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.