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.