Premier League Match 36 - Brentford 3 Southampton 0

 

More Expert Set Piece Defending Courtesy of  the Training Staff

There’s been a bit of a strange atmosphere amongst the fan base as this game approaches because mathematically, even with 40 points, we are not safe yet especially with the usual thing happening of teams in the bottom three starting to win matches. It should never have come to this. Interestingly, today we played Brentford and they are also on 40 points so I am immediately having thoughts of how much it would suit both teams to get a point each from the game. Like I said, it shouldn’t have come to this.

It was awards week at Saints this week with James Ward-Prowse cleaning up, winning Players Player of the Year, Supporters Player of the Year and also Goal of the Season for good measure.  The women’s team at least had the grace to share things around with Lucia Kendall, Laura Rafferty and Kayla Rendell picking up the three awards respectively. The fact that three of the women’s players won the prizes and only one of the men, probably speaks volumes about the two respective teams.

Today, JWP FC are at Brentford, who had the traditional “newly promoted team blistering start” to the season and were in the top half of the table until the wheels came off just before Christmas and at one stage it looked like they weren’t gonna get another point and were going to go crashing down into the relegation places. The way they responded to this threat was by sticking with their manager and signing a quality player in January. You could argue that Christian Eriksen would never have been available to them in normal circumstances but they took a chance on him and have trusted the player to perform and have been rewarded. They are not just a one-man team though but having that quality player in the centre of things certainly helps others and it’s no coincidence that Ivan Toney‘s goal output has increased since Ericsson joined.

Today is a new ground for everyone of course, seeing as it’s our first appearance at the Brentford Community Stadium and let’s hope that the team actually show up.  We have the usual keeper and back 4 with Bednarek keeping his place despite being awful for months.  Ibrahima Diallo is in for Romeu, to for a “two No 8s” partnership in the centre of midfield, which didn’t work too well when Romeu was injured at the end of last season.  Stuart Armstrong has got his place back but disappointingly, he’s dropped the wrong Nathan, with Redmond keeping his place.  The choice of strikers is just weird. Fresh from being criticised last week by Ralph after the game, Broja starts and fresh from being snubbed for about 10 games and being behind Shane Long in the pecking order, so does Adam Armstrong.  Fresh from scoring a hat-trick for the Under 18s, there was a place on the bench for 16 year old Tyler Dibling.  I mean, I very much doubt he’ll get on but fair play lad.

Saints start pretty well with Broja closing down Raya, who shanks his kick 30 yards to Redmond.  Back it goes to Broja and his cross is fired on target by Adam Armstrong but Raya gets down well to save…. and it was offside… but a good start anyway.  Brentford’s first attack is slightly worrying as Raya launches it down the middle and Toney literally moves Bednarek out the way in a way a centre back should never be moved, flicks it on to Wissa who eventually drags his shot straight to Fraser.

Salisu wins the ball off of Toney and then gives it away and a couple of passes later, Mbuemo is away on our left with Perraud nowhere.  His cross is knocked behind by Bednarek.  In comes the corner from Eriksen, Toney gets completely free of Diallo and chests down, walks through a pathetic challenge by Diallo and hammers it across the box and Pontus Janssen hits it high to the net from about 6 yards. Pathetic.

Virtually straight from the kick off, Brentford win the ball back and knock it back to the right back Ajer, who launches it forward. It drops on top of Wissa who is unmarked, so Bednarek leaves Toney to go and get to Wissa and gets nowhere.  Eriksen picks the ball up between the lines with no one close to him and drives forward.  Salisu tries to make up for marking space by trashing Eriksen which takes out both Eriksen and Bednarek and Wissa runs on with the ball before KWP can get across and passes it into the corner of the net. Absolute fucking Keystone Cops garbage.  Undone by a basic long ball that a centre back doesn't attack. Game over in all probability – 14 minutes.

Wissa Prays That He Can Play Us Every Week

The game goes into a lull whilst we get the ball back and kick off again but 3 minutes later and it’s very nearly 3-0 as we get caught out again and Diallo gives away a free kick in desperate fashion and gets booked for it. The cross comes into the box and once again, we show not ability to learn on the job as Toney peels round the back and smashes the ball back across and it’s only thanks to Stuart Armstrong‘s presence that Wissa can’t force it into the net and balloons it.  Angry - surely someone back there is saying "don't fucking let Toney peel off round the back because we've already let in one fucking goal from that".  I'm not kidding when I say that half decent park footballers wouldn't allow that twice.

Saints are throwing players forward like there’s only 5 minutes to go and once again, we lose it and Ericsson picks it up and just pings a crossfield ball out to Toney on the right hand side. Toney shrugs past an embarrassing challenged by Perraud before hammering in a shot, which Forster blocks.  It’s incredibly amateurish from us and the reaction to losing the ball and the over-commitment to attack is ridiculous.

Finally Saints produce of decent incisive bit of play when Diallo slips a good ball through to Broja who takes it onto his left foot and hits it but well saved by Raya. It seems to boost us a bit and some good pressing in midfield sees Eriksen smash a ball against Diallo and it bounces to Adam Armstrong, who smashes it across Raya and in… Get in…. fuck off… offside… and it is, just.  Bollocks.

The 5 good minutes we had before half time will no doubt mean that Ralph will delay changing anything in the vague hope we’re getting better and so it proves as the teams emerge for the second half.  Saints do start reasonably and Redmond picks up a pass from Diallo and knocks it through to Broja.  He is met by Raya rushing out and taking a massive swng at the ball and missing.  Though he’s missed the ball, it certainly looks like he’s taken Broja out but the referee gives fuck all.  If there is a VAR check then it’s very quick.  Truth is I can’t really be bothered to get annoyed about it.

The first change eventually arrives around the hour mark and it’s weird as fuck with Diallo being taken off and Elyounoussi coming on in the centre of midfield which basically means that our best player, JWP, the one who won all the awards, is not able to get forward at all.  Elyounoussi’s first involvement is to be on the end of a poor Brentford clearance following an ankle height Redmond cross and the Norwegian takes it down on his chest before volleying goalwards but Raya sees it all the way.

The lack of physicality in our defence is alarming when following a long throw, there is absolute carnage in our box, which ends with Toney having a swing from about 3 yards and Forster blocking it and then two more shots as the ball pinged about and we got away with it.

At 2-0 we still have a bit of a chance but we pathetically give them a 3rd goal.  Redmand stabs a shit clearance out to Norgaard on the edge of the box and Ajer picks it up, swats away Redmond’s token challenge, walks past Salisu and slides it between Fraser’s legs.   Embarrassing and pathetic, 3-0, dead.

3-0 with 20 to go and maybe time for the youngster but Ralph pisses off a majority by bringing on Romeu for Stuart Armstrong to make us more defensive, 3-0 down against (with all due respect) Brentford.  “You don’t know what you’re doing” can be clearly heard.  Nothing happens for the last 20 which was probably the aim.  Brentford bring on a kid to play the last 10, we don’t, so we learn nothing and gain nothing.  A wasted day, pathetic.

Fucking useless.  How familiar was that? Start the game reasonably well, conceded with the oppositions first attack, conceded again, 15 minutes gone game over.  Oddly enough, if we had scored at any time between their second and third goals then it may well have been like the Brighton game last week where we came back and nick to draw but we didn’t deserve to, based on the 90 minutes.  The game was finally put to bed with the Redmond assist for the third Brentford goal. They deserved the win and they were by far the better team which bearing in mind they aren’t actually that good, shows how bad we have become.  It was another game where what we did in the penalty areas just wasn’t good enough to win a game of Premier League football. We had no real plan going forward and all the balls into the penalty area were hopeful rather than purposeful and the defending at the key moments was absolutely shit.  All three of the goals conceded were shit and were too easy to score. 

Despite its familiarity, today was a watershed moment when a significant number of the away fans turned against the manager. The tipping point was the second substitution when Stuart Armstrong, who had been our brightest attacking player, was substituted and replaced with Oriol Romeu, which meant that Ralph basically settled for 3-0 defeat against Brentford.

It is getting harder and harder to defend Ralph at the moment. Again, we had an absolutely unexplainable team selection.  Nathan Redmond was picked again despite having done absolutely nothing in the last two games. Predictably, he did next to nothing in this game either, spent most of the game running away from the ball and if ever there was any sort of challenge to be made then forget it. Jan Bednarek was picked yet again and predictably; he was dreadful again.  Salisu has been dropped when his form tailed off but Bednarek is bombproof despite in the main, being worse.  Salisu would be much better with a better partner.

One of Ralph’s major flaws is that he is just too loyal to some players who are never going to pay him back for his faith in them.  He is too slow to pull the trigger on some players and this also manifests in game management when he’s too slow to change things when they are not going well.  It’s like he has blind faith that things will suddenly change or that a player who is shite 95% of the time will have a great game today.  Again today, there should have been changes at half-time but again we had to wait until halfway through the second half when his change left us with a central midfield of JWP and Elyounoussi which basically meant that JWP couldn’t get forward at all.

Then, the Romeu for Armstrong sub put me in mind of that famous substitution when Claude Puel brought on a right back to play on the wing when we were drawing 0-0 at home for the fifth game in a row.  In fairness, at 3-0 down, we were fucked anyway today.  Again though, I am wondering why we couldn’t have got something out of the game by putting Tyler Dibling on the pitch for the last few minutes.  Overall though, it was another generally lacklustre performance with no discernible plan.

I’m beginning to think we are like a Poundshop Manchester United under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.  Lots of overpaid half-arsed players who have a weak mentality and are not good enough to get the club where it aspires to go and a manager who people in the main want to do well but he’s not helping himself.   It is always the manager that gets sacked at the end of day.

Semmens and Solak: Picture Not Taken at 5pm on Saturday.

It’s certainly shaping up to be another major test of Martin Semmons loyalty to Ralph and his belief that he is “the best manager that Southampton could have”.  Of course it is no longer solely Martin Semmens decision and it’ll be interesting to see the influence that Dragan Solak and Rasmus Ankersen bring to bear on the situation.  Even if it was still just Martin Semmens decision, he is not going to be happy with a lower number of points and finishing lower in the table than last season, given the investment that was made in the squad in the summer.  It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Sport Republic guys want to go their own way which of course is quite often the way when a new ownership rides into town, especially when they’ve got people who are seen as football people, on the board.  Another thing to consider is that Ralph is generally held to be one of the highest paid managers outside of the big boys.  Maybe that’ll count in his favour as he’ll be too expensive to sack or maybe the new owners will think they can get better value for money elsewhere.

It could go any which way at the moment – maybe Ralph could be gone by mutual consent when the season is over or alternatively, it really could be as fragile as seeing what we do in the next two games. I believe there needs to be some sort of indication from Ralph to the people in charge that he can get a tune out of the team. Two more insipid performances and unless it really is too expensive to get rid of him, I can see a change being made in the summer and there is no way that three months ago I would’ve been thinking that.

Ralph’s coaching staff can’t escape scrutiny either.  Whilst we have no idea what Craig Fleming and Kelvin Davis do, balls, bibs, cones and cheerleading respectively I expect - we know that Dave Watson is in charge of set pieces.  Whilst he can take no credit for JWP pinging free-kicks in to the top corner, why do we look totally unthreatening at corners when we have one of the best set piece takers?  He’s also in charge of defending set pieces and fuck me we are dreadful and we don’t learn.  How many times did Ivan Toney peel off round the back today and win the ball easily?  We defend corners with the three biggest guys standing on the 6 yard line and the small guys attempting to block the opposition giants – any ball in between the penalty spot and the 6 yard line is fucking carnage every time.  Oh.. and we let opposition attackers stand on our goalkeeper?  What the fuck?  Then we have free kicks that are crossed in where our defensive system involves standing still in a high line and hoping the opposition get caught offside.  A 12 year old could sort out defending set pieces better than that.

As for the players today, I thought Broja put in a lot more effort than of late and Adam Armstrong was lively in the first half and unlucky with the goal that was chalked off for offside – he faded second half as expected but was left on whilst Che Adams warmed the bench.  Stuart Armstrong made some very intelligent runs as usual but his final ball was lacking and I thought both a full backs did a fairly decent job in trying to get something going forwards. The centre of midfield was poor with Diallo not really doing anything whilst at the same time restricting JWP's ability to get forward. The two central defenders were dreadful in the main. Salisu was the better of the two (not difficult as Ivan Toney made Bednarek look like a 14 year old playing mens football for the first time) but he didn’t cover himself in glory on two of the Brentford goals, whilst Fraser Forster didn’t have a chance and was let down by the players in front of him as per usual.

Next up is Liverpool at home, which will be played three days after they have played the FA Cup final against Chelsea.  One would assume that they will not be at full strength but whatever XI they put out will be too much for us in our current state. Leaving the thrashing by Chelsea aside, this group of players do seem to show up when we play against one of the good sides because they know that they have to. You will see a lot of people over the next few weeks saying it will be a typical Saints thing to do to get something against Liverpool but I would say there is about a 1% chance.  They are brilliant and we are shite and that’s all there is to it at the moment. As I said earlier though, Ralph might need us to do something here in order to safeguard his job for next season.