Carabao Cup 2nd Round - Southampton 0 Brentford 2

 

Amazing that he scored with that tight marking.

The biggest surprise to me about the Carabao Cup this year is that the competition was going ahead at all. When Covid19 first hit and we were all wondering how the season would be completed and I made a totally unthought out prediction that the Carabao Cup would be scrapped for this year and that would be the end of the competition going forward as it would never come back... but as usual, it appears that I was wrong.

Here we are then with a home draw in the second round against Brentford. I used to have this thing with a few mates that we always went to our first game in the League Cup, no matter where it was and we saw trips to such places as Scarborough, Rochdale and Gillingham. Of course, if it was a home game, we paid the reduced amount to go and watch the game at the Dell or at St Mary‘s. We of course don’t have a choice today but what we can do if we want is pay a tenner to watch a stream of the game on the Carabao website. I’m hearing that this official stream is one camera on the halfway line and it really doesn’t strike me as great value bearing in mind that Saints would probably charge a tenner or even less to get into this game if fans could be admitted. As I write, I still haven’t decided whether to pay the tenner or to fuck it off.

Brentford were very nearly a Premier League club this season but they bottled the play-offs against Fulham, just as they bottled their chances of finishing in the top two when West Brom were faltering in the run in. As is usually the case, you prove you have some good players and finish near the top of the Championship but if you don’t make it into the Premier League, then you get pillaged as you have drawn attention to the fact that you have good players. Ollie Watkins has already departed in what is a quite frankly insane £28 million move to Aston Villa. This is not Watkins fault of course and it’s not Brentford’s fault and let’s hope that all the money doesn’t get swallowed up in paying for their new ground and they can put together a team which is capable of challenging to get into the Premier League at the end of this year.

We have seen mass rotation from Saints in these kind of games before but I don’t see it happening today because it will be more valuable to get minutes in the legs of the players who didn’t perform particularly well against Crystal Palace. I can see Fraser Forster and Moussa Djenepo being given a start but not much else.

In the event we went with a full first choice team with only Will Smallbone being left out from Saturday, to be replaced with Nathan Tella, making his full first team debut on the right wing. It is good to get confirmation that we are taking the game seriously.  Brentford have changed 6 from their last league game.  An indication that this should be relatively comfortable if we are motivated for it.

We are playing a higher line than usual and it’s made obvious by the fact that McCarthy is sprinting out of his box and back like he’s on a fucking bungee rope.  Out to right wing to clatter a forward and give a free kick away and then out to the left wing to pass it straight to a forward, necessitating Stephens to get back behind him to clear the shot.

There’s a wonderfully simple but superb move as Stephens, complete with new 4 year contract in his pocket, pings a diagonal out to Bertrand, who produces an exquisite first time volleyed cross to Ings but the main man seems to misread it as he slides in and can’t get a touch.

We then create another really good chance but it’s not for us, as we produce a slightly altered re-enacment of the goal we conceded at Palace.  This time it’s Bertrand taking a throw back to Redmond who made a balls of it and then passed it blind across the pitch, straight to a Brentford player who goes on and smashes it goalwards but luckily, McCarthy manages to block it.

There’s more superb play down the left between Bertrand and Redmond which Bertrnd teeing up Adams with an open goal from 8 yards which he side footed onto the post via the keepers fingertips.  “Unlucky” says most “Absolute shite” says I.  It is an appalling miss and sure as shit, up the other end we go.

Brentford win a corner and in it comes from the left.  Nørgaard makes a straight run from 20 yards out, meets it on the 6 yard line and thunders the header into the net.  Good corner, great header, absolute wank defending.  Bertrand was supposed to be marking him and just didn’t fancy it and stepped away from him and having all our best headers of the ball lined up on the 6 yard line in front of McCarthy, again proves to be a complete and utter fucking waste of time as none of them attack the ball.  It’s been the same for a while now.  You drop a corner in between the penalty spot and the 6 yard line and we’re toast.  This zonal / man-marking hybrid is bullshit.  Maybe get the players who are best at heading the ball marking the players as they’re the ones that put the ball in the net, not the empty space.

Straight from the kick off and KWP breaks forward, Adams gets to the line and pulls it back and there is Danny Ings to launch it over the bar.  Another bad miss it has to be said.

There  a 5 minutes to half time and we are in the territory of get in, get Ralph to sort it out, turn it around 2^nd half.  Instead of that though, it’s a good move down the Brentford left, they work the ball back into the middle and Dasilva arrives unmarked and side-foots it low to give McCarthy no chance, showing Adams exactly how to do it from a much more difficult chance from further out. To be fair it’s a really good goal but the move started with Romeu misjudging a header and heading it straight up and then KWP did the exact same thing.

Half time and this is looking a bit desperate.  A bit like on Saturday I’m looking at our bench options and realising that we don’t have any game changers on there.

You sense that we need to score in the first 10 minutes to have a shout and it doesn’t happen.  Adams tries an overhead kick and hooks it well wide and Stephens meets a Bertrand corner and at least forces the keeper to make a save as he tips it over the bar.

Again there is this feeling that it’s not happening – Redmond, Tella and Adams are replaced with Djenepo, Obafemi and Long but nothing much happens – by that I mean that the half chances fall to Long who gets smothered by the keeper on one and then plays a fucking air shot when 6 yards out on another.

Well.

That was fucking shit.

Questions arising are ones like, is it Stuart Armstrong alone that makes this team tick?.... are these group of players as good as we thought they were?... why do we have so much less intensity than we did at the tail end of last season?.... why are we playing with a higher defensive line than last season when we don’t have the pace at the back?  I’d expected us to win relatively comfortably tonight because I’d just written off the Palace game as a bit of a sluggish one off which would act as a wake-up call. It’s ok for fans to think like that but not players.  Too many not really up for doing the hard yards tonight.

Ralph answered one of the questions in his press conference after the game when he basically said that the players have come back after this break without the same levels of fitness they had after lockdown. He also stated that we have to be very fit and run more than other teams to be successful, which everyone knows. He is also clearly frustrated with the small squad and the lack of additions to it which in turn means that he doesn’t have the options to leave players out.

A certain amount of blame has to rest with Ralph, the management and coaches though. We all gave them credit when we came back absolutely flying for Project Restart but now they have to take the criticism when we appear to have come back ill-prepared. Are they guilty of over trusting the players to look after themselves or is it just bad planning? Is it ok for Ralph to say that he hasn’t had chance to coach the team and then send them out to play a different way than before with the high line.  Looks like he saw Bayern Munich win the Champions League playing like that and decided to give it a go here - without having time to coach the team in it. More questions. Answers needed.

Is it easy to write off being knocked out of this competition early as a good thing in a “concentrate on the league“ kind of way.  This is bollocks because we have absolutely no fucking chance of winning the league, whereas we had a sniff in this competition and of course, now we don’t. It’s also never a good thing to get turned over by a Championship club at home and this should not be happening to us, especially when they rest half of their league starting 11 and we put full strength side out. It does happen though if the players are not 100% on it which seems to be the case. Brentford probably didn’t even want to fucking win either.

We have a whole four days to get this right before we play Tottenham at home. Win that one and most won’t mind too much but if we start with a third defeat in a row then all the preseason optimism is going to be completely gone And the mashing of the refresh button to see if we sign anyone before the end of the transfer window, is going to get more and more desperate.