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.