To tell the story of this game, we have to go back to New Year, when of course, this game was postponed. I wrote this as a preview for that game and it of course went unused. Might as well use it now.
December 2021
Most of the build up to the Newcastle game has been centred around whether the
game will actually go ahead or not with Newcastle crying about not having
enough players available to fulfil the fixture. This is of course complete
bullshit. There is a clear and obvious advantage to Newcastle potentially being
able to call the game off with the transfer window about to open and them
having billions of pounds to spend.
They don’t make the rules of course, but it certainly doesn’t help that Eddie Howe starts
bleating about getting game is called off as soon as his two best players,
Wilson and St Maximin get injured. As a
football manager, your default reaction to a couple of injuries is to be
thinking about who you can play where in the next game, but Howe had clearly
given thought to getting the game called off beforehand.
How the fuck can they say they haven’t got enough players when they have 25
senior players and 47 under 21s registered with the Premier League? Glad I
don’t live in Newcastle because the Covid rates are there must be horrendous. Absolute bullshit
Fast forward a few days….
The Premier League have called the game off and then said that they are
frustrated because they don’t have specific information. Anyone would think it wasn't their league with their rules! If the Premier League are saying
that they don’t have information then of course, they won’t be able to
implement any restrictions on who these teams can pick in the return game.
“We’d like to call the Southampton game off please”
“Can you tell me how many players are missing because of Covid?“
“No but if you add those to the number of injuries we’ve now got, we can’t
raise a team”
“Okay then, permission granted”
There is no way that is anyone who is injured for non-Covid reasons should be
allowed to play. What happened to integrity of the competition? Saints rested
Armando Broja against Spurs because we wanted him to play against Newcastle. We
put Shane Long in the team. We took Broja and Tella off against Crystal Palace
because we thought we were playing Brentford in three days time. Where is the
fairness? Does anyone care? No.
As we know on the South Coast, Eddie Howe has always been a depressive whinger
when things are not going his way. When you turned on Radio Solent on the way
home after a game and Bournemouth had lost, it was like listening to a person
it was about to jump off the Itchen Bridge. Every time, I wanted to call the
Samaritans to put him on suicide watch.
Saints are quite rightly casting the memories back to playing Manchester United
last season when we lost rather heavily. Kayne Ramsey and Alex Jankewitz were
making their full debuts and we had people like Will Ferry and Allen Tchaptchet
on the bench, who had never played a minute of Premier League football. We also
had two goalkeepers on the bench. We got on with it, we played, we took our
medicine and thanks to a stupid tackle in the first minute and the Mike Dean going
in dry, we got beat 9-0, again.
We’ve had two called off now, Brentford and Newcastle. In and around those
games, Brentford have been happy to play against Manchester City with a patched
up team and Newcastle were happy to play against Manchester United. It’s almost
as if they knew they were unlikely to get anything out of those games anyway
but a game against Southampton Is a better chance of three points so we want
our strongest side out to play that one”
Today…
And here we are with the rearranged fixture - unlike Brentford, which was rearranged with a few weeks of the original date, this game has been left for a couple of months. In that time, Newcastle have signed a load of players
and are a much better side now and no longer in the bottom three. None of the new arrivals are
players that particularly get the pulse racing but they are considerably better
than what they had before, which is all that matters. Where I have to give whingeing Eddie credit,
is that a lot of the players that were there before are now playing a lot
better and they were under Steve Bruce, in particular Joelinton, Ryan Fraser
and Jonjo Shelvey. The additions of Kieran Trippier, Dan Burn, Matt Targett,
Bruno Guimaraes and Chris Wood have done the job they were brought in to do.
It’s easy to spend money unwisely (see “Everton” for details) so Newcastle have
to be congratulated for what they have done since January.
Saints are coming off the back of the 4-0 gubbing we got off of Aston Villa on
Saturday, so in an ideal world, this will be the game to get us back on track.
There hasn’t been a lot of news out of St Mary’s since the Villa game, other
than it looks like Mohammed Salisu’s injury is not that serious and he’s been
back in training.
Personally, I’ve only gone and caught Covid for the first time so I won’t be in
the crowd tonight. I was fine for the original date. Ironic isn’t it?
To the teams and Saints are back to full
strength with Tino being preferred to Romain as the second full-back. Newcastle
have a few missing with St. Maximin being the obvious one that I’m pleased is
not there. It’s an even opening
to the game with not a lot happening until Romeu gets his head up and pings a
ball over the defence to put Broja clean through. However, it needed an instant
touch for it to be a decent chance and the subsequent poor touch meant Dubravka
could save relatively easily. The resulting corner is headed away by the giant Burn
and Oriol Romeu shows that Norwich is not the new normal, by lashing it into
the travelling Newcastle fans.
Saints and begin to take over as a half moves on
and Jonjo Shelvey gets caught in midfield by Romeu. The ball moves on to Che
Adams, who again, plays in Broja in the inside right channel but once again, he
takes a poor touch and lashes over the bar as Dubravka closes him down.
No matter as we carry on being on the front foot
and eventually KWP gets the ball down the left, cuts back in and crosses to the
back stick with his right foot, where Elyounoussi competes with Targett and
knocks the ball across and there is Stuart Armstrong right in front of the goal
to flick his magnificent hair at it and the ball hits Dan Burn and bobbles into
the net. Get in, 1-0.
Newcastle don’t respond particularly well but we
switch off and allow them to walk the ball at the left-hand side under no
pressure and there is still no pressure as the ball gets rolled back to Shelvey
who takes a touch and has time to pour himself a pint, drink it, go home, have
a bath, put his kit back on, look up and cross it into the box to where Chris
Wood has lost Salisu and plants an easy header into the net. Fucks sake. What a
shit goal. Easy to point the finger at
the defender who lost his man and that’s part of it for sure but the lack of
pressure on the ball during the entire move was shocking.
I very much doubt the halftime team talk had anything to do with defending like a team of Under 10s but that’s what we are doing and we are all over the place as Jacob Murphy shoots and it hits Elyounoussi and deflects over. Matt Targett swings in the corner from the right hand side, Burn loses Livramento at the back post and heads down and despite facing the wrong way, Guimaraes manages to backheel/mule kick the ball into the net giving Fraser no chance at all. Fucks sake. In the five minutes after the goal, we carry on defending shambolically and there are shots pinging in from all over the place which we are thankfully alert enough to block, which keeps us in the game. Newcastle are now defending really deep and we really don’t look like we have a clue. There seems to be a lack of movement up front and if Armstrong doesn’t create anything, it doesn’t look like anyone will. There seems to be a lack of energy apart from the aforementioned Armstrong and KWP. The first substitution arrives with the disappointing Armando being replaced by Adam Armstrong. We kind of create a chance after that with JWP finding Tino on the right wing but in all honesty, it’s a poor cross that Dubravka has to tip over the bar, rather than an effort deliberately fired at the goal. Another substitution with Shane Long coming on for Romeu which kind of means were playing 433 but there doesn’t seem to be any width with KWP coming in on his good foot every time and Tino seemingly reluctant to take anybody on. KWP does get a cross in with his right foot following a half cleared corner and there is Salisu getting up for a header but it comes off his shoulder a little bit and bounces down which allows Debravka to scramble the ball away. The one final substitution is Make-A-Wish Kid time, with Djenepo coming on for Elyounoussi. Needless to say it doesn’t produce anything and the one chance during injury time is when Stuart Armstrong cuts in from the right hand side and has a left footed dig from the edge of the penalty area which unfortunately is too central and Dubravka tips over. The End. Shit… but only our second home defeat of the season.
Well that was grim. I have a bit of an irrational hatred for Eddie Howe and his little pet dog Jason Tindall. However, they’ve done us today. Standard Howe tactics today – timewasting in the extreme from the first half. Fuck me, how many times was Schar on the floor, only to get up time and time again to complete the game. To think that we got criticised for the energy drink break a few weeks ago.
I don’t often do sour grapes but I’m going to do it today. With all the shithousery that went on over the original postponement from Newcastle’s side, it was absolutely inevitable that they would prosper today. There is irony all over the place in that the goals were scored by two players who weren’t on their books when the original game was supposed to be played. It’s also amusing in some way, that on a day when Roman Abramovich and all his dirty money got sanctioned and Chelsea were plunged into turmoil, Newcastle, funded with a money from a very dodgy regime, come to town and beat us. Ironic too that Amanda Staveley was in the crowd as well, after saying in the week that she felt sorry for Roman Abramovich. All Newcastle have done though is played the system - the Premier League should’ve done something when these dodgy owners came to the table and the Premier League should’ve done something about the blatant chicanery that went on around the Covid postponements. They never do though because they don’t care about integrity, so we’ve just got get on with it.
Forgetting all that though, as for the game on the pitch, we were shocking and probably deserved to lose despite Newcastle only really having two efforts on goal. The second half as a real return to the bad old days when a team sat back against us and we would have absolutely no clue how to break them down. When a team sits deep, you need to go round the defence or over it. Trying to pick your way through is definitely the most difficult option. We couldn’t go round it because we didn’t make the pitch wide enough because we didn’t have any natural width on the left hand side where we had two right footed players. KWP was our best player today by considerable distance but he would have been better on the other side. On the other side, Tino Livramento barely ran at Matt Targett once and the obvious substitution was to bring Perraud on and switch KWP to the right but instead of that we brought on Moussa Djenepo for reasons that only Ralph knows. We ended the game with a narrow 4-3-3 formation which played completely into Newcastle’s hands. For their part, they defended well and managed the game well in what they will see as a textbook away performance, especially in the second half.
Elsewhere, JWP and Romeu struggled to get to grips with Shelvey and Guimaraes in midfield and when they did when we were to one down, the creative limitations were there for all to see which is why Romeu got taken off in the end. However, you can only be creative and pass the ball forward, if your strikers are on it.
Whilst Che Adams had a good first half, he disappeared somewhat in the second and Armando Broja, sadly, barely got out of the changing room. Elyounoussi and Armstrong both tried hard to create something but nothing really came off and from about the 70th minute, the two of them were mostly just giving the ball away every time they tried to do anything progressive. Of the subs, Djenepo and Long didn’t do anything but Adam Armstrong at least added some energy.
The two Newcastle goals were both shite from a defensive point of view. There was absolutely no pressure on the ball when Jonjo Shelvey had about 20 minutes to weigh up his cross on to Chris Wood’s head. Salisu should probably have done better as well. The second goal was just a lack of reaction to a second ball. Great finish but we should’ve had a man putting his foot through Burn’s knockdown. Ralph’s main focus at full time was on us not being clinical with our chances. I reckon he was looking at the two that Broja missed in the fist half through poor touches. For me, in the second half in particular, we just didn’t create enough.
In response to our DJ playing money related tunes at half-time, Newcastle hit back with posting a team photograph from the changing room after the game, which is right up there with the most tinpot things you can do after a league game. Also, a tweet about the impact of their new signings tonight, is another dig which we just have to take and fair play. As I’ve said, make the most of the upsurge you’re on at the moment bceause you’ll get yours - don’t know when and it might take years but it will happen.
No time to dwell on it because on Sunday, we have got Watford who are generally looking like they are going to fighting it our with Norwich for last place. Since our “We are Fucking Massive” moment after the West Ham FA Cup game, we have lost twice, with two poor performances. This is they way it always is for teams like us. We shouldn’t be surprised.
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