Free-hit time. Manchester City at home. It’s OK
everyone, they’ve only won 12 times in a row. Covid absences?, AFCON? No
problem, we’ll just play our second XI of £50 million plus footballers so no
worries. Actually, we probably actually don’t need them as we could put 11
dustbins out on the pitch because Pep Guardiola is our manager. It’s tough being City.
The only time Manchester City and Pep get on my tits is when they pretend they
haven’t got all the advantages going and that they are in some way hard done
by. There is absolutely nothing that is not stacked in their favour. As I’ve
said many times before, the game starts with 11 versus 11. In this respect,
both teams have the same resources but as soon as the game starts, City have
the advantages, end of discussion.
How to get anything out of a game against City? Well, we’ve already done it
once this season when we played 4-2-2-2 at the Etihad. You need to make sure that you have a threat
going forward to stop them camping within 40 yards of your goal and you have to
concentrate for 95 minutes, most of which will be spent without the ball. You have to keep the correct distances
between defence and midfield and you also have a bit of luck and get a fair
shake off of the referee. To that end, we have Simon Hooper today who we have
had a couple of times recently and he’s been largely very good in those games.
This season of course, City’s marquee signing was Jack Grealish for £100
million quid, five times our transfer record. He used to be the only player
that you worried about when you played against Aston Villa but now he is one of
11. All I try to do when we play City is
focus on the players who are not quite as good as all the others, those being
Gabriel Jesus who is Brazil’s starting centre forward, Kyle Walker who is
England’s starting right back and Raheem Sterling who is virtually the first
name on every England team sheet. My
opinion perhaps but those three are not at the level of the likes of Kevin De
Bruyne, Phil Foden, Rodri, Ruben Dias etc. Maybe one of those lesser players
will make a mistake but are they are more likely to make a mistake then one of
your own players? So, strap yourself in, work hard and hope for the best.
Having had around 3 pm games we are now gifted the shitty 5.30pm slot on a
Saturday which is particularly shitty for the Manchester City travelling fans,
who no one in the FA actually cares about. Well, not as much as they care about
money.
In what was definitely a first, I managed to exactly predict the formation and
the starting line-up as we walked to the ground. Stuart Armstrong and Redmond
on the wings, Adams and Broja up front and KWP coming in at right back. The
rest of it was pretty obvious. City had their first choice team out, no doubt
about it with the possible exception of Gundogan and Mahrez but a midfield
three of Rodri, De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva isn’t too bad. Foden, Grealish and Sterling is not a bad front
three either.
Away we go and we seem to spend the first
5 minutes chasing the ball around and generally not getting a touch. The composure they have is ridiculous. Adams has to come back into his own half on
the left to set up our first real bit of possession and he combines with
Armstrong to find Romeu, who switches is out right to KWP. Forward he goes and pushes a pass behind
Cancelo to Redmond who return it back to him.
What happens next is mad. KWP
takes a touch and with the outside of his right boot, gives Ederson no chance
with a shot across him into the far corner.
Mental – what a goal. It’s not
quite Cuco Martina but what a fucking goal.
That’s just going to annoy them isn’t it.
Back to more City possession with Grealish at the heart of most of it,
dropping deep to pick it up. We are
getting tight really quickly, none more so than Bednarek who steams into Grealish
who executes a somersault in mid-air that Tom Daley would have been proud of
and lands in a heap. As Bednarek picks
up a deserved card, Oriol feels the need to go and tell Grealish the marks out
of 10 he was awarding for artistic merit.
Grealish is immediately cured of his death throes and is up giving Romeu
a shove. Romeu doesn’t move.
City aren’t really getting anywhere in terms of shots on goal but we are still maintaining a threat as Romeu, like he did against Brentford, spots the run of Broja from deep and clips it between two defenders. Broja takes it down superbly before advancing on Ederson and slipping it past him but the flag has gone up to kill any celebration. There is no protracted VAR check so I’m guessing it must be pretty obvious.
A few minutes later and Adams does superbly to retain possession before poking it through to Broja, who advances on Ederson again and tries to go round him and over he goes but once more, before we can get too excited and start screaming for a penalty and a red card, it’s fucking offside again and once again, it’s clearly not even marginal. Doesn’t stop the Clark Kent with the X-Ray vision behind me, who can see it wasn’t offside from 100 yards away.
There is a warning straight after that are Sterling twists past Perraud on the right and side but when the Eangland international should be getting his head up and picking someone out, like a decent player would, he takes a wild swing with his left foot and it’s always going over the bar. Raheem Sterling simply isn’t that good and that’s a hill I’m prepared to die on.
Having voiced that slightly contentious opinion, which of course you should never do whilst said player has time to make you look a right dick, Cancelo goes down our right and gets the cross over, Perraud misses it and there is Sterling who has an absolute sitter at the back post but he hits it straight at Forster from 6 yards, who toe pokes the rebound away as well. Redmond fannies around with it and gets tackled but we just about get away with it.
We’ve nearly reached half-time now but once more, Redmond has given the ball away and City come forward with de Bruyne threading a lovely ball in between our defenders and Salisu steams across to block the cross from Walker.
Half time – bloody hell. We’ve been excellent here. Not too many heart attack moments and we are in the main defending very well. It’ll be interesting to see how we keep the concentration levels up in the second half as it must be so tiring playing against this lot. As the teams emerge for the second half, Ralph has rolled the dice with Redmond coming off and Elyounoussi coming on. I assume he thinks the new man will track the runner better and look after the ball.
Surprisingly, we’re back on the attack immediately and Perraud’s cross is blocked behind for a corner. In it comes from JWP and in a Brentford carbon copy, Bednarek gets up and flicks it goalwards but unlike Brentford, it hits Ederson and they get it clear. A foot either side and that was in.
Stuart Armstrong breaks forward energetically and slides Broja in between Laporte and Cancelo but Laporte just about stays with him and then blocks the shot from behind him. Really good defending it has to be said. Bastard. JWP puts in the corner from the right hand side and it’s headed across by Salisu and Broja gets up in front of Ederson and heads it onto the post, fuck, out it comes for Bednarek to lash over the bar. I can’t help but feel that the flag would’ve gone up had Broja stuck it in the net.
Just when we’re beginning to get carried away with ourselves and our attacking threat, KWP tries to take on Cancelo and is on the receiving end of a properly good tackle which enables City to break and it’s terrifying. They work the ball through the players out to the right hand side with Rodri knocking it and getting it back 25 yards out and he looks up, and pings one towards the top corner. I’m up the other end mouthing the word ‘fuuuuuuck’ as it flicks off the top of the bar and goes over.
Pep agrees with me that Raheem Sterling is ass and off he goes to be replaced by Jesus. Jesus’ first miracle is to be dragged down by Che Adams on the right hand side. De Bruyne stands over it, plays it in and we go to sleep as the delivery is met at the back post by Laporte, who is one of three unmarked players who have broken through the somewhat feeble attempts to block them off. Bollocks. What a shit goal to concede.
Now it’s just seems to be a case of whether we can hang on or not and every time the ball goes to Kevin De Bruyne you think it’s unlikely. He picks it up on the edge of the box and lets fly with one of those ridiculous efforts with very little backlift…. Ping…. Off the past and away and Fraser wasn’t stopping that.
After that little escape, Ralph has decided that Bednarek has walked the second yellow tightrope for long enough and he’s off to be replaced by Lyanco. That’ll calm things down. More pressure as De Bruyne goes over on the edge of the box and someone somewhere is getting excited and getting in the referees ear. The words ‘Checking Possible Penalty’ come up on the screen. Shite.
It takes so long that both teams have a mid-season break… but we get away with it. Bizarrely, the screen tells us it’s a foul but outside the box. Can’t go back for that lads, play on.
Stuart Armstrong does play on and tries to close down Laporte in City’s left back area and catches hin with a high foot. Laporte, who of course can’t decide if he’s French or Spanish, also can’t decide if he’s dead or merely fatally wounded. Armstrong gets booked but the dreaded VAR sign appears on the scoreboard checking possible red card. Fucks sake.
“Hi there Hoops, Darren England here”
“Are you going to be a bit quicker this time Daz”
“Just slowing it down again to see if he definitely catches him”
“He does, I know, I’ve booked him, shall we get on with it”
“Hang on – super-slomo forwards, super-slomo reverse….”
“Come on Daz, Laporte’s gone down again with PTSD of some sort”
“…super-slomo zoom in, super-zoom in telescopic…”
“Laporte’s up again, he’s being a bit of a knob to be honest… Daz, what’s going on?”
“… telescopic super slomo fine grain forwards… and back…. Yep – he defeinitely caught him”
“I know, I’ve booked him – clear error on my part?”
“…super slo-mo in…”
“Bye Darren”
As explained on my official VAR transcript, whilst the check is going on, having got back to his feet and not had any treatment, Laporte decides to sit on the ground and start rolling around again. What an absolute fucking wanker. Check over, no red card, still no treatment for the port and he doesn’t have to leave the pitch. Ralph can’t get Stu off the pitch quick enough and on comes Diallo.
90 gone, 6 to go. Shite. Pressure and lots of it but the answer is Salisu. He’s ridiculous. Tackles, headers, blocks, everything. City break dangerously up our left and Sali is virtually last man with de Bruyne running at him. Bang, ball won, de Bruyne on deck without ball. On we go. Brilliant, full time.
Thank fuck that’s over. That is an absolutely outstanding performance and an outstanding point gained at the end of it. I always feel like a bit of a knob celebrating a point at home but anyone who gives a supporter of a team like Saints a hard time for celebrating a point against the multi billionairoes of Manchester City, needs to get in the bin, quite frankly.
The word that springs to mind is immense. Let’s start with a goalkeeper: Fraser Forster was absolutely immense today and Pep must’ve been having Barcelona nightmares with Fraser being back to his Wall like best this week.
In front of him you have Mohammed Salisu who was just absolutely imperious. He has it all really, pace, good in the air, really good one-on-one and his passing is pretty good. If I had to nit-pick, I would say he has to avoid going to ground on occasions but today he was absolutely superb. His passing is improving all the time as well.
Next to him, Bednarek and then Lyanco also played a huge role in keeping City quiet. Most of it is down to concentration and they did that. I could’ve done without Lyanco being an overlapping centre back on the right wing in the last couple of minutes but that’s just him, a lunatic. A word today for Romain Perraud. Sometimes his positional play is a bit lacking, and he doesn’t block as many crosses as he should but when he gets close enough to the winger he is incredibly difficult to play against and his persistence today resulted in Raheem Sterling doing nothing and getting substituted and Gabriel Jesus doing nearlynothing when he came on. On the right of course, you have KWP and whatever he did defensively today will be eclipsed by the goal that he scored which was of course absolutely outstanding.
The best laugh that I’ve had for a long time was learning after the game that
Jack Grealish was waiting in the tunnel for Oriol Romeu. That must be the first
time in football history that someone who wears a fucking Alice band to play
has decided to have a word with one of the most uncompromising hardest bastards
in football. Who’s your money on?
Hilarious. Oriol must’ve absolutely struggled not to piss himself laughing. The
flashpoint came of course from the incident where Bednarek got booked basically
because Grealish did a somersault when the tackle came in.
Talking of reactions or over reactions, I have never seen anything quite like Aymeric
Laporte. He got caught by Stuart
Armstrong and got up and was fine until there was a VAR check and then he
decided to put himself on the ground again and start rolling around. You pathetic wanker. What happened to ‘bringing the game into
disrepute’ because if that isn’t bringing the game into disrepute I don’t know
what is. After the VAR check he of course
carried on with no treatment and didn’t leave the pitch.
Up front today we had Armando Broja and Che Adams. They haven’t played many games as a strike
partnership and you could tell at times that they didn’t really have a
telepathic understanding but the two of them worked so incredibly hard today
and the understanding will come and this is definitely the partnership we
should persevere with going forward.
Ralph got it spot on today. It was no surprise to me that we went 4-2-2-2
because that has worked against City in the past but I thought the
substitutions were spot on today. He’s worked out that when you play against
teams to do throw themselves around that it’s not worth leaving players only
have a yellow card for risk of them getting a red, hence the withdrawal of
Bednarek halfway through the second half and the withdrawal of Armstrong after
the VAR check against him. All the
substitutions played a part today. Elyounoussi was fairly quiet but his role
was mainly to shore up the left leg ahead of Perraud and both Diallo and Lyanco
had a positive impact when they came on. We stayed brave and tried to play out
all the time which was very difficult because City are so good at pressing. Against most sides we look like we can pass
it through them relatively comfortably but City are different and we got a bit
panicky at times with Salisu and Bednarek knocking it around with Forster. However, the ends justify the means and we got
away with.
Raheem Sterling proved that he is average. It was a shame when Pep took him off because
he’d almost been our best defender. We
knew that if he got a cross in that it was just going to be random spam into
the box and never pick out a player and you were not remotely surprised when he
missed that absolute sitter at the end of the first half. He’s another player that when his pace starts
to go in a few years time, he will be another Theo Walcott in that there’s not
a lot of footballing ability to fall back on.
As a spectator it’s hard watching games when you’re only have 25% possession
whatever it was but you can really admire the hard work that goes in to playing
against a team like City. Keeping them arm’s-length like we did takes a
phenomenal amount of effort and it’s just a shame that having kept them out in
open play, we conceded from a fairly tame set piece. You can’t help but be
proud of the boys though for the way they went about it and if we can put in
that much effort and work in our next two games against Tottenham and Manchester
United then there is no reason why we can’t pick up points in those as well.
Before that though, it’s a week off and then it’s the FA Cup 4th Round against
Coventry which will be a chance for a few players to get some minutes and a
perfect opportunity to get into the 5th Round. As Mick Channon said at half
time, we ain’t going to win the league so why not give the FA Cup a real good
go.
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