Premier League Match 38 - Southampton 3 Sheffield United 1

"But Boss, We're Going to Look Fucking Stupid Doing This With No Fans"

And so this season finally ends with the visit of Sheffield United to an empty St Mary‘s. As I write, Sky are sorting out their schedules for the final Sunday of the season and I’m sure that the race for 11th will be on the priority channels. We will guarantee 11th place if we get a better result than Everton get against Bournemouth at Goodison Park. I guess that Bournemouth have a little bit of motivation for their own purposes.

Sheffield United have been one of the stories of the season, coming straight out of the Championship and for a long time, looking like they were going to finish high enough to qualify for the Europa league. That particular dream has died a little bit over the last few weeks but in all honesty, that probably won’t be a bad thing in the long term. Manager Chris Wilder, a former Saints apprentice no less, should be manager of the year. He won’t be of course but if you judge a manager on getting the most out of what he’s got available then Wilder would certainly be the man.

There are other Saints connections as well with Billy Sharp of course being their club captain, though he doesn’t often seem to be in the starting line-up these days. I will always see it as a bit of a black mark against Nigel Adkins that he never gave Billy Sharp a chance in the Premier League when we got promoted in 2012 but I guess sometimes you just have to make decisions on a player. One player I never ever saw as a Premier League player is David McGoldrick, who ironically, usually keeps Sharp out of the team. McGoldrick had the misfortune of having to carry the goalscoring burden in the infamous Poortvliet / Wotte season when we got relegated from the Championship. He was sold to raise funds after our ignominious fall into administration. I don’t think anyone thought he was particularly brilliant but he’s certainly done incredibly well to have the career that he has had and especially to be a regular Premier League starter. For us, he was the main striker in a shite team so it can’t have been easy for the then 19-year-old.

We won 1-0 at Bramall Lane early on in the season, after which I expressed an opinion that they would be relegated.  This is why I never make any money out of gambling.

During the week, the Pierre Hojbjerg transfer story has gathered pace this week. It looks like Saints accepted a bid from Everton and Spurs and Levy are still playing silly bastards because they know that Pierre actually wants to join them. As I’ve said before, good luck to the guy who has always given 100% whenever he has put a Saints shirt on despite wanting to leave. No, not you Virgil. What I want out of this is for the player to leave as soon as possible and for Saints to reinvest the money in the playing squad and that includes securing Kyle Walker-Peters. Personally, I don’t give a shit where Pierre ends up.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we managed to do the KWP deal separately and up front, so the Pierre deal can play out without Levy holding all the cards.

Anyway, with the new season announced to be starting in mid September, all of this transfers stuff is going to happen fairly quickly so mercifully, it’s a smaller window where we have to put up with every ITK in the book, speculating wildly with an air of authority.

Ralph names the expected team for today with the only surprise being Vestergaard in the team and Bednarek on the bench.  I guess that he’s not 100%. Jan is joined on the bench by the usual suspects and Dan N’Lundulu is this weeks ‘yet to make an appearance’ academy player.  McGoldrick isn’t in the 18 for The Blades and so Billy Sharp is picked to partner McBurnie up front.

Saints start brightly and attack which ends with Armstrong finding Danny Ings and Ings getting brought down on the edge of the box but the ref is not having any of it. The Blades pay on on whilst we appeal and a ball down our left hand side allows Billy Sharp to give Vestergaard a 5 yard start and still beat him to the ball and then muscle away from him and bear down on goal. It looks for all the world that Sharp is going to score but McCarthy stands up very well to block it for a corner.  Sadly, it's a crystal clear indication of Vestergaard's limitations and weaknesses... outpaced by 34 year old Billy Sharp who was never quick anyway.

It’s a short lived reprieve though as from the Blades next attack, ex-Skate Stevens crosses the ball in from the left hand side, Vestergaard takes his eye off the ball under a challenge from Sharp and it goes through his legs, wrong footing Bertrand who has lost Lundstram who easily knocks into the net for 1-0.  Another shit goal added to the catalogue of shit goals conceded at St Mary’s this season.

There is another blow as Armstrong can’t run off a knock so Smallbone is on.  KWP then fucks up and gives the ball straight to a Blades player and away goes Billy Sharp again through the inside left channel. This time he gets his head up and picks out Lundstram at the back post and his point blank blast at the goal is brilliantly saved by McCarthy.

The rest of the first half is spent with us playing at testimonial pace trying to find our way past the massed deep defence of Sheffield United and predictably, getting nowhere despite Redmond's best efforts. We reach half time without having made Henderson do anything with his gloves.

The second-half starts with more intent and the ball is pinging around in midfield without anybody really doing anything deliberately. Danny Ings mis-controls and Sheffield United midfielder Berge slides in for a tackle on Smallbone and accidentally pokes the ball through to Che Adams. There doesn’t seem to be any danger at all but Che takes the shot really early and it flies past Henderson at his near post. Really good opportunist goal and really bad goalkeeping from the man hoping to be in goal for Manchester United next season.  Che is on fire.  Revolution.

Suddenly, the game has completely changed with Saints picking up a gear and passing it quickly through midfield. A ball back from Ings allows Smallbone to try first time left foot curler which would’ve taken out someone in the crowd, if only anyone had been there.

Having made two really good saves in the first half and seeing us get back into the game and be the better side, Alex McCarthy then had a massive brain fart and passes the ball straight to Billy Sharp. Unlike Nketiah a few weeks ago, Sharp dithers is on the ball and Romeu comes crunching in to clatter everything and we survive.

Five minutes later and Sharp's dithering in front of goal comes back to haunt him as Saints build, despite some very hefty Blades challenges with JWP finding KWP out on the right and the player we hope to be signing pretty soon after the season ends, runs at the end of the edge of the penalty area cuts across, smashes it left footed, hits a Sheffield United defender in the stomach and poleaxes him and Che Adams takes one touch before smashing into the net to make it for 2-1.  Really good finish.  Che is on fire.  Revolution.

A feature of these Restart games has been our fitness and it’s really weird but the Blades have noticeably completely gone. They’re not getting back nearly as quickly or attacking with an intent whatsoever and it’s just a case of whether we can get another goal to put this to bed. The excellent Redmond carries a ball down the left hand side and feeds into Ings who takes a shocking touch back inside but the but the ball  breaks to Redmond who hits the keeper.  Fuck! Oh, hang on a minute, the ref’s given a penalty because Ings has been taken out by Norwood as he passed the ball.   Saints and penalties have not been a good combination this season but it’s Danny Ings again.  Please don’t stutter, please don’t stutter, just hit the fucking thing, bang, 3-1, that’s how you fucking do it.

Shane Long is on for Adams which is a bit of an odd one. We are 3-1 up with 10 minutes to go and we’ve got a young centre forward on the bench who hasn’t made his debut yet.  Get him on…. Maybe Ralph isn’t the sentimental type and wants them to earn it and this is proved when Obafemi comes on for Romeu for the last couple of minutes.

The referee blows his whistle to bring the worlds’ longest football season to an end and it’s been a very nice end to the season for Saints with an unbeaten seven match run to finish things off.

It didn’t look terribly clever at half time when in truth, we could have been completely out of the game. it looked like another one of those games where we give away a shit goal against a team that is content to just defend but once more, we showed we are made of sterner stuff these days and to be honest, we played them off the park in the second half and totally deserved to win. Our fitness again shone through as the Blades looked totally gassed out in the second half. Che Adams getting the goal just after the restart was the turning point of the game and from then on there was really no doubt we were going to win. We had the one shaky moment at 1-1 when McCarthy, for reasons unknown passed the ball straight to Billy Sharp but we had that bit of luck today whereby we got away with a couple of defensive mistakes.

Overall, McCarthy had a very good game apart from the one aberration, KWP was again excellent and will hopefully not be his last game in a red and white shirt and Romeu and JWP bossed the midfield. Romeu has really stepped up since Pierre stopped being picked to start games and he has shown that there is a place for him next season, which was looking in doubt for a while. Redmond had a really good game and overall, has had a decent end to the season and he was lively again today, playing with his head up and causing all sorts of problems down the left flank, especially in the second half. Upfront, Che is again showing the difference that confidence makes to a striker with two expertly taking goals. Danny Ings didn’t have the best of games but again showed what a gifted player he is and he showed that he can take penalties properly.  The Danny and Che strike force for next season is looking very promising indeed.

Next Years Strikeforce, Next Years Right-Back

Sheffield United have had a brilliant season but today illustrated the problem is that they have with not having a clinical striker. We could’ve been dead and buried at half time but Billy Sharp let us off the hook. It will be interesting to see how the Blades get on next season. I hope they do well because Chris Wilder is a breath of fresh air and it’s great to have a totally down to earth manager in the top half of the Premier league.

Elsewhere, the main issues of the day were that Bournemouth won at Everton but still got relegated because Villa got a point at West Ham.  I'm sure that the more special Bournemouth fans will miss their manufactured rivalry and will maybe start one up with someone like QPR.  Still, they won the St Mary's Trophy this year so I'm sure that they're happy and at least they have a shiny new ground as an investment for the future with all the millions they earned from five years in the Premier League.... oh wait.... still at the Dean Court Vitality Shed... apparently they invested in electronic turnstiles though so it's not all bad.  Watford also got relegated because their owners are fuckwits and they deserve it. The other issues were about the Champions League qualification and go and look it up on the internet because I don’t give a fuck.

Maybe we will next year though (joking!). With a few more additions there is a real chance that we could be seriously decent next season. I’m not a big fan of stats but one that I found interesting was that since the 9-0, we have got two more points than Leicester and Leicester finished fifth this season. That is the challenge - to do it over an entire season.

It’s currently looking encouraging that supporters may make it back in the grounds before too long but without the fans, I think Project Restart has been a surprising success. It has been good that every single game has been on television and this is something that I hope is continued for next season. The five substitutes rule can get in the fucking bin and I don’t really care if the water breaks stay or not, though it does seem to suit us with us having a proactive manager.

The season finishes with us in 11th place which is a tremendous achievement bearing in mind where we have been at various points of the season. In these financially challenging times, the extra prize money will be most welcome and it’s lovely to end the season with the whole club, from Martin Semmens on down, seemingly heading in the right direction.  Oh for a good transfer window.

Roll on approximately eight weeks time, when we all start up again.  With every finished season we are one step closer to the point where 9-0 doesn't get mentioned.  I'm actually quite liking it now though as it's become a positive - we lost 9-0 and we still beat you.