Premier League Match 31 - Southampton 0 Chelsea 6

 

Saints Defence and Midfield Line Up At the Start

Chelsea are the visitors to St Mary’s this afternoon as we try and build on the decent point that we got at Elland Road last time out. Chelsea come into this game on the back of two defeats at home, a 3-1 Defeat to Real Madrid which wasn’t that surprising but before that, they lost 4-1 to Brentford.  Is it a good time to be playing them? I doubt it.

Until this week Chelsea seem to have been completely unaffected on the pitch, to the fallout of Roman Abramovich being sanctioned and the club being put up for sale.  It looked for a moment like there was going to be serious problems at Stamford Bridge but the list of potential buyers looking to by the club for an eye watering £4 billion kind of means that nothing much will change as long as one of them goes through.  Who could have suspected that the Abramovich money was in any way dodgy.  It's a shock and no mistake.  Chelsea have had 20 years of success out of it and the club will be bought and bankrolled in the future by some serious players with some serious money.  I remember when Chelsea were up for sale for a quid, so they almost certainly going to have the last laugh and are going to be benefiting long into the future of the back of Roman Abramovich’s money.  It’s that detail that makes at least part of me wish it all comes crashing down, with Chelsea reverting to the mid-table 2nd level team I remember them being in the early 80s. Will anyone care enough to stop this sort of thing happening in the future? I very much doubt it.

Most of the Saints news this week has not centred on the current playing staff or the manager but on one of the club ambassadors and not just any ambassador. This ambassador who has been in the news with this week happens to be Matthew Le Tissier, perhaps Saints greatest ever player.

I am exactly the same age as Matt, which means I was privileged enough to watch his entire career from 1986 until 2002. He is a legend of the club and events of this week do not change that for me.  I’ve met him a few times over the years and he’s been nothing but a really decent bloke.  However...

Matt has stepped down as ambassador for Southampton FC because of an outcry caused by a tweet about Putin’s war In which he used a story about genocide in Ukraine to try and illustrate a point to not believe everything you read in the media. Saying not to believe everything you read in the media is fine on its own but when you use media reports of genocide that are widely corroborated by lots of sources, to illustrate your point, you are heading for trouble.

This isn’t an isolated incident either with him using other extreme examples in the past to rage against Covid reporting. There was one particular tweet relating to Ann Frank which was equally fucking ridiculous.  Now, everyone has a right to freedom of speech but it amazes me that someone who is media savvy, having worked in the media for the best part of 20 years, doesn’t think about how something it’s going to be received when you put it out there. If you think about him as a player, he didn’t compromise and did exactly what he wanted to do, probably to his detriment in terms of England caps – there was a certain stubbornness about his refusal to change at all.

Maybe, as in the same way as he didn’t care what Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle or even Ian Branfoot thought, he doesn’t care how his tweets are received but then if he didn’t care, why has he deleted the tweets afterwards?  Everyone has a right to say what they want but you don’t have immunity from consequences, especially if you are a public figure.

Overall, it’s a great shame because in his role as ambassador, he has done some great work around the city of a charitable nature. His resignation from his post as ambassador this week was undoubtedly the best way for this to play out because the club didn’t have to get heavy-handed to get rid of him and he appears to have walked of his own volition. Having deleted both this weeks’ tweet and the Ann Frank one, you would hope that there won’t be any more of this kind of thing because ambassador or not, he is always going to be associated with Southampton FC and I can’t stand the thought of one of my footballing heroes descending to David Icke level ridicule.

Back to today and as I said, two defeats in a week will mean that we are up against a bit of a wounded animal today.  Armando Broja of course can’t play so Ralph names Adam Armstrong up front in what has become our ‘go to’ XI, 4-2-2-2 formation.  Chelsea have a few missing with Azpilicueta and Lukaku absent altogether but they do have Timo Werner, a striker who only scores when Ralph is in the stadium, either as his RB Leipzig manager or as an opposing manager.

We make an encouraging start with Rudiger giving us a corner from a 40 yard back pass in the first minute and Tino starts well against his former employers with a purposeful burst forward.  Chelsea’s first attack sees us all over the place as we allow Werner to basically walk to the edge of the box on the right hand side of the penalty area and he drills a shot across goal and it pings off the far post and goes out.

Another warning comes as Loftus-Cheek goes down the right hand side and easily gets a cross in, which Werner meets on the 6 yard line and manages to head onto the bar. Fucks sake... it’s funny because he’s shit but there’s no way he’s going to keep missing.  We are not heeding warnings and a few minutes later, Loftus-Cheek again gets down the right hand side and crosses it. Mason Mount has peeled off the back of JWP and Romeu and takes it on his chest before flicking it to the unmarked Alonso, who smashes into the net in the same way he smashes through zebra crossings with people on them. 1-0, 8 minutes, fuck sake.

We flicker briefly as Elyounoussi is brought down by Christensen and JWP’s free kick from wide left is missed by everyone and only misses the far post by a foot or so.  Five minutes later though and another cross into the box is met by KWP and the clearance finds Mount on the edge of the box, who takes a touch and drills it past the seven Saints players in front of him and past the unsighted Forster to make it 2-0.  This is absolutely fucking horrible and the game is probably over already.

The only reason it’s not completely dead is thanks to Fraser who makes a point blank stop from Werner after Alonso has got to the line with Livramento nowhere.  Now it’s time to really dig in and make sure we get to half time just the two goals behind but instead of that, having had an attack, JWP decides to try and head the ball back to Bednarek on the half-way line but instead, headed it over him and Werner is away and despite it being Werner and him still having 50 yards to run, I know this is 3-0.  This is exactly the sort of chance that Werner made his name scoring for Leipzig and he sprints away from Bednarek, goes round Forster and rolls into the net. Brilliant finish and an absolute fucking catastrophe from us.  21 minutes, 3-0 down.  Strong Leicester 9-0 vibes coming through.  Some people are leaving… can’t say I blame them.

We’re still not getting anywhere near the Chelsea players in the middle of the park.  Someone fucking rattle into someone, someone start a fight, someone fucking do something.  No, alright then.  Surely we can get to half-time just 3-0 down. Oh no, Salisu decides to try and prove that he is the second coming of Virgil Van Dijk but unfortunately, he is the version of Virgil that used to make mistakes in the Scottish league and he tries to dribble past Werner and Havertz before losing the ball as he falls over. Werner takes it on , works space for himself and somehow manages to hit the post yet again but the ball drops straight to Havertz to steer into the empty net. Absolutely fucking pathetic.  Ralph has had enough and hooks Romeu and replaces him with Yan Valery so we go to the 3 at the back we should have had from the start.  The change means Stuart Armstrong dropping in next to JWP and maybe Elyounoussi, who would have been my pick to take off, will contribute something.  Valery’s first contribution is to stop Salisu and Bednarek arguing with eachother over who had been the most shit so far.

We do manage to get to half time just the four goals adrift, thanks to two decent Fraser saves to deny Havertz and Mount and another brilliant save from Fraser to stop Salisu putting through his own goal.  There’s another change with Adam Armstrong substituted and replaced with Diallo for 45 minutes of damage limitation.  Roman Abramovich chants from the Chelsea fans – classless bunch as always.

At the start of the second-half I am hoping that Saints put in a better effort and I’m also hoping that Chelsea‘s mind turns towards their game with Real Madrid on Wednesday but none of these things seem to be happening as Kante strolls straight through the middle of our team totally unbothered by any of our central midfielders and has a free shot from the penalty spot which Forster claws away but unfortunately it drops straight to Werner and even he can’t miss that. 5-0. Fuck off.

We then actually have an attack as KWP gets down the left and sprints away from Loftus-Cheek before playing in a wonderful ball in with the outside of his right foot which is met by Che Adams about 10 yards out but in typical Che fashion, he manages to drill it straight at the goalkeeper with no defender anywhere near.  No, we’re not even getting a consolation goal today.

Cometh the hour, cometh another Chelsea goal as Pulisic smashes in a shot at point blank range, which is brilliantly saved by Forster and he wins the follow-up tackle against Werner and he no doubt hoped he would be bailed out by defender but there are none anywhere as Mason Mount has another tap in. Skate bastard.  Six fucking nil.

Where's Tino?

At this point, Chelsea called it off and jogged through it.  They still kept the ball and we were still shit but mercifully there were no more goals.  Tino managed to achieve what I assume was his aim in the second half and get taken off and Will Smallbone had a bit of a run as we reverted to a kind of 4-4-2 for the last 20 minutes.  Is it over yet?  Kevin Friend was still a dickhead but we can hardly blame him now can we.

Well that was one of the most tedious and unenjoyable 90 minutes I can remember sitting through. There are certain minimum requirements that you need to win any football match regardless of who the opposition are. You have to work hard, you have to track runners, you have to win challenges against your direct opponent and you have to have some sort of belief. We did none of those today and I found myself at various points in the game casting my mind back to the Leicester City 9-0 defeat.  In the first 10 minutes of that game you could tell we were going to get absolutely battered and that was before Leicester even scored. After an opening flurry today when it looked like we were going to go toe to toe with them, Werner missed the first of two glorious chances to put Chelsea ahead and from that moment on it was always likely to turn out the way that it did. The fact that Chelsea have got a two-goal deficit to make up on Real Madrid on Wednesday is the only reason why it didn’t end up a similar scoreline or worse.

Where to start…Our entire starting midfield was absolute dog shit defensively from the first whistle. Four fucking training cones would’ve got closer to the Chelsea players. No one tracked runners and they played as four spaced out individuals. I don’t mean spaced out as in on drugs but they might as well have been. Chelsea just cut through us at will. In addition to the midfield not doing any work, Mohammed Salisu had an absolute nightmare at the back, culminating with trying to take on two players on the edge of our box and losing the ball for fourth goal. Tino Livramento started well and had a couple of good attacks in the first minute or so but then he just jogged about, half arsed, putting in no effort on recovery runs until he was eventually substituted.  KWP put in a shift at left back and was responsible for creating our only decent chance when his cross was battered at the goalkeeper in the usual fashion by Che Adams.  He will however feel he could have done a bit better with the first two Chelsea goals, even though he was given no help down his side by Elyounoussi.  Bednarek wasn’t too bad by comparison to others around him (low bar) and can’t have been helped by playing in between two defenders who may as well not have been there and in Tino’s case, quite often wasn’t.

Of our midfield, JWP had quite possibly his worst game for a couple of seasons, allowing Mason Mount to run off of him on numerous occasions and Oriol Romeu was substituted after half an hour which seemed strange on the face of it seeing as he’s our main defensive midfielder but maybe is not so surprising when you consider that he wasn’t actually doing anything and we were already 4-0 down.  There also seemed to be no communication between the centre backs and central midfielders as to who should pick up who.

Elyounoussi and Armstrong were both complete shite. At least Armstrong had some moments going forward with the ball but the overall contribution from those two was absolutely negligible. Adam Armstrong actually did alright in the first half given the service he was given and was unlucky to be sacrificed at half-time when Ralph brought on Diallo to try and help with the damage limitation. Behind it all, Fraser Forster had a superb game, making at least five outstanding saves and generally keeping the score down whilst being given next to no help by those in front of him.

Chelsea were good, I mean really good. It's amazing what 20 years of Russian money can do. Kovacic and Kante absolutely ran the midfield and Kai Havertz up front was virtually unplayable. He certainly seemed to be unmarkable and we seemed to have no plan to cater for his movement across the front line. We let Timo fucking Werner score twice and if he was any good he would’ve scored five. I can’t work out what’s the biggest insult from today, Werner scoring twice or skate bastard Mason Mount doing likewise.

As for Ralph, well I don’t know why on earth he didn’t go with three at the back from the start because that formation has worked against Chelsea before and though it was a pretty low bar, we did actually look better when Valery came on and we more or less matched up Chelsea‘s formation. Personally, with the listless and gutless approach that most of the players had out there today, it wouldn’t have mattered what formation we picked. Why were the players like that? Is it because we have nothing much to play for this season? The higher we finish, the more money we have and the more of them get replaced. Maybe that’s it.

In short, regardless of how good the opposition were, that performance was absolutely unacceptable and I hope the useless fuckers have to sit through a full debrief of the whole 90 minutes tomorrow. Looking back it now seems that the defeats against Newcastle and Watford in games that should’ve been our springboard to finish relatively comfortably in the top 10, have been the signal for our season to completely collapse and for us to finish 15th or 16th. One thing for sure is that we cannot play like that for the rest of the season, starting with next Saturday‘s home game against Arsenal who are faltering somewhat in their chase for the top four. They will certainly be motivated next week and we have to be the same against a team who we generally struggle to get anything out of.  Right now though, I would just settle for a wholehearted hundred percent performance and not the plate of half arsed dog shit that we served up today.