Premier League Match 18 - Leicester City 2 Southampton 0

 

5 and Stephens on his shirt but it's still Bednarek.

A trip to the King Power to play Leicester City in a game of Nine Nil bingo. It doesn’t matter that we beat them up here last time out and it doesn’t matter that we won two out of the last three games against them. What matters to the world is that they beat us 9-0. Everybody knows it and everybody will keep mentioning it. Nothing we can do about that.

We’ve had what amounts to a couple of weeks off because our FA Cup game against Shrewsbury was postponed due to the Covid outbreak in the Shrewsbury camp. It looked likely for a while that we might be given a bye through to the next round but everyone has co-operated and this game is next week. What it does mean is that we have had plenty of rest since the Liverpool game which should stand us in good stead today against one of the best sides in the division.

When you think of Leicester’s team, the first thing you think of is Rat Bastard Vardy upfront who I can’t help but like, despite him being the aforementioned Rat Bastard. The tackle he put in on Virgil Van Dijk at St Mary‘s a few years ago led to a series of unfortunate events, culminating in Liverpool winning the Champions League and the Premier League and their fand being even more unbearable. Mr Vardy has a lot to answer for. Elsewhere, they have what is for me one of the best midfield threes in the country in Ndidi, Tielemans and Maddison and the defence this year has featured young Frenchman Wesley Fofana. He arrived for £30 million in the summer along with Thomas Castagne for £20 million but this was offset by the sale of Ben Chilwell for £50 million to Chelsea. I feel that Leicester have got the better of that particular deal. All of this has been overseen by the man with great character and even greater teeth, Mr Brendan Rodgers, steadily rebuilding his reputation having gained a reputation for being a complete arse from his stint as Liverpool manager. I personally will never forgive him for buying Rickie Lambert from us and ruining the end of his career.

So, I can’t help but like Leicester. They are a similar sized club to ourselves and they had the ridiculous premier League win in 2016, a year in the Champions League and are now are in the Europa League again and they have taken advantage of all of this and built a squad which has quite a lot of depth and should be able to maintain a decent level of performance throughout the season. They are a good club for us to aspire to be like. They do have one major advantage over us though and that is of course the owner who is prepared to put a few quid into the club and actually have a presence around the place from time to time.

You would think that the 13 days that we’ve had since our last game would enable a few more of our players to get fit but it looks like Vestergaard, Redmond and Djenepo are still out and it’s been revealed that Danny Ings has been self-isolating for 10 days after testing positive for Covid around about the time we played Liverpool. I can’t help it feel there’s a bit of mind games going on here and Ralph acknowledged that he was back in training on Friday so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he features today. Adams, Romeu and McCarthy should all be back after missing the Liverpool game.

… or so I thought.  In the event, Romeu is nowhere to be seen, nor is Ings and Redmond, who has not had a reported long term injury, is still missing, meaning that we are playing Will Smallbone on the left, with Diallo retaining his place after his excellent performance against Liverpool.  It’s Theo and Che up front with McCarthy back for Forster.  The bench… oh man!  Forster and Long and then 7 kids…. Valery, N’Lundulu, Vokins and then it’s some who’ve never even been close up until now like Will Ferry, Kegs Chauke, Allan Tchaptchet and Caleb Watts.  Leicester have a bench full of internationals like Soyuncu and Under.

Saints start relatively positively with KWP prominent and Adams causing mild panic with a driving run which is eventually snuffed out near the goal line.  We don’t create any real chances though and then we make a bollocks of playing out from the back with Stephens gifting the ball to Leicester 25 yards out and Albrighton passes across to Vardy who steps over it and Barnes shot is parried away well by McCarthy

Another Leicester attack he’s broken up with a good sliding tackle by Bertrand and we move up the pitch through JWP who finds Diallo and he gets goal side of Ndidi and is away. Ndidi pulls him back right for the referee Stuart Atwell, who does absolutely fuck all and Leicester attack again, over comes the cross, Vardy takes a big air shot, possibly down to the ploughed field that he is playing on and Bednarek smacks it clear up to Walcott.  Theo loses it and Albrighton chucks it into the mixer and once again we half clear it. Tielemans picks it up and threads a straight ball through to Maddison who rolls Stephens who has got too tight and smashes it high into the near top corner. Bollocks. Even though it all stems from a shit piece of refereeing, we had 3 chances to clear it so that isn’t getting disallowed.

There are a few complaints to the referee when the goal goes in so Atwell knows he’s fucked up and his next action is to book Diallo for ironically, pulling back a Leicester player.  Saints create their best chance of the day with a good move building up the left hand side with JWP sliding the ball through the defence to Bertrand who has made a great run forward.  With no options in the middle, he steadies himself, takes aim and smashes it goalwards and Schmeichel, somewhat fortunately manages to get something on it and see it loop over the bar.

Half time and the only real difference is that we haven’t had the breaks and one bad bit of defending.  It’s hard to see how we change it around too much though.

Saints start the second half on the attack with Armstrong bundling through the middle and eventually feeding it left to Smallbone who tries to curl one into the far corner but Schmeichel gets a good hand to it and the rebound hits Walcott and goes out for a goal kick before he can sort his feet out.  Diallo then pulls back Maddison again and probably should get a second yellow but Atwell, as I may have mentioned, is a shite referee.

Smallbone goes down after a tackle and it doesn’t look great but he’s up and back on for a minute or so before going down again.  N’Lundulu is the man coming on with Walcott dropping back.  A few minutes later and Che Adams is off to be replaced with Shane Long.

Saints are pushing up now and leaving in a few gaps and allowing Leicester to create some chances. Following good work by Barnes and Justin on the left hand side, the cross comes in from Barnes and Vardy has got in between Stephens and Bertrand, neither of whom are bothering to mark him but Rat Bastard heads over the bar.

Back come Saints through KWP who passes it on to N’Lundulu and Armstrong, who comes infield and smashes it against the bar. The ball has gone straight up in the air and it’s coming down on top of Shane Long and Johnny Evans just shoves him the ground. Even Atwell has to give that as a penalty.  Yes – he’s blown almost instantly but then he’s looked across and you know what’s coming. Because it’s Shane, you just fucking know he’s going to be offside and sure enough that is what’s given. It’s somewhat amusing in a black humour kind of way that when they show the replay, Shane is in an offside position the entire time, never once getting back behind a defender in the whole time that Armstrong was dribbling across the pitch and getting ready to shoot.

At the other end, Bednarek snuffs out an attack and then gives Bertrand a hospital ball which allows Leicester to cross it and Barnes meets it at the far post and it’s going in but Bednarek makes up for his error by getting back and heading off the line.

Saints are really open now, committing players forward with Walcott feeding KWP on the right hand side and his cross is headed away allowing Leicester to break through Justin who advances virtually unopposed to the edge of the area before feeding Rat Bastard, who jinks past the last defender and then smashes it and McCarthy pulls off and off an excellent save to keep it at 1-0.

Valery is on for Diallo who has been in non-tackle mode for about 40 minutes now and on 92, we try and attack again but Jack Stephens passes it straight to a Leicester player in midfield and two passes later Barnes is completely through on goal and he sits McCarthy down and scores easily.

Ah fuck it. The second goal makes it a little bit more comprehensive than it really was but the bottom line is, Leicester deserved to win the game. If we had been incredibly fortunate, we might have got a goal and come away from that game with a draw but it would have been undeserved as we looked incredibly blunt in attack. We had the first half chance from Bertrand which was saved and the second-half, the curler from Smallbone and the shot from Armstrong which pinged off the bar for. For about a second I thought we had a penalty but then hope turn to resigned acceptance when I realise it was Shane Long who was fouled and he would therefore by definition, be 5 yards offside. Maybe when Shane gets a little bit more experience, he will learn to time his runs better.

We were behind at half-time basically because we made a defensive mistake. The move that led to the goal was started by Stuart Atwell, comfortably, despite some amazing competition, the worst referee in the Premier League.  He failed to spot the most obvious pull by Ndidi on Diallo. That said, we still have plenty of opportunity to do something about the move before Maddison rolled around Stephens and smashed into the net. It was dreadful defending by Stephens and there is no getting away from that.  It’s not picking a scapegoat, it’s just stating a fact. Jack is like Maya Yoshida in that he’s a good backup player and he is capable of two or three decent performances but there is a concentration issue if he has to play more than two or three games and there is always a shocker of a performance just around the corner. The second goal doesn’t matter, coming as it did in the 94th minute but it was the same player giving the ball away again.

We had the cutting edge of a spoon today. This is a problem that we have when Danny Ings doesn’t play. We don’t have another player who you would trust to score if an opportunity presented itself. Adams, Long, Walcott, Armstrong… they are all just as likely to miss than hit the target. We played the last 20 minutes with Shane Long and Dan N’Lundulu up front. We know that Shane isn’t going to score and Dan spent most of his time trying to link play up outside of the penalty area. He showed some nice touches to be fair but we had next to no goal threat.

There were some good performances from the likes of McCarthy and Bednarek. Bednarek made a couple of mistakes but made up for them with his customary determination to do so. I thought Ryan Bertrand had a decent game out on the left flank and JWP and Diallo were strong in the centre of midfield. Diallo was quiet second-half because he knew that one more foul and he was going to get sent off. Two identical fouls, booked for one, not for the other and can be grateful for the fact that Atwell as a shit referee. Will Smallbone and Armstrong both had their moments in the wide areas but Smallbone it now emerges has done his ACL so he’s going to be out for 6 months at least. 

Questions have to be asked about the medical staff at the side of the pitch on match days.  In the last few weeks we’ve sent Adams back on after his boot in the head, which led to him missing a game a week later and now we’ve sent a young kid back on with an ACL injury.  It’s not a good look.

I agree with Ralph when he says that the team did as well as they could do, given the players that we had available. When you look at the roll call of players missing then it is no wonder. Vestergaard, Romeu, Redmond, Djenepo, Ings. Add into that Salisu the Myth and Tella. Leicester are very good side with a very strong squad and so it is no disgrace to go up there and get beat. Like I said, on another day with a bit more luck we might of nicked a point but the defeat was deserved.

Skate and Twat

Today's game was brought to us by BT Sport which meant we had Steve MacManaman as a co-commentator.  A classic commentator who knows nothing of teams from outside the top 6. Stephens has a big fucking number 5 on his back with his name written above it but he's still Bednarek to McManaman.  Still he thought Atwell refereed the game well - fucking idiot.

No time to moan about it though because we have a quick turnaround with the Shrewsbury game being arranged for Tuesday. I imagine that we are going to see quite a few of the youngsters who were on the bench today which will make it interesting in its own right. Up the fucking Saints.