Premier League Match 14 - Southampton 0 Manchester City 1

The Best Playmaker on the Pitch and a City player

Manchester City arrive at St Mary‘s in rather a strange place. Ever since Pep Guardiola has been the manager, they have always been this force of nature and played incredible football and if you were not careful, they would smash you out of sight but something has changed this season and the atmosphere seems to be different. I fully expected Guardiola to leave in the summer but instead, he signed another two year contract but regardless of this, it wouldn’t surprise me on any given morning to see that he’d resigned. On the pitch, he appears to have tried to tighten things up and not be so easy to score against and as result, they are not scoring as many goals. Of course, they are still capable on any given day of tearing any team a new arsehole but I’ve seen a couple of their recent games, against Manchester United and against West Brom, where they just didn’t seem to have much inspiration in the front third. It’s absolutely crazy when you think about it because they still have Kevin De Bruyne, Raheem Sterling and a cast of billions to pick from. The injury to Sergio Aguero has definitely been keenly felt because he gave them the cutting edge that Gabriel Jesus just doesn’t. Bernardo Silva, Riyad Mahrez and Phil Foden have found themselves more often than not sitting on the subs bench along with Ferran Torres, who looks a very exciting replacement for the departed Leroy Sane. In midfield they’ve been using the rather pedestrian looking Rodri and have spent their usual £100 million on defenders in Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake, both of whom look pretty average from afar.

Saints are going to the game in a confident frame of mind of course but this is going to be a very different game to the one we faced against Arsenal on Wednesday.  There isn’t much rotation of the squad and the one change sees Moussa Djenepo given a start with Stuart Armstrong being rested on the bench.  We’ve had a third and hopefully final vote on the 5 subs thing and it was defeated yet again, the compromise (probably to get Klopp to shut the fuck up) being that teams now have 9 subs on the bench instead of 7.  For us, this means a place for Shane Long and Nathan Tella.  Yes, the rules have to change now for Shane to make the bench.  City’s team and squad is fucking ridiculous – Torres, Sterling, Bernardo Silva and de Bruyne… and that’s just the forward players.  The only thing even is that both teams start with 11 players.  Today’s referee is Mike Dean and he’s a twat.  If the best referees are the ones that you don’t notice, then it follows that Mike Dean is the worst.

Away we go and a good start and we are not sitting back, with the front six all pressing high.  It’s going to be interesting because a defence that includes Kyle Walker and John Stones is going to have a good chance of having a mistake in it.

For the first 15 we are knocking the ball around confidently as well but then we have a little phase of giving the ball away too easily and City win a corner when de Bruyne’s shot is blocked by Vestergaard. We survive the corner but they were another one as Adams gives the ball away and then Cancelo fires in a shot from the edge of the box which McCarthy saves well.

We seem to got over our wobbles for a bit and then Ederson launches forward and Bednarek heads down his midfield but City win the 2^nd ball and break with Bernardo Silva finding De Bruyne and De Bruyne picks out Sterling superbly in the middle and he’s unmarked. Fuck.

Our response is good to be fair and we carry on trying to impose ourselves on City. Vestergaard pings a lovely ball out to KWP, leading to Walcott’s first time shot being parried by Ederson and it flies out past Ings before he can react. Another chance as Adams turns well in midfield and finds Djenepo and his cross is headed back across by Walcott and Ings throws himself at it and heads wide.  He was impeded by Dias’ foot being up around his head but it’s Mike Dean so nothing doing.

There’s another decent opening a few minutes later as Bertrand gets the ball out to Walcott on the right and his cross looks like it’s going to be met by Adams but he fails to get any contact on it.  The look on his face afterwards tells you that he should have done.

The ball is with McCarthy but everyone’s looking at the half way line where Danny Ings is sat down.  Oh shit.  A quick chat with the physio and off he goes for another spell on the sidelines.  Shit, shit, shit – please don’t be the knee.  I’m expecting Armstrong or Redmond with Walcott up front but it’s Nathan Tella who comes on.  Bit of a surprise but go on lad.

Half time and 1-0 down.  We’ve played well however but I’m wondering how the second half is going to pan out with us playing our third game in six days and with both Romeu and JWP falling foul of yellow cards from Mike Dean in the preceding 45 minutes.  No further changes and away we go with a City break and Torres gets played in on the right hand side but he shoots across McCarthy and just past the far post.  A sigh of relief as a second City goal is going to kill this stone dead.  They have another go and De Bruyne plays a one-two with Sterling which carves us open again and eventually it ends up with Bernardo Silva who luckily for us, wasn’t born with a right foot so his eventual shot would barely have reached the goal if McCarthy hadn’t smothered it.

We have a shout for a penalty as City clear a corner out to Sterling near the penalty spot and it hits his outstretched arm via his thigh.  We need Mike Dean to give this so that VAR can they try and prove is was an error but nothing doing as you’ve come to expect. Redmond is on for Djenepo but it appears he has his boots on the wrong feet or his feet on the wrong ankles or something.  On the other side, Saints break through an excellent driving run from KWP who feeds Tella who plays in a great ball between keeper and defenders and Stones, slides in, knocks it over Ederson but it’s just too high for Adams to get his header on target as he fell backwards.

As we enter the last 5 minutes we are clearly knackered and City are breaking almost at will.  McCarthy makes one outstanding save from Gundogan but other that that, the fact that City don’t score is down to them pissing about.  They take 10 passes when 2 would have done before Mahrez volleys over the bar from 6 yards.

N’lundulu for Adams for the last knockings but we’ve not got enough about us to create another chance.  We do get the pleasure of watching City timewasting during injury time which I guess is an indication that they respect us and just want the game to end.

Well bollocks. We didn’t deserve to lose that really. It’s funny but we played considerably better than we did last year when we beat them 1-0. However, we did give them a bloody good game and I know I sound like a broken record and a shit on about this a lot but when you look at the relative costs of the two squads then you have to say we did amazingly well. Put it this way, I guarantee at their lowest paid player will be getting paid more than our highest-paid one, certainly in the starting 11‘s.

Ultimately we lost the game because we switched off for a second when Ederson launched that ball forward. It was not the great visionary forward pass that the media will have you believe it was because the end of the day it went straight to Bednarek but his header wasn’t great and it dropped into midfield where City reacted better than we did and piled forward with great intent and unfortunately it was Kevin De Bruyne on the right wing and not Kyle Walker who would’ve fucked it up. De Bruyne picked out Sterling who it cleverly made space for him self by stopping and he swept into the net.  They had other chances of course that they will point to but they’re always going to have those.

We had chances ourselves through Adams and Ings and there were a couple of occasions where we took the wrong options and passed when we should’ve had a shot. On another day, with another referee instead of Mike Dean, we could’ve had a penalty as well. It is true that the high foot on Danny Ings as he went to the header would’ve been given in any other area of the pitch but you very rarely see penalties given for that but the handball by Sterling is fucking mystifying to me. I’m hearing that it’s not a penalty because it came off another part of his body first. Is that the rule now? If so, what complete bullshit. The ball comes out to him and he tries to control it with his thigh and cocks it up so it hits his arm which is outstretched.  He’s gained an advantage because if it doesn’t hit his arm then it just rolls out to the edge of the area where one of our players could’ve come in and smashed it in the net.  I feel that it’s one that Mr Dean would have given against us and VAR wouldn’t have overturned it.

Though we were better in the first half, I was impressed by how well we played in the second-half, particularly given that JWP and Romeu were on yellow cards which were correctly handed out by Mike Dean. City should’ve had a couple more players on yellow cards, particularly Cancelo who was using any means necessary to stop Theo Walcott but Mike Dean was at his random worst today. “Random” is not a good word to associate with a referee but it’s a good one for Mike. Mike Dean can give handball against KWP from 50 yards when it hits his chest but he can’t give one against Stirling when he’s 10 yards away and actually hits his arm.

It's All About Me and Don't You Forget It

It’s nice to get some positive press with people now beginning to realise why we have been in and around the top four this season and we will continue hopefully to stay in the upper reaches of the table. City will of course finish above us and so they should but we should remember that in the last few weeks we have played Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City and though we have only got one point from them - with a bit more luck we could’ve got six or seven.

The injury to Danny Ings is a bit of a bastard but appears it’s not a recurrence of the knee injury but a slight hamstring strain which does quite often happens after the injury. Today, Ralph threw on Nathan Tella on the back of scoring four goals as a striker for the B team. It was a bit of a punt considering there were many other options he could’ve used including Walcott, Redmond, Long or N’Lundulu and in the main, the youngster struggled to get involved but he did look good when he got into wide areas and played in a couple of really nice crosses. I would anticipate that for our next game against Fulham on Boxing Day that Theo Walcott will be upfront again.

Speaking of Walcott, he was absolutely excellent today with more of the direct running that has characterised his second coming at Southampton. The way he has adapted to a different way of playing at his age is superb really. I read an article during the week and suggested he was only bought here was cover but now he’s become an essential part of the first team and you can see why. He is one of many players who are outperforming what was expected of them at the start of the season. KWP has gone up a different level at right back, Romeu has in midfield, Che Adams has up front but the most ridiculous step-up has been for Vestergaard who today was absolutely ridiculous, picking out full backs and forwards with monotonous regularity, either with snappy passes along the ground or 40 yard pings over the top.  Put it this way, If Virgil van Dijk had played even one of the crossfield passes Vestergaard pulled off today, the media would be talking about it for years.  He’s come a long way since I wondered if he was only bought because there was a high lightbulb to change in the changing room and we couldn’t afford a fucking ladder (© Me – Leicester 0-9 game).

Having put into pretty good performances against Arsenal and Manchester City and come away under rewarded in terms of points, we now have a game against Fulham on Boxing Day which is probably all anyone is going to have to look forward to on over Christmas because our country is fucked. A couple of months ago Fulham would’ve been a guaranteed win but not now as they are putting some results together and look like a side that may even have a chance of staying up. Suddenly it’s a big game. Fulham will be without Mario Lemina which will make them stronger as well. It is an important game for us – they all are but it’s the sort of game we have to go and win so bring it on.

Happy Christmas from Tier 2.