Premier League Match 6 - Southampton 0 Wolves 1

 

Jan With a Perfect View Of The Goal

Wolves at home in what is a game that will shape our perception of how good our start to the season has been. The bottom line is that in all the games we have played so far, if we had won any then it would be a pleasant surprise, so to only lose once and draw four times can definitely be spun as a positive. Win this and we’ve got to 7 points and it will definitely be a positive start to the season. However, fail to win and it doesn’t look as rosy in the garden. It’s a day when we need a performance.

Wolves are going to be very interesting this season because they have been riding a wave since they got promoted under Nuno Espirito Santo and have had two very decent years at Premier League level when they have been upper mid table for the majority of it. Last year was not quite as good as the year before, mainly because they lost their main striker Raul Jiménez to a horrific fractured skull injury and they subsequently struggled to put the ball in the net. There has undoubtedly been some strangeness around the way they tried to replace Jimenez with Fabio Silva and unsurprisingly, the manchild plucked from the Portuguese league for a ridiculously high fee has totally failed to provide the goals that were needed. This season they have looked very short of goals even though Jiménez is now back. They still have Adama Traore of course, despite him not doing and weights and being linked to some ridiculous big-money moves in the summer but these never materialised, probably because either a) it was media/agent bollockspeak or b) clubs actually looked at his end product and decided it really wasn’t worth it.

So, Wolves season could go either way this season with new manager Bruno Lage, and line us, they will be viewing this game as one they can win. Saints are off the back of what is, on the face of it, a fairly positive week with the point at the Etihad and then progression in the Carabao Cup in mid week, even though we made hard work of it.

When I get to the ground, I take a moment to remember that this is only the third game back where the attendance has been unrestricted. The pre-match entertainment has changed a little bit from pre-Covid days with the brass band walking up the side and playing “oh when the Saints” at mind buggering volume. It’s actually quite good because it gets the away fans to shut the fuck up and does build the atmosphere. I do get the impression though that it will will become old hat fairly quickly. Still, it’s better than the fucking mascot dog with a drum.

Ralph doesn’t particularly spring anything interesting with the team selection as it’s the same line-up as Man City apart from the injured Stephens being replaced by Bednarek. I guess that proves that no one really stuck their hands up at mid-week in Sheffield.  It does seem to contradict the ‘horses for courses’ approach we’ve been taking so far.  There is no way that this is the same type of challenge as Man City away is.

So, against a team who don’t know the meaning of the word “attack”, Saints start badly and immediately cough up a chance with some weak play in midfield, allowing Podence and Jimenez to get the ball wide to Semedo who has a clear shot at goal but luckily smashes it straight at McCarthy, who beats it away.

The game settles into a pattern of Saints possession with Wolves sitting very deep.  We aren’t showing much inspiration going forward and it’s quite frankly, boring.  Eventually,a JWP free kick is headed out to about 25 yard out and Romeu decides to have a go at hitting the scoreboard with a shot and only narrowly misses.  You could probably put a bet on that somewhere near where our owner lives.

We then actually get the ball in the net when Livramento takes a throw to Elyounoussi and he chips it into Redmond who controls and finishes smartly but the flag is straight up.  Miles offside.  There is one more moment of relative excitement before half time as Adams nearly catches Wolves keeper Sa, pissing about on his six yard line and half blocks the clearance which we pick up and Adams tees up Armstrong for a shot which is straight at the relived keeper.  Half time and soup is consumed whilst pondering how bad we are at attacking  Lots of effort but no inspiration.  Wolves sure as hell aren’t going to change the game plan so we’re going to have to.  Redmond and KWP are providing nothing down the left as they are both reluctant to go on the outside and there’s next to no link up between the strikers.

No changes at half time and we have a bit more life to us.  KWP brings it forward, plays a nice 1-2 with Adams and sends Armstrong away down the left hand side.  He picks out Livramento across on the other side who drills it at the near post and it’s comfortably blocked by Sa. It’s our best effort by far.  From the resultant corner, the ball hits Semedo and there’s a half arsed shout for a penalty but no chance.  Wolves are not even bothering to try and attack and are just camped in theor own half and eventually Elyounoussi takes aim, sees his shot defelcted and then pushed out by Sa to Che Adams who as normal, can’t put the rebound in and he would’ve been offside anyway.

Adams is in the thick of it moments later as Elyounoussi’s shot hits him in the ass and deflects to Redmond who doesn’t react as quickly as Semedo, who blocks and Sa just picks it up.  Sa looks up and bombs it downfield.  One of the things you will hear coaches of youth football teams say to their defenders is “don’t let it bounce” – obviously not in Poland though as Bednarek takes his eye off it, lets it bounce and then gets in a wrestling match with Jimenez.  He gets thrown off and Salisu tries to make up the ground but Jimenez lets him slide by before sitting Bednarek on his arse again and rolling it into the net as easily as you like because McCarthy looks too far over towards the far post.  Overall – it’s a shocker and what a shock that Jimenez uses Saints to break his post-skull fracture duck.  A great moment for him though and I’m really happy about it for fucks sake.

Jimenez Thanks The Lord for Teams Like Southampton

Broja is on for Adams and Djenepo for Redmond.  Djenepo seems to be on a mission to make something happen – he doesn’t know what exactly but it’s better than before and he gets chopped down by Moutinho.  It’s in the range where you think JWP might be able to score form but not this season so far.  The trajectory is good but there’s not enough on it and Sa walks across and gathers easily.  The Great Wolverhampton Cramp Plague strikes at that moment.  With every minute that passes, another player goes down with cramp or feigns an injury in a tackle.  Referee Andy Madley is letting everything go and I mean everything, so Wolves stop pretending theiy’re hurt in tackles and just go for the cramp option when the ball is out of play.  It’s fucking outrageous but my mind is about to be taken off it.

It’s third sub time and what the actual fuck is this shit? It’s 2021 and Ralph’s decided to make his last roll of the dice, a player who spent the second part of last season not able to get a game for Championship side.  Yep, Shane Long, about 5 years past his sell by date is on for KWP.  Well that will fucking help won’t it?   Nathan Tella is still on the bench and if KWP is coming off, even Perraud or Diallo would be more likely to deliver something going forward.

In amongst Great Wolverhampton Cramp Plague, we don’t do much really.  Djenepo feeds the overlapping Salisu down the left hand side and he shows the value of having a left-footed player out there as he puts over a first time cross, Adam Armstrong flicks it on towards Long so it doesn’t end up on the net.

We finally resort to Bednarek upfront and lumping it forward. We are that shit and have absolutely no idea.  The Great Wolverhampton Cramp Plague happens again and then we make a fuck up another long ball when Jiménez knocks Romeu out the way but this time McCarthy saves it.  Wank.

Well that was fucking dreadful. Our attacking play was non-existent from the first minute to the last.  We had 16 shots apparently… I remember two that forced a save – Livramento’s which was never going in and the Elyounoussi one that deflected.

It really doesn’t matter that Wolves are wasting time like bastards for the whole of the second half and the referee was doing very very little about it because we wouldn’t have scored if we had played until Monday. Our players get into the positions to create but just have absolutely no quality. Che Adams and Adam Armstrong are strikers with very little creativity between them they need the service and neither is the type to create a goal themselves with any regularity.

It’s games like today that remind you that when they are up against a packed defence, all of our wingers are not good enough.  Elyounoussi glides around the pitch and has a lovely first touch but when it comes to actually playing a through ball or putting a cross on someone’s head, forget it.  Redmond is just a ‘wrong option’ disguised as a footballer. There was a moment in the second half when he had the chance to do something creative and all he had to do was lift the ball over defender for Adam Armstrong and he was clean through. He tried to lift it over the defender but hit it about three times harder than he needed to and it just ran through to the goalkeeper. That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. When the moment comes to show any sort of quality or deftness of touch then he just hasn’t got it. One good thing every 15 games when we play a team that are absolutely shit.  Moussa Djenepo did more in his 20 minutes at the end but again, it’s so infrequent that anything comes off of Moussa and actually connects with one of his teammates.  He’s got ‘something’ but we are in his 3rd season now and we’re still waiting. As has been said before, the only wide player we have who has any quality on any consistent basis is Stuart Armstrong and he is injured.

You could argue that Ralph can’t help the players that he has at his disposal in these areas but there were other problems today that were totally of his own making. The lack of attacking effort was not helped by KWP being on the left-hand side. It just condenses the play into the middle and made it easy for Wolves. Nelson Semedo is an absolute fucking disaster at right back but all he had to do was funnel us inside into the three-man central defensive unit where there was the massive Kilman and Coady sweeping up behind.

Impact Sub in "No Impact" Shocker

So we keep persevering with Redmond, Djenepo and Elyounoussi despite them never really having done it in an attacking sense and then the ultimate piss take is to bring on Shane Long for the last 15 minutes. I virtually have nothing to say about this other than it’s 2021 and we are still giving minutes on the pitch in the Premier League to Shane Long. This is especially fucking weird given that as a club we have been showering ‘Starboy’ Nathan Tella with praise and he played pretty well at Sheffield United during the week, yet he is left on the bench when we need to goal and we bring on Shane Long.  What’s the agenda there?  Is it because he only has a year and a half left on his contract?

Wolves were pretty desperate as an attacking force as well but of course in the one moment that mattered, Raul showed some quality as our defenders obligingly fell over all around him. Bednarek created all his own problems by not heading the initial ball and once he let it bounce, he was weak. There is a suggestion that Jimenez pulled him back but even so, it was weak defending. If that was Jack Stephens who had done that, he would be getting absolutely slaughtered. Salisu tried to bail him out and the last line of defence was the goalkeeper, who for me was not in the right place and made the finish very easy.   Maybe that’s harsh but put it this way, from my view from the Chapel up the other end, I could see exactly where the big gap was for Raul to roll it into the net.  From our point of view, it is an absolutely dreadful goal to concede and like I say, our response was to bring on Shane Long.

I said at the start that this game would shape the perception of how good this team is and how the season has started. This was a depressing crash down to earth after the positives of the points taken against Manchester City and West Ham. We are really going to struggle to score goals this year.  It’s acceptable to not have many decent efforts on goal against the stronger teams but as a Southampton player you earn your money against the teams that are mid-table and lower and today, our attacking performance against a very average Wolves side was absolutely desperate. If that’s the best we’ve got then we are going to struggle.  Ralph has taken some deserved plaudits for the way we have set up against the likes of City and West Ham but today it was absolutely horrible and if we are going to create as little as that against the other mid-table and lower side then it is going to be one hell of a long season.

Chelsea next.  Oh good.