up against Solly March and the Brighton player makes a total balls of it and Hojbjerg chests it down and he’s clean through but can only blast the ball straight at Maty Ryan.

We are just after the quarter hour mark and Brighton win a throw on the right hand side.  It’s all pretty unremarkable as diminutive Lamptey throws it into Murray, who has walked away from the dozing Vestergaard and he flicks on and no one reacts, apart from Maupay who smashes it through Bednarek’s legs and wrong foots McCarthy who has no chance from about 8 yards.  What a monumentally shit goal to concede.  Embarrassing.

Brighton have got what they wanted and now they sit back and soak it up whilst we go sideways and backwards with no pace or width in our play.  Out of nowhere after a long period of sideways and backwards football, Redders turns up on the right and plays a nice ball through to Ings who smashes it under the keeper and it bounces up off the bar and Honey I Shrank the Right Back, manages to stick it in his own net in comedy fashion. Lino has got the flag up though so no excitement there really.

It’s been rubbish to be quite honest. As said, we’ve got nothing going in the wide areas at all as Vokins its content just to knock the ball infield and having started well, Hojbjerg is now plodding around at the back in full “fish up a tree” mode. You feel there has to be some changes at half-time and you wonder how much point there is in Romeu being out there bearing in mind he is on a booking and he is not exactly likely to unlock a defence which is going to get deeper and deeper as the game goes on.

I don’t often do “I told you so” but I vented on twitter that I’d bring on KWP for Romeu and Adams or Long for Obafemi” and Ralph obviously read that as I’m sure that the new SFC Playbook includes looking at what that fat wanker who writes blogs thinks about substitutions at half time.




Lucy Knows....

So, Ralph did what I said and we were immediately better and the chances started to come as we suddenly had width and some pace in our game.  KWP initiated a break up the right, the ball was held up by Adams and we eventually work it across to Vokins who drills it left footed and it skims across the ground and goes about foot wide of the far post.

Is it going to be one of those days?  After another decent build-up in which KWP features strongly, JWP slides a ball out to Ings on the left hand side and the King of the Scummers cuts inside, curls it round the defender and it smacks off the far post and comes out Adams who drills it goalwards, past the keeper but it hits Lewis Dunk on the thigh on the line and Brighton survive.  Straight after that, a lovely floated ball by Hojbjerg to the back post, where Ings has pulled away from the Brighton short right back and his side foot across goal is missed by the lunging Adams and he ends up in the net without the ball.

There are two ways of looking at it – it’s either going to be one of those games where it doesn’t happen or just maybe, the pressure will tell and thankfully it’s the latter as Adams knocks the ball down to Redmond who plays a wonderful first time pass (he should do this more often) to Danny Ings who was again pulled away from the wee right back and there is never a doubt that he’s going to slot this past Ryan into the far corner…. Goal, get in… and we are level.  25 to go – can we win it?

Another build up in front of Brighton and it doesn’t look like anything much it’s going to happen until the ball finds Vestergaard about 40 yards out and you could see his brain working… “fuck it, why not?“ and he absolutely drilled it, couldn’t possibly have hit it any better and it smacks of the underside of the bar and the post and bounces down for the goalkeeper to pick up. It’s not until you see a replay that you realise though that shot was destined to the top corner and Ryan has got a fingertip to it so it goes down as a brilliant save. What a killjoy bastard.

It wouldn’t be Saints if it was a procession and JWP loses the ball in their box and Brighton break. We are our usual shambles of a scramble defence and eventually the ball finds Bissouma who has a free shot from the edge of the box and shanks it wide. Always thought he was crap – absolute sitter.

The last 10 or so minutes pass by with nothing much going on.  There’s some decent “body on the line” defending from Dunk and Ex-Skate Webster in defence for Brighton and they manage to hang on and get the point that they came for.

Well, we really should’ve won there, even though we only played for the second half. We missed some chances which was down in equal measure to bad luck, bad finishing, committed defending and superb goalkeeping. Ings had one chalked off for offside and hit the post, Adams had a couple blocked and got caught flat-footed on another couple of opportunities, Vokins skimmed one just wide and then there was that ridiculous shot from Vestergaard, which would’ve raised the roof even in an empty ground but for Ryan’s unbelievable fingertip answer the crossbar.  That’s quite a few chances created against a team that didn’t have much attacking intent once they scored.

The new Brighton in truth, not much different to the old Brighton and if you try and look at this game in some sort of wider context of our struggles to put average teams away at home, then you could say that followed a similar pattern in a team came to St Mary’s and they didn’t want to be particularly expansive but we gifted them a goal which enable them to sit back. It  was absolute dogshit defending from us. All you have to do to limit teams like Brighton is concentrate and they won’t score. Vestergaard was completely asleep from that throw-in allowing 48-year-old Glenn Murray to wander away from him, with his fucking zimmer frame and flick it on and no one reacted quickly enough to stop Maupay scoring an incredibly easy goal.  I guess that you do have to remember though, that we had a very makeshift back four in the first half.  The game reinforced my view that Potter has done well with that squad to be fair and tonight, he did really well to substitute the tiny right back straight after the goal because we were targeting him with every attack.  It was probably his bed time.  Having said that – I bet he wished he’d subbed him before the goal.

If you look at the game as a whole, there were some elements that were a bit of an ugly throwback to earlier on in the season when we had out of position players playing at full-back. The full-backs are so important in the way that Ralph wants to play that having players out of position there, is just never going to work.  In the first half, we in effect had no full backs doing the job they needed to do because Vokins was to tentative and kept passing the ball 5 yards inside rather than driving to the huge space that quite often opened up in front of him and on the right hand side, after an encouraging opening five minutes, Pierre had a bit of a nightmare. In the second half, Vokins started driving forward which gave Redmond more space which highlighted just how bad Lamptey, the Brighton right back miniature was.  When he came on, KWP put in a man of the match performance on the right and was the single biggest factor in the change around.

The first half of this game also highlighted something that we already know about our strength in depth and how much work some of the fringe players me to do before they’re going to be considered as starters on a regular basis. Michael Obafemi was absolutely miles off the pace, basically being a one man possession recycling scheme for Brighton.  Every touch he had went straight to Brighton player and it was the most predictable half-time substitution ever when we come out after the break.  He has so much to learn. For someone who has such pace, it’s remarkable that we never ever see him use it and the reason we never see him use it is because he has absolutely no idea when to run.  I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for him to have as ineffective a game as he did against Arsenal a few weeks back but he managed it today and like in that game, he got hooked at half-time.


King of the Scummers scores, as Small Scale Right Back Looks On.

Will Smallbone, having looked excellent in his cameo against Manchester United, seemed to struggle, especially in the first half and look very lightweight. He improved after the break and put a couple of good balls in but a summer in the gym beckons I think.  Jake Vokins was the best of the three today and once he got a bit of bravery about himself to run forward, he did ok.  He didn’t actually have to do any defending today so it was a good game for him to come in for. None of the players who emerge from our academy are going to be the real deal in Premier League terms straight away.  They are getting minutes and they will improve but they are not to be considered as potential regular starters as yet.

Elsewhere, as mentioned earlier, Che Adams had an eventful half, mixing up very good hold-up play, bad luck and missed chances. The lad needs to start hitting the net with some of the simpler chances he gets presented with. He honestly could’ve scored four today but the chances all passed him by either through a lack of strikers instinct in the box (being on his heels) or through decent defending. He is still our best option at front to partner the King of the Scummers so I hope he starts the last two games.

What can you say about Danny Ings - 20 goals from open play in the Premier League.  The fact that he's the first to 20 since James Beattie puts it into context somewhat when you consider the high regard that Sir Rickie Lambert, Graziano Pelle and Sadio Mane are held in and they didn't get near that number.

“I want to win trophies at Spurs” Hojbjerg had a very strange match. He was good for a bit and then crap for a bit at right back and then he was good for a bit and then crap for a bit in midfield.  Some great passes and some attempts at looking like he didn’t know how to kick a ball.  It looks like the situation with him is gathering pace with Everton ready to bid actual money, which might make the Levy masterplan of paying nothing a bit less likely to succeed.  If Hojbjerg moves to Everton, I expect Levy will shithouse us on KWP - we are playing it cool on that score at the moment but there is no way on earth we would not be interested in buying him unless we already have a deal agreed elsewhere for a right back.

Back to tonight's game and you can tell Brighton we are absolutely delighted with the point which makes it all but a mathematical certainty that I will stay up to struggle again near the bottom next year. Ralph was pleased enough with the point bearing in mind we had played just three days earlier but was understandably pissed that we didn’t win it bearing in mind the amount of chances we had in the second half.

Next up is a trip to the Vitality Tinpot Blue Rinse Arena to play Bournemouth. They have to beat us or else they are getting relegated on Sunday and if my sources are correct, the way Bournemouth over-celebrated after they beat us at St Mary’s, hasn’t been forgotten.

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