Premier League Match 10 - Southampton 2 Manchester United 3

 

It Was All Going So Well....

One of the myths that persists in the Premier League is that Manchester United always struggle and they play away at Southampton. There were three seasons in a row in the mid 1990s when this was the case but is it really the case anymore? Apparently, the last time we beat them at home was 2003 with a goal by James Beattie with an 87th minute header. Of course, this fact and the fact that they always get the grey shirts game and the 6-3 game mixed up, shows how piss poor for the mainstream sports media are when it comes to teams from outside the big six. I always have to stop myself a little bit when I say big six these days. You can say big six but you can’t say top six because out of the big six, Manchester City, Arsenal and today’s opponents Manchester United are floundering in mid-table, trailing behind Everton, Leicester and wait for it… Southampton.  It won’t last.  Well, maybe it will with Arsenal.

Our decent start has prompted us being highlighted in the media a little bit, in much the same way that we were when Ronald Koeman was in charge. Ralph’s work on the Saints FC Playbook that he has been instrumental in devising, was the subject of quite a large Sky Sports article the other day. I always feel slightly uneasy when we are praising the undoubtably praiseworthy stuff that goes on behind the scenes. The last time we did that, in the aforementioned Koeman era, was when Les Reed was director of football and he seemed to be on the news every day, talking about how great we were and The Southampton Way and all that, which of course preceeded signing shit managers and shit players and trying to get relegated. I guess the message is to stay humble. It is however, quite nice that we are being recognised and pretty universally liked.

So, today’s visitors are Manchester United who are largely being seen to be having a poor season but if you drill into it a little bit, you can see that they’ve only played three away league games and they won them all. This will not be easy because of that and because of course, at the end of the day, they are Manchester United, with a huge squad of players that cost an eye-watering amount of money.   Even without knowing the teams, you can more or less say for certain that the lowest paid player they have on show today, will be earning more than our highest earner.  They should beat us of course and if they work as hard as we do, then they will beat us.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer somehow reminding charge despite never really looking like he was going to return the club to the glory days. I struggle to think of a single Premier League manager he could replace at their club and do a better job. He seems to be fishing and throwing a lot of shit at the wall and hoping some of it sticks. Last year they did quite well with the midfield three of Matic, Pogba and Bruno Fernandes and all the praise was for the front three of Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial and Mason Greenwood. A thumping home defeat by Spurs this season and Ole has gone all mega pragmatic with the likes of Scott McTominay and Fred in the team. Fred is thought of as some sort of makeweight squad player but then you look and see that he actually cost £52 million quid. Whatever team they put out, they will have some ridiculous players on the bench like Pogba, Van der Beek and Edinson Cavani. One player won’t be anywhere near the match day 18 is Luke Shaw who picked up a muscle injury which Ole used to try and justify having five substitutes every game - as if Luke Shaw never picked up a muscle injury before when he was running down the road chasing a fucking hotdog van.  I bet Shaw can’t believe that Marcus Rashford is campaigning for food for kids and not food for him.

Talking of five subs, Jürgen fucking Klopp has been getting right on my tits, complaining after every game when Liverpool pick up another injury. Today it was an injury to James Milner, a 33-year-old midfielder who has hardly played for the last three years because Jürgen doesn’t rotate the squad. The competition has started and everyone knew what the rules were at the start, so fuck off Jürgen.

There was some positive news from Ralph on Danny Ings injury and it looks like he will be back for the Brighton game. From past experience, I would expect him to be 100% fit and ready to start that game.  Today though, with Nathan Redmond still being unavailable, we had the same team as we had against Wolves with Theo Walcott given another run upfront with Che Adams.  United gave Van Der Beek his first start in a midfield four with Greenwood and Rashford up front.

Away we go and United look up for it with Matic playing a harmless looking ball forward but Vestergaard and McCarthy between them, leave it to each other and Greenwood is in round the goalkeeper but with the angle against him put it into the side netting. That was lucky and he really should have scored.

United’s energy and diamond midfield is proving difficult for us and JWP and Romeu are getting over run at the centre of midfield. We do begin to get a foothold in the game after about 20 minutes and win a corner on the left hand side off of Lindelof. JWP sends it to the near post and there is Bednarek in a cluster of players, who rises and flicks it past De Gea for a totally undeserved 1-0 but we’ll take it thanks very much.

United seem quite rocked by our goal and we start to come into the game a bit more and find a bit of time to knock the ball about. However, that all goes to shit as we knock it back to McCarthy who decides that it’s a good time to pull out one of his occasional nightmare passes into midfield and gives a straight to Greenwood who advances forward to the edge of the box before crashing it goalwards and McCarthy pulls off the sprawling save but it goes straight to Fernandes and whilst we wait for the inevitable goal for the Portuguese, McCarthy spreads himself to pull off a brilliant save and somehow we survive. I don’t really know what to say about this because it’s an incredible save which arose because of an absolutely shite bit of play by the same player. Anyway, we march on, as the advertising slogan says, 1-0 up.

We make the most of our let off and attack again with Djenepo attacking the left hand side of the penalty area and the clumsy Fred gets beaten and then rather than just accepting it, seeming to take it as a personal insult and hacked down the Saints winger to give us a free kick right on the edge of the box. You know Mr.Fred, you don’t want to be doing that against us. This is quite wide as free kicks go but JWP steps up and spins it over the wall and away from De Gea and about an inch inside the post. It’s an absolutely brilliant freekick again and to add insult to injury, or rather to add injury to letting another goal, De Gea appears to have smacked his knee against the post.

We are 2-0 up from really are only two incursions into the Manchester United penalty area and it’s nearly three as KWP tries a speculative shot which spins off a defender and clips the outside of the post.  United seem shellshocked and we get to half-time relatively comfortably. United are clearly frustrated and we start getting a few theatrics, particularly for Van der Beek who cannot get tackled without screaming in pain when there is absolutely nothing wrong with him. Get on with it you dickhead.

What’s impressive for me is the way that we have learned how to play against the diamond midfield and switching the ball wide to Djenepo and Armstrong and then driving forward quickly is something we absolutely have to keep doing.  Half time and so far so good, on the scoresheet at least but the first 15 minutes of the second-half are going to be huge.  Ole decides that it’s time to put on his best line-up and so Cavani is on for Greenwood and you could argue that Henderson on for De Gea makes them stronger as well.

At the start start the second half Van der Beek stops screaming like a small child watching a jump scare in a horror film and wins the ball off of KWP and puts Rashford away down the left. He looks well offside but we have to play on and he decides against giving Cavani a tap in cos it’s much better to drill the ball straight at McCarthy who again pulls off an excellent block.

With KWP having lost it for that chance, it’s now Bertrand’s turn to lose the ball on the halfway line and United get moving with Fred who avoids a tackle from Vestergaard to find Cavani down the right and the Uruguayan gets his head up and crosses to Bruno Fernandes who is 10 yards out and unmarked and guess what happens? One touch, turn, bang, 2-1. Shit.

This goal has an incredibly deflating impact in my house. You can see United coming into the game and you can see us not handling Cavani terribly well. You can also see us giving the ball away too often because we’re not driving forward enough and as soon as the ball hits the net, you sense that United smell blood.

It’s all United now and even Wan-Bissaka, not known for doing anything in the opposition half, gets forward on the right hand side and dinks over a nice cross on to Cavani’s head and his flicked header drops about a foot wide of the far post. One thing is for sure, they are not going to continue to miss and we are either going to wake up to these warnings or lose. We seem to have about half of the energy that we had in the first half. United players suddenly got time to get their heads up and pick passes forward and cross the ball with no pressure on the ball.

Cavani gets on the end of another cross in the box and swivels and smashes it over the bar. For some reason, mainly because Cavani appealed for it and he can’t be arsed to haul his fat arse back to the half way line for a goal kick, John Moss decides that it’s a corner despite it not hitting anybody.  Jan Bednarek appears to have got injured though in trying to stop him and so we have to try and defend the resulting corner without one of our central defenders on the pitch, which is one of the more stupid rules that we have a football these days. Luckily Fernandes is feeling generous and produces a very shit corner about ankle height to the near post.

70 minutes and it’s time for some fresh legs and it’s probably time for Djenepo to come off but I’m finding myself wondering what the fucking hell Shane Long is going to bring to the party. The TV cameras pan to Dave Watson giving Shane his instructions on an iPad. I wonder what it says? Run around and chase the ball perhaps.  Anyway, on he comes to hopefully add something… anything.

In comes another corner and McCarthy punches it, not entirely convincingly out to the edge of the box. It’s drilled back in by Bruno Fernandes and Cavani throws himself at the ball to deflect into the net to make it to 2-2.  The defence has kind of pushed out and Vestergaard has gone back to defend behind McCarthy after his punch and that left Cavani in acres.  Bollocks.

The one-way traffic towards our goal was relieved for a second as Bertrand got down the left and slings over a cross which is headed straight up in the air and Che Adams brings it down turns and squirts a shot just wide of the far post.

Diallo is on for Armstrong as the 90 minutes are up but there is still this crushing feeling of inevitability about what is about to happen. United win a free kick in the centre of midfield from a tired looking Romeu challenge on Fernandes and it’s so easy. The freekick his tapped left to Rashford and he swings in the cross and Cavani gets in front of our defenders to flick it into the net. Bednarek lost him and Vestergaard can’t get close enough. Even though it was inevitable, it’s still somewhat gutting coming as it does in the 92nd minute. Ralph sends on N’Lundulu for KWP and we have one chance to get the ball in the box on the right hand side but Long can’t even kick the fucking ball more than ten yards when he was aiming at the far post and it gets easily cleared and that’s the end of that. Fuck.

First things first. Over the 95 minutes, we did not deserve to get anything out of that game. We just didn’t do enough either creating chances in attack or defending well enough to stop the stream of chances that United created. Consequently, I have absolutely no complaints about losing that game on the balance of play. It’s a bit of a wake-up call to anyone who thought we were going to breeze through the season. Our squad and strength in depth is not quite there yet and of course, when you compare to what Manchester United have got. In Edinson Cavani, they have got a genuine world-class striker to bring off the bench to change the game. Manchester United players tend to get hyped to high heaven and I’ve seen Marcus Rushford and Mason Greenwood being called this and that but Cavani is a different level altogether. It doesn’t matter that is 33 because, much as in the same way as Zlatan Ibrahimović, pace has never been his thing. It’s the cleverness of his movement and the speed of thought that sets them apart. I’ve seen people saying that we left him free and we didn’t pick him up. Well, players that good tend to find themselves free quite a lot because they are so good that they find spaces at the exact right time at the ball arrives. That’s what makes a top level player as opposed to a good one.  I remember first noticing Cavani in 2014 when he played for Uruguay against England at the World Cup and he did exactly the same job in that game as he did today.

As for our substitute striker - no footballing ability whatsoever. He is not the reason we lost of course but all he is doing at the moment is taking minutes away from the younger players who will benefit much more and couldn’t possibly offer less. He looks more like a competition winner playing in a testimonial with every passing week.

I felt that we stop playing football in the second-half. Whether it is because we were 2-0 up and trying to defend it I don’t know but with the exception of Vestergaard and JWP, we stopped looking to pass the ball forward and we caused our own problems in that respect, continually gifting United the ball. There seemed to be a lack of movement for us in the second half. Whether that was because we got tired and stopped running or because we just buckled under the pressure that Manchester United were putting on us, I don’t know.

Consequently, we tried to play our way out of trouble but when you have no movement then you keep losing the ball. It was notable to watch KWP struggle in the second half because it’s not in his nature to just clear the ball but as the options that he had were so limited, he ended up waiting for an option and losing it quite a lot. Our wide midfield players didn’t give JWP and Romeu much help in the second half JWP in particular was hamstrung by the booking he picked up in the first half.

If I have one criticism of Ralph it is over the use of Diallo. One of the things that were said about him when he joined was that he give us an option should Romeu be on a yellow card for example. I feel that today, in hindsight, he should have been used to bolster the struggling midfield a lot earlier than he was. 

There weren’t any major injustices with the referee. Sky were trying to make a drama out of nothing in the first half and Rashford kicked JWP in the penalty area and went over and they were trying to give him a penalty, though I will admit it’s always a relief when it doesn’t get given. It wasn’t picked up by the commentators or by VAR there was a foul on KWP for the third goal where he was clearly held by Matic to stop in closing down Rashford which allowed him an extra second to whip the ball over for the winning goal.

You have to say it was a bit of a miracle that we were 2-0 up at half-time with a couple of bits of magic from JWP from a corner and the freekick which was absolutely ridiculous – World class no less.  Other than that though we created nothing but half chances and in the second half, substitute keeper Dean Henderson literally had two shots straight at him and that was it.

As I always say, it is no disgrace to get beat by the big boys as they should beat us but it’s always disappointing when you’ve had a 2-0 lead.  We went through a phase a few years ago where we basically just used to turn up and get beat 3-0 by all the big clubs and it was a complete waste of everyone’s effort.  It hurts more to lose a close one but at least we competed.

Our defence has become pretty tight against the rank-and-file teams and we don’t let in many but they get found out against really good clubs.  If it’s only the likes of Werner and Cavani that really give us major problems, we can be grateful that not too many clubs have players of that calibre.  Ralph was quite buoyant afterwards despite the last minute setback.  Unlike Klopp he wasn't demanding more subs but maybe we could start a campaign for games to be half an hour shorter.

Onward for a game against a team that has Danny Welbeck up front and a trip to Brighton where it looks like we will be playing in front of 2000 spectators.  Things are looking up.

Premier League Match 9 - Wolves 1 Southampton 1

 

THEEEEEEEOOOOOOO!

The international break has happened but it ultimately was quite short on interest as far as Southampton was concerned with Danny Ings and JWP pulling out of the England squad injured. Stuart Armstrong was in the Scotland squad who managed to qualify through winning the joke "Nations League being shit Play-offs".  They beat Serbia on penalties to go with their semi-final win on penalties. Stuart didn’t actually get on the pitch though. Joking aside, Scotland won’t give a rats arse how they qualified. The rules were there at the start of the tournament and they took advantage of them and have qualified and fair play to them. Rumour has it that they are interested in calling up Che Adams because he has some 17th-century relative who went to Scotland on a day out once.

England played three games in the break. An utterly pointless and irresponsible friendly against Republic of Ireland and a Nations League game at home to Iceland. Both of these countries are absolutely shite these days and both those games resulted in comfortable wins. Sandwiched in between that was a game against Belgium, in which we got annihilated 2-0. The game was over after 20 minutes and despite Belgium playing the whole of the rest of the game in second gear, we didn’t force their keeper into a save. For me, Gareth Southgate is failing horribly. We have decent enough players so that it’s virtually impossible to not twat the minnows out of sight but when it comes to playing a half decent organise side, we haven’t got a clue. Southgate basically plays with seven defenders and no balance between defence and attack. With the tournament being postponed, it does give him an outside chance of sorting it out but personally, I can’t see it. He’s going to going to the tournament with a back three of Kyle Walker, Eric Dier and Harry Maguire, with Pickford in goal, so whilst all the attacking players we have gives us high expectations, the defence and goalkeeper will not.

Saints action starts again with a trip to Wolves to play a team who seem to have found it a little bit more difficult this season especially in the goalscoring stakes, only having eight in the first nine games. They have only let in nine though, despite four of those being in one game at West Ham so the defence, marshalled by the excellent Conor Coady is going to be a tough nut to crack. They still worry me going forward though and in Adama Traore, even though he hasn’t done anything this season, they have a striker who is similar to Michail Antonio at West Ham, who is built to give us nightmares. All pace power and strength.

I’ve written before about the Jorge Mendes connection and how it has enabled them to get numerous Portuguese internationals in through the door for not very much money. They seem to have been on the wrong end of it this season though with Diogo Jota moving to Liverpool and proving to be a big loss so far and Matt Doherty who went to Spurs to play for Mourinho, for not much money, when Mourinho is also managed by Mendes, as is Doherty himself, as is Nino Espirito Santo, the Wolves manager. It stinks and apparently there is no conflict of interests in this according to the powers that be that matter, so no point in moaning about it.

Good news for Saints in that Ryan Bertrand is fit so I would anticipate him coming into the team in place of Jack Stephens and the only choice seems to be on the left wing where it will be one of Redmond or Djenepo. I would anticipate it being Redmond with Djenepo having travelled to Mali for the international break. It would appear from the pre-game press conferences that all of our internationals have come back in one piece. It’s going to be a very tough and tight game today but one I believe that we can go into without any inferiority complex and we should be looking to get a positive result from. Whereas our last game was on a Friday and we knew we went top of the league if we won it, this time we are playing on Monday and we can go as high as third if we win.  The top-of-the-league thing proved one thing in that Spurs fans don’t understand a club like ours and our self-deprecating sense of humour about it.  We knew we were top because we played on Friday and were taking the piss so all the gloating at our expense from Spurs fans when they went top on Sunday, was quite frankly embarrassing.

The team news was mainly that Redmond had a knock and Djenepo starts – not wanting to be a conspiracy theorist but it’s strange that the one player who could be sulking about being left out, is injured.  Big news is that Conor Coady is unavailable for Wolves and the positive Covid test that they had in the week was Roman Saiss.  Traore, resembling an American Footballer with the pads sewn inside his skin, starts the game.  He doesn’t work out of course.  We’re on Sky today so it’s Alan Smith on commentary.  I wonder if he’s learned a few of our players names since the Everton game.

Interestingly, considering that they never do it, Wolves have lined up with 4 at the back which should give us the chance to get at the full-backs, who are very attack minded (Semedo) and very defensively naïve (Ait-Nouri).  The first decent chance goes to Wolves though as Bednarek plays an airshot and Romeu is forced to pile into Podence and give away free kick on the edge of the box. It does look like he actually played the ball but having given the free kick I’m amazed that Andre Marriner has not booked him.  Moutinho steps up and crashes the free kick straight into the wall.  It rebounds to Semedo who hits it, forcing McCarthy into a decent low save and then he has to instinctively throw up a shoulder to deflect the next effort from Dendoncker over the bar.  Shit that was close – all from Jan’s airshot.

Saints first decent effort involves build-up down the left between Bertrand and Djenepo and eventually Armstrong cleverly slides Walcott through but he’s running out of angle and Patricio saves it effortlessly enough.  We do go very close from our next attack as after more patient build-up, Adams plays a superb ball through through to Armstrong on the edge of the box who gets there before Patricio, who gives it up for dead as it rolls just wide of the post.  I’m on my knees on the floor – being an armchair fan hurts your knees.

Traore is starting to give us problems in that he is running past various comical efforts from Djenepo and Bertrand to tackle him but Vestergaard comes over, clearly wins the ball and Traore hits the deck, winning a free kick. Moutinho’s kick is flicked goalwards by Podence and McCarthy again has to react well to push it over the bar. Good save once more

The Non-bodybuilder about to Hit the Deck Yet Again

Half-time and 0-0 and it’s an incredibly tight game and I'm struggling to see where a goal is going to come from. We haven’t had the ball up particularly well upfront and Walcott is struggling to have the impact that he had against Newcastle, albeit not entirely unexpectedly because Wolves are a much better team.

Wolves start the second half with a decent break down the left hand side and Podence find himself free on the left hand side but Vestergaard doesn’t let him switch it on to his right foot and his left footed drive as well saved again by McCarthy. If there was an away end it would be chanting “England’s Number One”.

On the hour mark we try and play out of defence and Vestergaard’s ball somewhat fortuitously bounces up in the air on the halfway line and JWP nods it to Armstrong who beats the powderpuff attempt to challenge by Ait-Nouri and is away down the right. Armstrong cuts in and feeds it across to Djenepo and he gets his head up and floats a lovely ball over the top of the Wolves defence to Adams.  Adams tries a cross which gets blocked and then fires it across again and finds Walcott at the back post who is totally unhindered by the sleeping Semedo and he knocks into the net for 1-0. Get the fuck in and the two Wolves full backs with the assist.

There is a huge moment five minutes later as McCarthy‘s launch downfield is superbly controlled by Adams and he turned and flighted a lovely ball over the top to put Walcott clean through and onside with just Patricio to beat and I am full of a lack of optimism and he unfortunately proves me right and puts it wide of the far post. Bollocks. Ralph has given it the full jump in the air in celebration and then come down with his head in his hands, probably shouting “fuck off” in whatever language came into his head of that particular time.

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

You know what’s coming next and it duly does. Saints play it out of defence and it’s all going well and the ball reaches Armstrong and he jinks past a couple of players before trying to beat a third and loses the ball. Eventually the ball finds its way to Jimenez on the edge of the box and he drills it across McCarthy and it crashes back off the post and for a microsecond it looks like we might have got away with it… but the rebound goes straight to Neto he finds the Netto with ease. 1-1. Bollocks.  We basically gave the ball away in our own half and Wolves did to us what we do to countless others.  It was poor from Armstrong to give it away but the defensive reaction from us wasn’t great either.

Marriner, who has refereed quite well so far, then decides to have a funny five minutes with Wolves upping the tempo and there are Saints players getting flattened all over the place but he just waves play on until Traore gets the ball and is totally taken out by a combination of JWP and Vestergaard. In comes the freekick from Moutinho and Jiménez bullets a header into the net but it is well offside and no need to get annoyed.

With 15 minutes to go, Ralph has decides that he’s had enough of watching Djenepo trying to tackle people from the wrong side and he’s off to be replaced by Long and a few minutes later Armstrong is off down the tunnel to be replaced by Diallo.  Saints have a couple of openings in the final few minutes with Diallo making a good break down the right and it was interesting to me that we crossed a last minute corner into the box with both the centre backs up, rather than settle for a draw.  A draw was what we got though.

First things first, a point away at Wolves is a good result. Overall, I’m perfectly happy with it and you have to say that our goalkeeper had a lot more to do then theirs did. However, we had that chance through Walcott which would’ve made it 2-0 which would’ve meant that we would’ve won the game. If we are looking to be having a really special season then its games like this one that need to be won, when we probably only deserve a point.

That very small moan aside, fair play to Wolves who pressed fairly high and were very difficult to pass through and that gave us difficulties when trying to play through midfield and made it a very intense game. We had issues today with a ball not sticking to the forward players and to be honest, I thought that Walcott was a candidate to be taken off just before he scored. It was great for him to score and that’s what the focus of the media was after the game, first Saints goal for fifteen years etc but…. that miss though?  It is a definite achilles heel that he has had throughout his career when he has just too much time to think about things.  When he went through I had the feeling I used to get whenever Bradley Wright-Phillips was clean through or like when Shane Long has half the pitch to run into, in that I never felt remotely optimistic that he was going to score and it was very unsurprising to me that it went wide of the post.

There were a few standout performance today for us, most notably Alex McCarthy who made a load of really good saves and had absolutely no chance on the goal that did beat him. It is becoming ridiculous that a Manchester United reserve goalkeeper who never plays, is in the England squad ahead of him at the moment. Not far behind McCarthy today was Jannik Vestergaard yet again – now firmly established as our first choice centre half, having been fourth in line at the start of the season when Salisu was signed. He had the additional worry today of having Traore playing down his side of the pitch but he managed him really well. I think the plan was obviously to not let Traore cut inside and just make him go wide the whole time because his ball into the box is usually shit so if he does get a cross away then it can usually be dealt with. Traore is always going to cause problems and he did batter Bertrand and Romeu out of the way a couple of times but overall his contribution was negligible.  

Che Adams deserves a mention as well because of the amount of work he did, again setting up the Walcott goal and his glorious chance to make it 2-0. He must’ve been delighted when Ralph decided to give him some help for the last 15 minutes by bringing on Shane Long who was about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.  One particular attempt to control a ball up to him with both knees was remarkable.  Maybe it’s time to start giving Dan N’Lundulu the last ten minutes in these games.

The more I think about it, the better the point gets.  JWP and Romeu both seemed slightly under par today but it was tough in the midfield today with Wolves having three good players in there in Neves, Moutinho and Dendoncker.  I think most fans of other teams would think that Ralph is a very likeable manager and I have to say the same about Nuno Espirito Santo he seems to have a great sense of humour about him and was very honest about the game and how good we were which was nice to hear from an opposition manager. He wasn’t just saying it to deflect away from his own side being poor like some managers do because Wolves were decent today and you can see why they do as well as they do.

Moving on and I expect us to be at full pelt next week when Manchester United come to St Mary’s.  It’ll be a good test of our newly acquired home form as they have a very good away record.  They can certainly be got at though and it’s a very good opportunity to show the world that we are a contender near the top of the league this season.

Premier League Match 8 - Southampton 2 Newcastle United 0

Drink It In

Newcastle at home on Friday night and because we are playing on Friday, if we can win tonight and we will be top of the league. You can see it now… this time last year they lost 9-0 and now they are top of the league… I bet the headline writers are rubbing their hands with glee. The only problem is, we are Southampton and we will probably fuck it up. Apparently, we haven’t been top in the Premier League-era and any time before that doesn’t count of course but we were top for about half an hour in 1988 I believe. Anyway, far too much has been spoken about it and I will save my talking about it until after the game and if we have won, I will be giving it the big one.

It’s a rarity for us to be the story instead of our opponents but the major story of this week has been Danny Ings and his knee injury. Initial reports suggested that it wasn’t too bad but apparently, a light training session the following day saw the knee swell up again and a further scan and it turns out that he’s got to have a minor operation and he will be out for 4 to 6 weeks. Bollocks. I say bollocks but I think most would’ve accepted that situation when the injury first happened and especially after Medical Twitter decreed that he was somewhere between having to have the leg amputate and dead.  Needless to say, our fans are creating Facebook hate groups and organising a militia against the player who was involved in the incident. I’m joking of course because we are not fucking idiots like those from the Red side of Merseyside.

Theo Walcott would be my choice to replace him up front because he is the closest that we have in terms of an intelligent thinking footballer. I know that Shane Long is usually the first name when it comes to replacement strikers but a feature of our attacking play recently has been the intelligent running off the ball and ‘intelligent running off the ball’ and ‘Shane Long’ don’t belong in the same sentence.  Sure, he runs but it’s mainly about chasing the ball. We will see what Ralph does though. He has other headaches with Ryan Bertrand injured and this is the one position that we don’t have any sort of natural replacement with Jake Vokins also injured. KWP has played left back before but do you move one player and create another problem or do you just slot someone in and make as few changes as possible. I think I would be tempted to crowbar Stephens in at left back, given that we have no left-footed alternative. You could always start like that and then swap them over if needs be. There is a chance though that Stephens will be needed to partner Vestergaard, in which case we’ll have to do something else. I guess it’s best to just shut the fuck up and see what happens.

Newcastle overachieved last year with a squad they had and Steve Bruce should take immense credit for that. They have however been a very very boring site to watch under Bruce and for the year before that under Rafa Benitez. There was some entertainment provided last year by Alan St Maximin who scored the winning goal here last year, when Yan Valery produced the mother of all fuck ups. They do have some relatively good players in forward positions with Callum Wilson and Ryan Fraser being signed from Bournemouth but their defenders are somewhat limited and so they are still not the best team to watch because they have to play deep to protect those guys. I like the look of Darlow in goal, who has come in for the injured Dubravka who was excellent last year. The previously mentioned Callum Wilson has looked a completely different player to the hopeless lard who didn’t move when he was playing for Bournemouth last season. In fact, he’s been so much better this season, it kind of raises questions about his attitude last year. He’s certainly scored the goals that Joelinton was supposed to score last year. He doesn’t get on the pitch much these days but they’ve still got our old nemesis Andy Carroll as well and he was always a fucking nightmare for us though we are better at dealing with that kind of basic route one threat these days.  They’ve also signed Jeff Hendrick on a free.  He’s one of the worst players I’ve ever seen in the Premier League and how he is still playing in it is a mystery to me.

I would be 100% confident of us winning this without the injuries but there’s no point in moaning about it, we just have to get on with it as that is what squads are for.  That’s a lesson that the Big 6 could learn from.  Perhaps if we do you go top we can be like those wankers at the big clubs who are still bleating on about not being allowed five substitutes every game. Get to fuck. As I’ve said before, the big clubs have every advantage in the book and this is just another one that they want. The only thing that’s fair about football these days is that both Teams start with 11 and being able to replace half of the outfield players just plays into the hands of teams who have nine £50 million plus substitutes.

Team news and I like it – Bednarek has recovered so he’s in and Ralph decides to only make one change in the back 4 with Jack Stephens tasked with playing at left back, leaving KWP on his favourite side.  Sensible in my book – as said before - why have two players out of position.  Walcott is pushed up front which is good news and the surprise is that his place on the left goes to Moussa Djenepo ahead of Nathan Redmond.  There’s a place on the bench for Kayne Ramsay and Dan N’Lundulu.

Saints are all over Newcastle right from the start and after five minutes we can pick up the ball in Newcastle is half with JWP finding Armstrong who lays it off to Adams. Adams doesn’t fuck about and just hits it first time towards the right top hand corner as he looked at it but Darlow took off to pull off a bit of a save for the cameras. The ball goes out to Almiron on the left hand side.  He does everything that Steve Bruce would have told him not to do at the start of the game and pisses around with the ball, eventually getting hunted down by KWP and Walcott. Theo takes it on and drills it back to Adams who sweeps an unstoppable volley, first time into the net. Fucking brilliant goal.  The in-play table, another personal hate of mine, has us top of the league.

Che Steps Up.

You can always tell how up for it opponents are, by how they react after letting in a goal and Newcastle don’t do anything. We have the opportunity to put this game to bed as soon as we can. Adams tries a shot from a narrow angle which Darlow saves comfortably. Adams certainly looks capable of providing what we’re missing with Danny Ings being out nand it’s very encouraging.

Newcastle do then actually produce something as Lewis gets down the left hand side for the first time and slings over across which is missed by Vestergaard and Sean Longstaff comes in behind him but thankfully, heads it straight to McCarthy. Just a little warning there.

Oriol Identifies the Newcastle Danger Man

Having been burnt by St Maximin last season, there seems to be a real desire for lightning not to strike twice.  JWP has already got a couple of tackles in on him and then Oriol produces a special to stop an attack at source and wipes him out – yellow card and no arguments.  That’s it from Newcastle though but we don’t manage another attempt on goal until the 40th minute when Fernandez gives us the ball and we break again and Djenepo produces an outrageously ridiculous flick to put Walcott away and he sets himself up perfectly curl it into the far corner and all of us in front of the TV shout “GOAAAAA-FUCK because it’s a foot wide. Bollocks, that had to be a goal.

Half-time and the only complaint is that we haven’t put the game out of sight. We’ve been good but Newcastle have been fucking dreadful and Steve Bruce is going to have to do something more than it normally does at half time, which is sit there and have a roast dinner with lots of fresh potatoes and gravy. Obviously.

Away we go for the second half of the game hasn’t changed at all.  We win a couple of corners in quick succession and JWP puts one over from the left hand side, Darlow goes walkabout, Vestergaard heads down and Bednarek hooks towards goal but it’s cleared from in front of the goal by Lascelles. It’s coming. 

Newcastle are still not learning the lessons and are still pissing about with the ball in their own half and this time it’s Longstaff who gets burgled by JWP who knocks it square to Romeu and the man who suddenly has an eye for goal absolutely batters it towards the top corner and it pings off the bar and over. It takes a replay before we discover that Darlow has got a fingertip to it and it’s an absolutely unbelievable save, similar to the one that the Brighton keeper pulled off against Vestergaard last season.

Bednarek gets his head on another JWP corner and flicks it goalwards but it’s straight at Darlow who again reacts well.  Bruce makes his first change, removing Hendrick who has looked over-priced for a free transfer tonight and he’s replaced by Matty Longstaff.  The Sky commentators are getting on my tits…”are Southampton going to rue all these missed chances”…. Fuck off!!!

The clearly tiring Djenepo taken off and Redmond comes on.  Moussa has done pretty well , winning more of his fair share of tackles with his defensive work and causing problems at the other end.  It would be so nice if he could stay fit.  Back on the pitch, Armstrong decides to play basketball on the edge of our own area and gives Newcastle a free kick.  Bollocks – won’t this just be typical?  We have all the big units in the wall and no one does a Mings and they all jump and Murphy’s free kick hits someone on the head and is cleared.

We make Newcastle foray into our half into a break with more clever play in midfield and Armstrong is away and he gets to the edge of the box but he doesn’t seem to want to shoot and tries to roll it in front of Walcott but under hits it and Walcott it’s totally cleaned out by Lascelles, who gets a bit of the ball and a lot of the man.   In the 70s this was perfectly fair but it’s 2020 and we have VAR and “bit of the ball, lot of the man” is a foul so it should be a penalty.  Surely this is gonna be looked at by VAR. Yes it is but today anyway, the tiniest scuff on the ball means he can follow through afterwards, totally out of control and kill a forward.

Steve Bruce has stopped eating crisps on the bench for long enough to make a substitution with the completely ineffective Callum Wilson coming off, along with right back Murphy and big lumbering nemesis bollocks Andy Carroll comes on along with £40 million Joelinton Carrillo. When a team brings on two 6 foot 4 strikers at the same time, you kind of know what is coming.

A feature of Theo Walcott’s play today has been picking up the ball turning and running of the Newcastle defence and it does it again after Adams wins the ball for him and he gets to the edge of the box before being crowded out and Sean Longstaff picks it up but fatally decides to piss about and try a drag back on the edge of his own box, allowing Armstrong to nick it off him, adjust his feet to get past Lascelles and virtually pass it into the corner of the net. 2-0 and barring disasters. Game over.

Game Over

Newcastle now have one option left and here comes the hoof from Darlow and Carroll wins the ball and it goes out why to Lewis.  Lewis slings is in the cross and Joelinton produces a marvellous header which looks like it’s heading into the top right hand corner but McCarthy proves he still awake by taking off and superbly getting his top hand to it and getting it over the bar.

Back to normal now for the last few minutes as we re-assert superiority with a decent move involving Long And Redmond and ends with Armstrong almost toe-punting a shot goalwards and Darlow just stands there and waves his arms about and in none too convincing fashion, managers to shovel it around the post.  Game over, another clean sheet, another home win and what’s more….

Southampton Football Club are top of the Premier League.

This is mental. I remember a time in about January 1982 and I remember another time very early on in the season in 1988 and now we have 2020. I know it isn’t going to last but fuck it, I’m going to enjoy it.

The game today was another easy win, like the Everton game was. It was ultimately very comfortable but we should’ve put this one to bed a lot earlier than we actually did and it was a combination of poor finishing, poor final ball and inspired goalkeeping that kept it to 1-0 for so long. These are small complaints though in the scheme of things. We took on a team that we have struggled against in the last few years, without our best player and main goalscorer and without the one player we really don’t have a replacement for and we managed to win and keep a clean sheet and go top of the fucking league. Did I mention that?

Newcastle become another one of the teams that we have made look woerful so far this season. Steve Bruce can be as mystified as he wants about why they didn’t play as well as they did against Everton last week but the fact is that they weren’t allowed to play and they couldn’t deal with us.  The pressing from the forwards and the midfield in particular was incredible and a few Newcastle players were shown up as not having the best of attitudes, none more so than their main man St.Maximin who they need to perform but he couldn’t have looked less bothered if he tried with his body language being absolutely appalling. Having praised Callum Wilson for getting a few goals this season, it was interesting to see him revert back to his Bournemouth form from last season. I know he didn’t get any service but he didn’t do anything about that either and really looked like he couldn’t be bothered before he limped off on 70 minutes.

We on the other hand were fucking magnificent.  I’ll start with the midfield as JWP and Romeu were imperious. Oriol picked up a booking with a Wotton-esque challenge and played the rest of the game with an amazing discipline. Gareth Southgate won’t agree but JWP should start in the centre of midfield for England. He won’t of course because Rice and Henderson will start but he is playing at a completely different level at the moment.

The call to play Theo Walcott up top was definitely the correct one as he was a constant threat dropping deep and turning and causing havoc. He never quite seemed to know what to do when he got into the penalty area but he did create the first goal for Adams which was a quite brilliant finished and created the havoc which led to the second goal as well. Che really stepped up to the mark today in the absence of Danny Ings and the boy now looks a serious player. When you compare him now to the player who looked like he couldn’t really be bothered at certain stages of last season, it is absolutely crazy how much he has improved. The wide players back to the great job in stopping Newcastle wingbacks going forward and also both had great moments in the Newcastle half. Djenepo produced an absolutely outrageous piece of brilliance to put Walcott through (he missed) and Armstrong was absolutely doing my head in by under-hitting every single pass he tried to put through but then the man with the magnificent hair, scored the decisive second goal so all is forgiven.

At the back, Jack Stephens did a solid enough job at left back whilst being put under absolutely no pressure by Newcastle. There were times when he could’ve used the big space in front of him but I think he can be forgiven but just taking the easy option. Remember, he hasn’t been playing very well this season so for him to get through the game without any major fuck-ups is a decent showing in a very alien position for him. The centre backs are a real partnership now. They were really solid and didn’t give Callum Wilson a kick. Some of Vestergaard’s passing out defence was superb and really helped us to break the lines and get the attacks going. Behind them, McCarthy (who is probably the most in-form English goalkeeper right now) despite having a quiet game with not much to do, produced one outrageously brilliant save tonight from the one decent effort that Newcastle mastered through Joelinton.

I found the Theo Walcott interview after the match very interesting because he was talking about the last time that he played at St Mary‘s and he mentioned that he was playing upfront with Kenwyne Jones and Ricardo Fuller. It’s interesting because Theo was referring to a time when Saints were in the Championship having just been relegated and it of course has been a theme throughout our journey over the last year of how far we had come. Theo is a good person to interview because not only does he speak very well, they also can’t ask him about the fucking Leicester game.

And his post match interview, Ralph was delighted, they talked about the 9-0 as they always do, they talked about as being in the bottom three and I talked about to be on top of the league. The interesting bit from last interview was the fact that he mentioned having no fans in the ground as a positive as it enables them to play without any pressure. Interesting. Maybe the fans at St Mary‘s should consider, when we do get back in the ground, how much a positive mindset can be beneficial to the players.

It’s international break now and hopefully those who go away will come back uninjured and Ryan Bertrand will be fit to return in a couple weeks time against Wolves. We won’t be top after the weekend unless about five teams all lose but on Friday at 10 pm, we are top of the table and I’ll take that. The only thing that sad about it is of course the fact that if we were all in the ground and we were all in the pub afterwards. It would’ve been a good evening, it would’ve been a messy evening.

At the start of the evening I was getting slightly irritated by the amount of chat about going top of the league but now we’ve actually done it, if only for a day or two, I fully endorse being as big a dickhead as you possibly can be about it.

Up the fucking Saints.

Premier League Match 7 - Aston Villa 3 Southampton 4

"We should yav won that roight"....

Similar to last week, we have a team to play who are over performing so far this season, with a visit to Villa Park to take on Aston Villa who won the first four games but came back down to earth with a bit of a bump last week, getting slapped 3-0 at home by Leeds. Villa’s first two wins were against teams who weren’t particularly good in Sheffield United and Fulham but the third win made a few headlines as it was a 7-2 annihilation of Liverpool, where Villa had one of those games where in 90 minutes, they used up every single bit of good luck they could possibly have over season with four of the goals being a big deflections.  On the day they were absolutely brilliant but the overriding feeling about that game was that it was very, very funny. Following the Lord Mayor’s show, they then won at Leicester which is never easy at the best of times.

Whilst not being world beaters, they are decent side this season with Dean Smith having done well in the transfer market recruiting players in positions they actually needed. It is very hard to see them struggling at all to stay up this season.  I would say that the defence is still ropey though.

Eyebrows raised when they paid over £30 million for Ollie Watkins but he has started well and of course scored a hat-trick in that Liverpool game. He will be key to their season and if he can get 15 goals then Villa are going to have a decent year. They still have Jack Grealish of course because the market wasn’t ready for him to move for £80 million quid this summer. Grealish of course divides opinion and some of his diving about is completely pathetic but I think he’s a marvellous footballer but as far as England are concerned, he seems to be going down the Matt Le Tissier route of never being completely trusted and almost having to rely on there being absolutely no choice before he is grudgingly given a chance by the risk averse management of Gareth Southgate.

Villa have added added a similar kind of threat with Ross Barkley on loan for the season. Barkley is one of those players who for a few games every season, will look like the best player on the planet but for the vast majority, he won’t actually do very much, which is why he has fallen out of the reckoning for England and Chelsea were keen to move him on.

Villa’s most pressing need was at the back. They’ve signed Matty Cash at right back who was highly rated but at the end of the day he was a defender from the Championship so he’s not gonna make that much of a difference but the best signing was probably Emiliano Martinez as he finally gave up on ever getting a fair shake Arsenal and is now the undisputed number one goalkeeper with Villa having spent last year pissing around with Pepe Reina, Tom Heaton and an average Scandinavian, Nyland.

Once again it has been a quiet week down South with not much news coming out of Staplewood. It appears that Moussa Djenepo is nearing fitness of sorts and last weeks squad will be boosted with a return of Theo Walcott, which presents Ralph with a nice problem of having to decide which two out of Redmond, Armstrong and Walcott start  the game.

In the event, the team news had a bit of a surprise in it because Walcott started on the left ahead of Redmond.  For me, this is exactly the right selection but it’s still quite surprising that Redmond was left out.  Just perhaps Ralph watches the games a bit more closely than Alan Smith.  Djenepo did make it back as far as the bench and there was a place once more for Dan N’Lundulu.

Away we go and Saints make a positive start with Walcott and Bertrand combining to put Ings away on the left and Mings blocks his attempt to cross and we win a corner. In it comes from JWP, flicked on by Ings and the ball hits a Villa defender and Adams and bobbles apologetically over the line and into the net and bloody hell, 1-0 up with our first attack. Hang on, it’s been checked by VAR and you can see that there’s going to be a microscopic onside or offside decision against Adams. The ball Has actually hit Konsa’s foot and then his hand and then it’s flicked off Adams and gone in the net. How can Adams be offside if he hadn’t touched the ball and Konsa has handled it? It should surely be a penalty or a goal. Fucking joke if this is disallowed but sure enough, it is. The expression on Che’s face clearly shows that he thinks it’s absolute bullshit as well.  They’ve basically applied every interpretation possible to disallow the goal – decided Adams was active from the moment Ings flicked it on, decided Konsa’s touch with his foot wasn’t deliberate and decided that the handball doesn’t matter.

Never mind and we immediately attacked on the right hand side through Armstrong a via nice flick by JWP, Ings finds Walcott on the left and he takes it on first time and side foots it over the goalkeeper and pings off the bar and goes over.  Not to worry as on 18 minutes, Armstrong works a crossing position for KWP and as he overhits the cross, Targett crashes through him and so we get a free kick to the side of the penalty area. JWP takes it and there is Vestergaard to absolutely bullet a header back across and into the side netting on the far side. Get the fuck in. Brilliant header and laughable that he was being marked by John McGinn who is about 5 foot 3.

Pick That Out!

Villa are struggling to pick up our two wingers who are coming in off the wings and they don’t close down Vestergaard either and he manages to slide a ball through the Villa midfield to meet the run of Walcott who gets trashed by Douglas Luiz on the edge of the ‘D’. It’s the absolute perfect position for JWP and it just feels like one of those days where you know he’s going to score. We all know where it’s going, the guys in the wall know where it’s going and Martinez in goal knows where it’s going. Over the wall and ripping into the top left corner as we look at it. Brilliant freekick. Get in.

The expected Villa fightback doesn’t really materialise and we win a free-kick as Grealish fouls KWP. We take it quickly and work it down the right hand side with Adams slinging over the cross. The Villa defenders are all in horrible positions, none more so than Matt Cash who has Walcott behind him so he sticks his hand up and pushes it away. He is last man and he surely has to go off but the referee, Darren England gives us a free kick and books him and totally bottles it. What a fucking shambles. This freekick is a bit closer and right on the edge of the box and it will be nice to score just exact some measure of justice for the cheating fucker and crap referee.  It looks like Vestergaard it’s just going to belt the shit out of it but no, it’s JWP once more and he whips it over a very half arsed wall and into the far corner in exactly the same way as the last one. The best view in the house was had by Emiliano Martinez, who stood still and watched it rip into the far corner.  He may as well have had his phone out and filmed it. Three fucking nil.

Tyrone Can't Jump

Half-time and Saints have to make a change. Bednarek came down from a great height in the first half and banged his head on the pitch so it’s no surprise to see him replaced by Jack Stephens. Villa start the second half well because they couldn’t be any worse and it’s all going through Grealish as it always does and like him or loath him, he is making things happen, often with theatrical falls to the ground. They do work a quick free-kick to him though and he fires over across which Trezeguet meets at the back post but McCarthy keeps it out well down low. Back it comes in from the other side and Grealish himself wins the header after the cross has floated over Stephens head, heads it down and McCarthy has to go to his left again to pull out a decent save.

No worries though as KWP skips out of defence and finds Armstrong running forward and the man with a magnificent hair carries it to about 30 yards out before finding Ings on the left hand side and everyone knows what’s coming, except for the little shit Matty Cash, who has the best seat in the house to watch the King of the Scummers curl a shot over Martinez and in off the bar on the far side. It’s a quiet outstanding finish.

It’s all been absolutely marvellous so far but complacency is key as we doze off and no one close down Grealish on the left hand side and he gets over a decent cross with the outside of his boot and there is Mings to flick it past McCarthy to reduce the arrears.

There is still half an hour to go and there is still work to do here and another cross from the wing goes over everybody to Trézéguet who brings it down and Vestergaard throws himself in the way like a big fucking tree falling down and pulls off a superb block to bail out Bertrand who had let the ball go over his head. Another cross from the left, another shot from Trézéguet and once more McCarthy has to take off and tip it off the bar. We are suddenly making very heavy weather of closing this game out and the discipline we showed in closing out the Everton game is nowhere to be seen.

We are forced into a reshuffle straight after this as Bertrand has pulled up and has to go off and with no other defender on the bench, it’s Diallo who comes on in the centre midfield with JWP going to left back. The fact that JWP is at left back is less of an issue than the fact that JWP is no longer in midfield as Villa are now running the game. Then, we have a fucking disaster as Danny Ings tries to run the ball out on the left wing, gets blocked off by Douglas Luiz and falls really awkwardly with his left leg folding underneath him and he’s not getting up…. The world stops…. Fuck!. This is not good. He’s down for a good three minutes and there is concern from the Villa players who know him from England like Mings and Grealish so you know that this is potentially quite a bad one. There is one good sign as he eventually gets up and walks off the pitch but the replays look horrible and we fear the worst.

Shane is on to pick up his appearance bonus and the 90 minutes tick around but there are 6 to go – I’m not happy.  Ings in injured and I just want this game to be done.  There is some defending to do and Armstrong doesn’t do it again, allowing Grealish to walk past him and get to the line near the 6 yard box and when the cross bounces back to him, Diallo swings a leg at it clear it but only succeeds in booting Grealish who goes down like he’s going to be left paralysed for the rest of his life…. Regardless of this though, it’s a definite penalty. H Ollie Watkins, who has done precisely fuck all all game takes it and scores easily, sending Macca the wrong way. I can’t believe it, we were 4-0 up with half an hour to go and I’m looking at the watch nervously.

We’re up to 95 minutes but we then manage to fucking do it again as a big switch of play finds Grealish on the left hand side and he makes space and drills at the near post, McCarthy is unsighted by Stevens and it zips into the net to make it 4–3. There are seconds to go and we kick off and still managed to boot the ball against the Villa player but luckily, the referee decides that that’s enough and blows the final whistle. Another three points on the road but worries about the injuries, particularly one of them.  It’s not a mental celebration like it would have been if we’d scored a last minute winner to win 4-3 – it’s a bit subdued.

What a fucking team we are! For the first hour we were absolutely brilliant and looked like we could score any number of goals that we wanted to. For the last half an hour we were absolute dog shit. Only Saints can be 4-0 up with half an hour ago and still have you looking at the clock nervously at the end of the game. It’s fucking ridiculous.

So we won the game and got the three points but how many people would swap a Villa equaliser in the 99th minute for Danny Ings not being injured? I know I would. The result of his scan tomorrow is kind of pivotal to determining how the rest of the season is going to go but more than that, you don’t want to see him injured again after what he’s been though in the past and where he has got to right now.  I’m no medic but at least the knee wasn’t twisted in the incident and I’m searching for positives.

So – bad news first – the last half hour shambles.  It was no coincidence that we started to get worse once we had to make substitutions with Jack Stephens being a notable downgrade on Bednarek.  Jack is nowhere near the levels of last season and will need to improve massively to stand a chance of regaining his place, especially with Salisu nearing fitness (maybe).  Everything was coming down that side in the 2nd Half and KWP and Armstrong weren;t great defensively when it got tough either.  Armstrong in particular will certainly need to look at himself for the first two goals we conceded.

Ryan Bertrand is one of the few players that we don’t have a natural replacement for and moving JWP to left back wasn’t the best, mainly because it took him out of midfield. Diallo looked slightly raw and was trying to hard to steam into tackles when he would’ve been better served just pressing. He was a little bit unfortunate with the penalty he gave away because he was just trying to clear the ball and didn’t seem aware that Grealish was there. It’s not really a dive because he did get kicked but fuck me, did he make sure with the theatrical finish.

The god news was that we were brilliant for an hour and that was ultimately enough.  It should have been 1-0 but for the already explained shite VAR application and the four goals we did get were all marvellous in their clinical nature.  Vestergaard’s header put me in mind of Sir Rickie’s header for England v Scotland at Wembley and what can you say about JWP’s free-kicks?  It’s a matter of time before teams start putting a player on the line. As said earlier, Cash should’ve been sent off for the handball and then none of the second half shambles would have happened and we’d have won about 5-0.  It was nice to see Cash show Danny onto his right foot for the 4^th goal – how did that work out for you?

As predicted before the game, Villa’s defending was their undoing. High on the checklist of things you shouldn’t do again Saints must be leaving the 6 foot 7 guy virtually unmarked, giving free kicks away around the edge of the box and allowing Danny Ings to cut-in from the left onto his right foot. Dean Smith thinks they should have won though – cretin.

JWP led the way today on what was his 26th birthday. The two free-kicks were brilliant of course but his overall play was superb and though I don’t think it was the best move to him put him at left back, he did a passible job when pressed into service there. His partnership with Romeu  really gives us an amazing platform to go out and play the way we want to play.

Theo Walcott justified his selection on the left wing ahead of Nathan Redmond and it was a very good bit of play the lead to the second goal, getting himself in front of Douglas Luiz and being carted up in the air. It’s a matter of time before he scores as well and it would have been today but for the handball.  On the other wing, Stuart Armstrong still didn’t look entirely hundred percent and as mentioned, his defending wasn’t great today but it struck me again what a good player he is when he gets in the opposition half and he got the assist for the fourth goal. Mind you, giving the ball to Danny Ings is not exactly rocket science.

We must just hope that the King is not badly injured as the partnership with Che Adams is getting better with every game. Adams was very unlucky not to score today but more than that, the movement of the front two gave the whole Villa back for absolute nightmares and when you had Armstrong walk off into the mix as well, It was no wonder Villa felt apart.  Look at the 4^th goal – Ings is left, Walcott and Armstrong are in the middle and Adams is right.  That’s great movement and very difficult to mark.

The improvement any Jannik Vestergaard has been noticed by many and this is mainly because it is such a contrast with what he showed for the majority of last season. He has been nothing short of magnificent this season and whilst scoring goals will get you in Garth Crooks team of the week, it’s his defensive work and passing that is showing off the scale improvement at the moment. The block he pulled off in the second half was brilliant and he even managed to look relatively light on his feet. Jan Bednarek had started the game pretty well and we missed him in the 2^nd Half.

Alex McCarthy also had a very good game. Having had absolutely nothing to do against Everton last week, he pulled off a string of saves today and was heading for a real 10 out of 10 performance until Grealish scored the third goal in the 97th minute which was a strange one and that it went near post and he seem to be completely deceived by it and just watch it fly in.

Look at that league table. We are third.

deserve to be there as well. Over the last three games we’ve gone away to Chelsea and got a draw, beat Champions-elect Everton and now won at Villa who had won four out of their previous five games. It’s not as if the fixtures have been falling particularly kindly. We are now a bloody good team that is hard to beat and we have a cutting edge and now we have a bit of depth as well. Hopefully, that depth won’t be too severely tested over the next couple of games and all three of the injuries are not bad.

Next up – Newcastle at home on Friday – win that and we will actually be top for a day.