Premier League Match 23 - Southampton 1 Wolves 2

 

It all Started So Well...

Here we are again for another dance with Wolves, just a few days after the last one.

I was taken aback by some of the reaction from Wolves fans about the FA Cup defeat that they suffered. Sure I expected them to be disappointed with the team selection and the apparent prioritisation of a mid-table league game but I was not expecting to see so many calling for the managers head and the like. There was a somewhat surprising sense of entitlement within the fanbase of a club who have had a couple of good seasons but have been predominantly shite for the last 30 years. With the whole Jorge Mendes Super Agent situation, you could argue that the whole thing is built on sand anyway as it cannot be a healthy long-term strategy to be completely reliant on one agent. I would suggest that the Nuno/Mendes axis is what makes the world go round up there so it will be very interesting to see what happened if Nuno did indeed move on.

Anyway, he’s here today and like Arteta a few weeks ago, has a point to prove after a cup exit.  We came through the Cup game, not only with a win but with a clean bill of health going into this game so it should be a strong team selection and it is with McCarthyy holding off Fraser for the goalkeeper shirt, Vestergaard returning in place of Salisu and Minamino restored to the left in place of Djenepo.  It’ll be an interesting test of Minamino’s defensive work because apparently, the main reason Liverpool and Klopp are unconvinced by him, is his work rate off the ball.  Adama Traore is down his side today, with Neto and Willian Jose making up a new front line from what they had in the Cup.  Conor Coady is of course back as well, as is Rui Patricio.

Wolves immediately look better than they did on Thursday and win an early free-kick on the left hand side which Neves swings in and Willian Jose heads miles over the bar from an offside position.  Both sides are pressing so there’s not a lot happening but Saints do manage to work their way upfield when Vestergaard plays in to Minamino and a flick by him and one by Ings and Redmond is running into all sort of space.  He waits for Minamino to catch up and plays it into his path but the scuffed left footed effort is easily saved by Patricio. We don’t get a corner because for some reason, an offside is given in the middle of the pitch and that’s an absolute fucking mystery.

Minamino again produces a lovely touch in midfield to send Armstrong away and then Redmond and Ings are breaking.  Redmond has the ball and fucks up the pass to Ings and puts it behind him.  Danny checks and jinks across the box before teeing up Redmond again and his attempted curler into the far bottom corner is very well saved by Patricio.

Saints are in command now and Wolves aren’t producing anything up front.  Armstrong charges past Semedo on the left, gets to the goal line, looks up, crosses it left-footed and Danny Ings absolutely smashes it into the net on the volley. Brilliant goal and I’m looking all over the place to see if there’s some way that it’s going to be disallowed – such is the way of things these days.

Half time is reached and we have now had three halves of football against Wolves where they’ve done nothing.  There is no way Nuno is going to send them out without a rocket up their arse so we have to be ready for that.  As they line up to start the second half, it’s clear that Neto and Traore have swapped wings.

Wolves look better straight away and are playing with more intensity.  It takes all of 5 minutes to change the game as Traore picks it up and turns infield.  Romeu can’t bin him because he’s been booked already and so Traore bundles across the aprk and plays it to Semodo on the right.  He takes a potshot which hit Bertrand from close range and goes for a corner.  Hnag on, Graham Scott has pointed to the spot.  How the fuck has he given that – it’s been blasted at him.  The replay shows that Bertrand has turned his back with his left shoulder facing the ball and it’s hit his right arm.  How in the name of fuck is that handball?  Trouble is – unlike every other ref on defensive handballs, the fucking ref has given it so it’s not going to be overturned. 

“Scotty, it’s Martin Atkinson at Stockley Park…. Scotty, it’s Marty mate, come on”
“No need Marty mate I’ve given it – don’t need you”
“Hang on Scotty, all penalty calls have to go to VAR”
“Not when I’ve given it…  Big Mikey D told me that”
“Hang on Scotty mate – how was he supposed to get his hand out of the way?”
“I’ve given it mate”
“It was blasted at him from 5 yards for fuck sake”
“I’ve given it, I've given it, I've given it”
“How did you see that from where you were, it was the other side of him”
“Not listening, I’ve given it, fingers in my ears, nah-nah-ne-nah-nah”
"For fucks sake Scotty"

Is Neves going to miss?  Of course he fucking isn’t. 1-1.  Cheers Scotty you wanker.

..and then it all went to shit

Saints initially respond well with KWP playing in Redmond down the right.  He cuts it back to Armstrong who drills it goalwards but it hits Coady and goes for a corner.  We play the corner short and it eventually falls to Armstrong to chip it into the box towards Vestergaard. He misses it and the ball hits Dendoncker’s arm which is away from his body and he’s had plenty of time to see it but even though Graham Scott has a perfect view of it, that is not a penalty. Useless fucking wanker.  The game goes on and the VAR headset crackles into life again...

“Scotty, it’s Martin Atkinson again”
“Play on… I’ve not given it”
“But it’s hit Dendoncker on the arm”
“I know but I’ve not given it”
“But you gave the first one Scotty and this is more clear and obvious, you gotta be consistent”
“I’ve not given it, moving on Marty”
“And you were looking straight at this one and everything”
“I gave the first one, I’ve not given the second one, I’m being fair”
“Have you been talking to Mike again Scotty?”
"He got death threats from these Southern bastards"
"That was West Ham Scotty"
“Play on!”
“For Fucks sake Scotty”

Traore is starting to get on the ball now and we don’t know how to handle him. Same again and he weaves across and eventually the ball is worked out to Semedo on the right hand side again just like the move lead to the penalty but this time Vestergaard blocks it.  Wolves win the ball back and end up back with Neves who sets himself up with a volley straight at McCarthy. Another chance comes and goes after Bednarek trashes Neto over on the left wing. In comes the freekick and it’s Bednarek who makes up for giving away the free-kick by toe ending it away from onrushing Wolves players. We are living dangerously and the tide has completely turned in the 15 minutes since half time. The game seems to only be going one way at the moment and we need to do something about that.  Have we got anything though?

There’s a straight swap with Djenepo coming on for Minamino but then the inevitable happens.  Saints are on the ball through KWP but his ball forward gets headed back into the mix so where Jose picks it up and finds Neves. The ball goes out to Neto on the right hand side and he looks like he’s going to cut back in but he sends Vestergaard for hotdog, nips past him go outside and then bends it past McCarthy into the far side of the goal from a narrow angle. Brilliant goal but we have again contributed to our own downfall.

Adams comes on for Armstrong who has been comfortably our best player and then KWP goes down injured again which is a fucking disaster.  Looks like a hamstring so off he goes and Salisu is on and Ralph presses the ‘Random Formation’ button his remote and it’s a kind of 3-4-3 with Djenepo at right wing back against Traore.  Oh good.

On we randomly go and Ings works an opening on the left and his cross is blocked out to JWP who hits it, saved low by Patricio and Adams follows in, uses the right foot when he should’ve used the left and Patricio saves again. However of course he’s fucking offside so it wouldn’t have counted anyway.

In the ten minutes that remain we create one half chance as Traore gets crowded out in midfield, throws himself on the floor to try and win a free kick but nothing doing and Djenepo sends Redmond away on the right.  His cross is decent and aimed at Adams but he dives and produces a 50p head special and off for a goal kick. Has Che ever scored with his left foot or his head?  That’s all folks. 

That second-half was truly pathetic and almost as bad as it gets. Coming from the team that is lost two games 9-0, that’s really saying something. Wolves upped the tempo and we had absolutely no response whatsoever. Okay, the handball decision and the inconsistency showed later is absolute bullshit but even before the decision gets Bertrand you could see that Wolves had just taken over at the start of the second-half. It’s a common theme, Saints set up and play the way they do with high energy and a big emphasis on pressing but as soon as another team wrestles the initiative from us and it’s time for us to up the tempo, we have absolutely nothing, no Plan B and no game changers to bring off the bench.

The Amazon Prime coverage at the end of the game focused on the two handball decisions and basically, if Graham Scott is going to give the first penalty then the VAR has to give the second one but VAR clearly never communicated with Graham Scott other than to tell him that it wasn’t a penalty against Dendoncker. If Graham Scott had been asked to go and look at it then maybe he could’ve given the penalty because he gave the first one. It’s another example of the system being absolutely bollocks.  Dear old Scotty doesn’t get away with it though because he gave the penalty against Bertrand when he couldn’t have possibly seen it from the position he was in and he didn’t give the Dendoncker one when he was looking straight at it from 10 yards.

Ralph’s anger at the inconsistency was obvious and his post-match interview but I sense there was a bit of deflection going on there. He didn’t want to take any questions aside from about the Referee/VAR decisions.  I have a few other questions I’d like to ask….

1. You can’t argue with the fact that Wolves changed things up and got the upper hand and we did nothing. Why did we not respond by upping our tempo when Wolves changed things up?
2. Why did he take Armstrong off? This week has illustrated (again) that Stuart Armstrong is probably our most important player in regard to making the team tick, so I’d like to know why he was taken off today. Hopefully he was just feeling a little bit tight and it was precautionary because after he went off we did absolutely fuck all
3. Djenepo had already come on for Minamino who had faded badly in the second-half like he did last week – Nathan Tella, who had huge impact off the bench in midweek was left freezing his arse off in the stands.  Why was that? 
4. When KWP went down we brought on Salisu and went to a back 3 so we now had Djenepo playing at right wing back against Adama Traore.  KWP was playing his second game in 4 days after a long layoff so why wasn’t Kayne Ramsay on the bench?
5. Why are we like a long-distance runner who has one tactic, to sprint as hard as he can at the start of the race and maybe get to the finish line or maybe collapse in a big fucking heap? Why do we only have one way to win a game?
6. Why do we react so badly when anything goes against us and just collapse?  

We are led to believe that Ralph is the highest paid person at the club but however much a manager is paid, it’s their remit to know the answers to these questions. This is what top level management is all about - you are responsible when things go wrong. It’s an undeniable fact we’ve lost six games in a row, one of them by 9-0. It can’t all be circumstances beyond your control.  I’m not saying for a second that Ralph should be replaced (we couldn’t afford it even if we wanted to) but there is this narrative that he’s some kind of deity that can’t be challenged.  Bullshit.

The first half, though it seems so long ago, was excellent from us aside from the fact that we didn’t score more than one goal. Nathan Redmond did some very good things and some very bad things and Danny Ings looks like he’s getting back to his best. The goal was absolutely stunning with the brilliant run from Armstrong, awareness to look up and pick a player out, execute it with his wrong foot and the volley was sublime. The defence was comfortable in the first half and we didn’t let Wolves have a shot of any note. How quickly it all went to shit after half-time.

All that Wolves seem to do was play with more intensity and switch Neto and Adama over to the opposite flanks. The left-hand side of our team had been handling Adama with ease because you had Vestergaard who could stand up to the physicality and you had Bertrand who is a very clever player but the right hand side really struggled. We funnelled him into the middle, where he’s always going to go because he is totally right footed but then didn’t get near him and that was how the first goal came about. The second goal was a brilliant bit of skill by Neto and he showed the ability that he has.  Vestergaard totally bought that he was going to turn away from goal onto his left foot and lash it but though he kept it on his left foot, he managed to skip round the Saints man on the other side and smash it into the far corner of the net. Brilliant goal.  Our response – nothing much.

We have a week to find some answers and we’re going to have to do it without KWP who looks like he’s going to be out for a while with a hamstring injury.  That’s a problem because we didn’t sign a fucking right back in the window so KWP had to play 2 games in 4 days when coming back from injury.   I do hope we are not shoehorning Jack Stephens in to right back but I fear that is what is going to happen. Lose to Chelsea and it’s a seven-game losing run and the game after that is Leeds and then Everton at Goodison Park, where we have a diabolical record.

Football is fucking bollocks sometimes.