Premier League Match 22 - Newcastle 3 Southampton 2

Bertrand Tells Minamino That He's Not Going Back to Liverpool

It’s been a strange week. We got beat 9-0 again on Tuesday but everyone has been focusing only on Bednarek’s appeal against the ridiculous red card he got from Mike Dean and all praise to common sense because it has been rescinded. There will of course be no sanction on Mike Dean and Graham Scott for getting it completely wrong, nor or on Anthony Martial for diving in the first place.

Ralph appears to have come out of it somehow even stronger and more focused on the job in hand. It really is weird, and the great thing is, no one outside of our little Southampton bubble can really understand it. The mainstream media really don’t understand that we are different to other clubs these days and we do things in a different way. Make no mistake, there are lessons for Ralph to learn because you can’t just get fucking hammered every time you go down to 10 men. You have to just sit tight and stay in the game as long as you possibly can but everyone who cares about Southampton seems to accept there was virtually nothing that we could’ve done with the players that we had available.

Moving on because that’s what we have to do and it’s an away trip to Newcastle and St James’s Park which has been a bit of a graveyard over the last few years. We go all that way, do nothing and come home with zero points usually. The annoying thing about that is that Newcastle haven’t been any good for a number of years and this year is no exception. They are boring. I made the mistake of being in the room when one of their games was on and Steve Bruce was playing Jeff Hendrick, the most overpriced free transfer in history, as a wide striker. It was a case of turn the television off or fall into a coma so I chose the former.

The question about Newcastle this year is will they be bad enough to make a serious bid for relegation or will they just float around sixth from bottom all season. Apparently they have injury problems in defence, well cry me a river.  St Maximin is always entertaining though and Wilson will score goals if he doesn’t have to work particularly hard for them so there is a threat but nothing to be too worried about in theory..

Things are looking a bit more positive for Saints regarding players being available. It looks like Oriol Romeu is going to be back this week which is well timed given us not getting the Jankewitz ban overturned - apparently Saints debated for a whole zero seconds before deciding not to appeal, so Alex is serving the first game of the three game ban. It also looks like KWP and Jannik Vestergaard are getting pretty close as well but this weekend might be too soon for them. There is certain to be a debut for Takumi Minamino. As usual with us though, we can’t have any good news about there being some bad as well and Stuart Armstrong has picked up a muscle injury so he will be out for this game.

In depressingly predictable fashion, Alex Jankewitz saw his social media bombarded with racist insults after Tuesday‘s game. What I saw was mostly insulting emojis because the racists aren’t intelligent enough to actually fucking write anything. I hope that when these people are tracked down that their names and where they come from is published and if they are Southampton fans, they are banned from buying tickets for life. If anyone is reading this who left racist messages on Alex’s Instagram page, can you kindly fuck off and not read my stuff. Thanks very much.

Alex Jankewitz will be back, have no fear about that and he will get a good welcome from the rest of the Saints fan base. Kayne Ramsay deserves credit as well for putting his head above the parapet on social media to defend his friend and whilst the reason for him having to do that is diabolical, I can only applaud his message.

To the team news and it’s even better than predicted with both Romeu and Vestergaard returning to the starting XI, Minamino starts on the left with Redmond preferred to Djenepo on the right.  When the didn’t sign a replacement full back in the window, it was clear that Jack Stephens was going to have to play at right back at some point and that point is now – I’m sure he wouldn’t have chosen to play against St Maximin.

Stephens starts at right back and perhaps unsurprisingly, we don’t start very well and look nervous.  Shelvey plays Wilson through and he looks miles offside but we have the charade of him going on and finishing but it’s never gonna stand.

It doesn’t take long though.  Schars bangs it forward to where Stephens should be, Bednarek gets beaten by St Maximin who cuts in, gets his head up and picks out Willock running in, who scores easily.  Great

Having given them a 1-0 start, we now begin to play and there’s some encouragement as Stephens and Adams combine to send Ings though on goal but for some reason he takes an extra unneeded touch and the angle disappears and Darlow blocks well.
 
Back come Newcastle and a speculative ball from right to left again finds Stephens absent.  St. Maximin picks it up and finds Almiron before anyone closes him down and Almiron just smashes it across.  It’;s speculative but it works and Bednarek plays a 1-2 with his own amazing dancing feet and deflects it past McCarthy.  There’s a massive amount of luck in this but it’s still shit from our point of view. It’s fucking garbage to be honest

There’s not too long to dwell on how shit everything is as Bertrand surges forward on the left, plays it in to Minamino who takes a sublime first touch past a defender before lashing it left footed into the roof of the net at the near post.  What a goal that is.  It’ll be funny if Liverpool don’t score in their next game.

Newcastle are rivalling ourselves on the injury front and have lost both Manquillo and Wilson in the first half with Krafth and Joelinton coming on. At least it’s not Andy Carroll who would have been guaranteed a goal today.  Willock then again easily beats Stephens and sees his show clawed away by McCarthy, who doesn’t look comfortable at all.

There are about 30 seconds to go until half time and following a free kick from the toher side when most of our players are forward, Redmond picks it up on the right, about 30 yards from goal.  There are players ahead of him that he could try and find but oh no, he turns and goes backwards and eventually we go back to McCarthy, who produces a shite underhit pass to Bertrand and he loses it to Almiron who runs through and scores easily at the near post for one of the shittiest goals you will ever see conceded.  Just fuck off.  Talk about self inflicted.  No need for Redmond to go backwards, no need for McCarthy to pass it short, Bertrand should have just whacked it and bollocked him.

The half time reshuffle consists of Bednarek and Stephens swapping over.  They both had a mare in the first half but it’s interesting that the Stephens at right back plan for the rest of the season has lasted all of 45 minutes.  Down the other side at the start of the half, Willocks works his way across and tees up Shelvey, who Redmond has tracked from a distance of 10 yards, observing social distancing protocols but Voldemort inexplicably puts it wide.

It's a big let off and we have a chance to capitalise as Hayden carts over Adams about 25 yards out.  It’s predictable – we know what’s coming, Darlow in goal knows what’s coming and JWP knows what’s coming.  Over the wall and ripping away into the near top corner – simply brilliant, 3-2.  We should definitely still be on for a point at least here.

Even When Faced With a Wall Containing Voldemort, the Magician Strikes Again

As I’ve said before, Jeff Hendrick is a very average footballer and it appears he doesn’t have a brain either as Minamino gets away from him and Hendrick grabs his shirt – second yellow.  Jeff has forgotten that he got booked for scything down the same player in the first half so it’s one of the most brainless red cards from an experienced player that you will ever see so now, Newcastle have 10 men.

It looks like Newcastle are pressing the self-destruct button as Schar needlessly brings down Adams over on the right wing.  We win a corner following the free kick and JWP’s kick is met at close range by Vestergaard and Darlow doesn’t know much about it but he spreads himself and saves it.

It’s pissing down even more now and the pitch is beginning to suffer with standing water right down the middle.  It’s not helping but we do breate a great chance as Adams plays Redmond in near the goal line and his cut back is met by Ings, clipped over the keeper, onto the inside of the post and straight back to the grounded keeper.  Fucks sake.  Another chance goes by as Ings latches onto a loose ball and gets it past Darlow and Adams bundles it into the net.  They’re both offside though.

A rare Newcastle attack sees Almiron try to burst past Bednarek and he goes down holding his throat even though the contact was across his chest.   Definite free kick though and it’s shite and hit into the wall.  As it bounces out, Schar tries to shoot and gets there at exactly the same time as Vestergaard and that’s like kicking a wall. He’s injured and has to go off and Newcastle now have nine men.  Nine, it’s the magic number.

There are 18 minutes to go and Ralph makes our first sub with N’Lundulu replacing Stephens on 81, so now it’s a kind of 3-4-3 formation.  Nothing happens as we just crab aimlessly across the pitch.  There is a moment of excitement as Romeu’s cross is flapped out by Darlow and Ings shot is cleared off the line by Hayden. Vestergaard has gone near the keeper so that’s a foul, so it doesn’t matter anyway.

We carry on in clueless fashion til the end. Vestergaard is up front as well now though he’s not the best person to be up there when the crosses are knee high and rarely beat the first man.  There is one unscientific almighty scramble and it’s Vestergaard who has the chance but as the big man swings, Hayden gets a touch on the ball and Jannik hits it over the bar. Full time. Pathetic.

So, we had 20 minutes against 10 men and then 20 minutes against nine men and we couldn’t score and that was absolutely pathetic. Looks like Newcastle learned more from our 9-0 battering on Tuesday than we did.  If you take the game as a whole however, the fact of the matter is that if you throw three goals into your own net against anyone, then you do not deserve to get anything out the game and you are going to struggle to get anything out the game even if it is against a team as limited as Newcastle.

When we got tanked by United last week, there were a host of mitigating factors but today, the only one was the heavy pitch.  That maybe stopped us moving the ball as quickly as we needed to but regardless, there was no excuse for playing sideways through the mud, working a crossing opportunity or a 1v1 opportunity and then passing back across into the mud.  All of this is done 40 yards out and then someone basically puts the ball into the mixer.  Just loading bodies up front is never the key, it’s what goes on to draw the defenders out to make a bit of space, creating overloads.  It’s a training drill that you do from about Under 12s.  Our ‘plan’, such as it was, was to crab across the pitch and eventually cross from deep into our forward line which consisted of Ings, Adams, N’Lundulu and Vestergaard.  It’s been nagging at me for a while now that our players are very well drilled in Ralph’s system but do they have the ability to think on their feet? Is there a section in the SFC Playbook about 11 v 9?

Newcastle deserved their win because they dug in and showed a real desire to defend but they were helped to do that, even when they had nine players, by our total ineptitude to speed the game up, spread the play, put decent crosses into the box and pepper the goal. On top of that, when we lost the ball we usually committed a foul and allowed Newcastle to waste time and then put the ball up our end of the pitch for a minute and a half.

Almiron Shows What He Thinks of Saints Attacking Against Nine Men

Some of the players need to take a good look at themselves. The key incident of the game was the third goal. We were on the attack with 30 seconds to go to half-time and Nathan Redmond has the ball on the right about 30 yards out with most of our team in the penalty are from the preceding free kick. Instead of trying to go forward he turned back which eventually means that we gave it back to McCarthy who then gave Bertrand an absolutely shit pass which he then gave away and we end up 3-1 down at half-time. I don’t think McCarthy was particularly to blame for any other nine goals against Manchester United during the week but he looked today like his confidence are taking a bit of a battering. He was awful on the third goal, not just giving Bertrand the hospital pass but also not getting back into position and allowing Almiron an easy pass into the goal of the near post. It was pathetic.

I’ve already touched on Nathan Redmond and his desire to go backwards all the time. The  only situation in which he is any good is if we are on the attack from deep and it’s kind of broken field possession where there is lots of space to run into. As soon as an opposition player gets anywhere near him or a defence is set, he just turns back in plays safe. Any time he gets into a position to actually cross the ball it’s knee-high and always hitting the first defender. Since he came back into the team after his injury he is now played about three games and I don’t think he’s actually taken on a player once.  He’s clearly scared to try, so what is the point of him being out there?

As is obviously the plan given the defenders that we have in the squad, Jack Stephens played right back today with Vestergaard being fit again. That experiment lasted for the first half because Stephens was absolutely woeful, offering absolutely nothing in attack and not looking like he had a clue in defence.  Bednarek had an awful first half as well, being at fault for the first two goals and he got the job in the second half.  Rather than the experiment I would rather play Kayne Ramsay if KWP is not available. That one is on Ralph, as is leaving Redmond on the pitch for 95 minutes when Djenepo, who can actually beat a player and commit defenders, was left on the bench, as was Nathan Tella.  Djenepo should have been on for Redmond when Hendrick got sent off and Tella for Romeu when they went down to 9.  What was the point of leaving Romeu on?  Maybe Tella could’ve come on and played on the left with Minamino playing in midfield instead of Romeu for the last 20 minutes. Oriol was understandably off the pace today with his first game back.  That’s all with the benefit of hindsight though.

In some ways it was worse on Tuesday. We were playing a team who are utterly crap even with 11 men and we just did fuck all really. There was no cohesion to our play whatsoever, yet we scored 2 brilliant goals. Another freekick masterclass from JWP and a wonderful touch and shot by Minamino which will have the Liverpool fans purring. Minimino had a good day because his goal but he did drift out of the game quite badly at times but a lot of that would’ve been down to us not keeping possession well enough or attacking quickly enough.  The thought of him on one wing and Armstrong on the other is certainly appealing.

Up front, Danny Ings looked about half the player that he was at the start of the season and Che Adams never really look like scoring. When he did put the ball in the net you just knew it was going to be offside and those two have to get back on it as soon as possible.

A depressing end to a shite week of football. We have a player sent off and collapse and get absolutely fucking demolished whereas Newcastle have a player sent off against us and hold on to win. Not good enough.

Next up is the double header against Wolves, FA Cup away on Thursday followed by League at home on the Sunday.  Fraser Forster will start on Thursday and it should also be a debut for Mohammed Salisu.  I feel that the 5 defeats in a row that we have suffered will mean that maybe 1 or 2 are rested.

PS. After a couple of games where we’ve been on the end of some shockers from the referee, I’d like to highlight how well I thought Craig Pawson refereed the game today.