Premier League Match 38 - Leicester City 4 Southampton 1

 

Ralph Thanks Moss for Taking the Heat Off Him

Last game of the season and thank Christ for that. Just one more game to endure and it’s a visit to the King Power Stadium in Leicester. Leicester have had a strange season under the smug twat Brendan Rodgers, failing and getting knocked out of two European competitions and failing to mount any sort of challenge to get back into Europe this season. In their defence, they have had a lot of injuries and are on course to finish in the top half thanks to a decent run-of results at the tail end of the season.  Mind you, the fixture list has been somewhat kind to them in that regard in that they have had two wins recently against already relegated opposition in Watford and Norwich. Regardless of who they’ve played against however, they are in better form than we are. Mind you, so is everyone.

It was somewhat amusing at the start of the season when Leicester signed two of the regular members of our record breaking bad defence from last season with both Ryan Bertrand and Janick Vestergaard making the move to the King Power.  Neither have had any sort of positive impact at all with Bertrand basically having been injured all season and Vestergaard even struggling to get a game when every other central defender was injured.  Neither are expected to feature this afternoon. On the positive side for Leicester, Jamie Vardy, good old Rat Bastard himself, is back fit again when he’s not hanging round in a court room listening to two vacuous wastes of space arguing  the toss about who leaked what to the newspapers, when the newspapers probably all found out on their own.  James Maddison has been showing the form that will still see him get ignored by Gareth Southgate and Harvey Barnes is back fit again and playing well and these three will no doubt be the biggest threat to us this afternoon, apart from ourselves of course.

The only real news for us during the week was Theo Walcott being linked to a move to the MLS in America.  Due to it bring a Mickey Mouse league, I kind of forget that that’s a possible destination for has-been players that we have given contracts to on too much money. Theo would certainly fit the bill for a swansong over there as someone with a bit of a reputation who will put some bums on seats and I’m sure that with the standard of soccerball over there, he will probably do pretty well.

The team today is showing three changes from the Liverpool game and it looks like three straight swaps with Adam Armstrong coming in for Armando Broja, Stuart Armstrong for Nathan Tella and Oriol Romeu for Ibrahima Diallo.  Consequently, it looks like it’s going to be the same formation as last week, so I’ll be interesting to see if we try and play Adam Armstrong passes in the channels or whether we just smash the ball up to him from 60 yards like we did for Broja against Liverpool.  Broja isn’t even on the bench, suggesting that Putin has recalled him to his club.

Here goes nothing… oh hang on, we’re playing 4-2-2-2 with Salisu at left back and Nathan Redmond up front.  Two players who have never been anything other than dreadful in those positions.  Saints get lucky as Maddison’s corner gets half cleared out the far side and then back to Maddison, who turns Stuart Armstrong inside out before crossing it with his left foot and it’s perfectly onto the head of Castagne about 6 yards out and dead central but he manages to head out of the bar.  Bad miss but I’m sure they’ll score in a minute.

In reality, nothing much happens in the first half hour as neither side looks like it can really be arsed.  I have a feeling that the opening goal will be huge because the team that goes behind will have to raise their game and I can’t see either doing it, especially if it’s us. Evans plays a ball from the back into our penalty area, Lyanco misses it and Rat Bastard runs across him, sees he’s in the penalty area dives. It’s pathetic. It’s one of those ‘click your heels together’ efforts and it looks like he’s diving into a swimming pool.  Fucking Rat Bastard wanker. Jon Moss in his last game clearly can’t be fucking bothered to do anything about it and the fat pudding just waves play on.

We get away with some more shoddy defending on our left hand side as Maddison eventually finds Castagne on the wing in acres of space, unbothered by Salisu, and his cross into the middle his met on the stretch by Rat Bastard, in behind the ball watching Stephens but he can’t get enough on it and the ball goes as wide as his wife’s desire for fame.

Half time, shit game, matter of time before we concede.  In terms of not being behind it’s one of our better half time situations recently so there’s won’t be any changes.  What could possibly go wrong?

What follows now is the inevitable Leicester goal but it’s remarkable that we find a new way of being shit and going behind and at the same time, Jon Moss finds a way to remind everyone one more time, how incompetent he always is.  We win a throw on the left-hand side of the start of a half and Elyounoussi throws it back to Salisu and Rat Bastard brushes past Romeu and hits the deck complaining that he’s got a head injury.  Fat Jon stops the game while we have the ball and when he restarts it, he gives it to Leicester because we had the ball.   Whilst this is annoying it is absolutely no excuse for what happens next which is Schmeichel launching a ball down the field Lyanco heading it straight up in the air and when it comes down, heading it off his nose about a quarter of the distance he needed to head it, which allows Rat Bastard, now running at full throttle after his fake injury that pole-axed him, to shoot, McCarthy to save and Maddison to run in the rebound into an empty net. Fuck off everyone.  Embarrassingly, after much argument, Saints seem to think Leicester are going to allow them to walk a goal in but unsurprisingly they don’t.

Saints try and get back into it in the only way we know how, by overcommitting and a  pass forward from Romeu is miscontrolled by Adam Armstrong and one pass later we have seven men in front of the ball and Lyanco ends up defending on his own against Barnes and Rat Bastard and it’s a good bit of defending to force Barnes wide and force him to butcher it.

There is then a genuine head injury for Rat Bastard to appreciate as Adam Armstrong heads the ball and Jonny Evans heads Arma’s head and both end up on the deck covered in blood. It’s interesting in there if it had been a challenge on the floor and Adam Armstrong nicked it round Evans and then Evans wiped him out, Evans would be the one getting booked but because it’s a header, for some reason it’s given as a drop-ball.

Adam Armstrong is wandering around like Charlie Austin at closing time and after another demonstration of the shambles that is the concussion protocols, he sits down and has to leave the pitch to be replaced by Che Adams. Adams is involved on the left hand side as he and Elyounoussi, without really knowing what they were doing, bundle past a few challenges and Elyounoussi makes his one creatinve contribution of the day and puts over a decent cross which is met on roughly the penalty spot by Redmond’s head and it produces the finish that you would expect of Nathan Redmond with his head and Schmeichel catches it comfortably.

Having done something for the first time of the match, Elyounoussi of course get substituted and we bring on Djenepo for the last twenty and the only reason I can think of for doing this is for a laugh.  Moussa smashes a ball into Redmond that no one could control and a couple of passes later and we’ve overcommitted again with 8 players in front of the ball. Barnes streaks away and finds Rat Bastard and he gets away from Lyanco and then cuts in and beats him before scoring at the near post. Game over. Fuck off everyone again.

We do actually produce a decent bit of play after that as Stuart Armstrong plays a couple of passes before playing a one-two with Redmond and sprinting into the box where he goes past Tielemans who dangles a leg and takes him down.  Even Fat John Moss can’t not give that one and up steps JWP to bury it past Schmeichel, who then acts like a complete prick and doesn’t let us have the ball back.  Does Jon Moss book him for time wasting? Of course he fucking doesn’t.

All the delay means is that it takes slightly more time for us to concede again.  Straight from the kick-off Leicester win a throw off of KWP on our right-hand side and KWP just had a little wander around in a daze as they take the throw and a couple of passes later, Maddison curls it over with his right foot and Ayoze Pérez, who never scores against anybody apart from Saints, is totally unmarked by Salisu in the box and knocks it easily into the net. 3-1, fuck off everyone.

The head injury to Armstrong means that there are eight minutes of injury time for everyone to enjoy and all that happens in that is that Shane Long comes on for what has to be his swansong and we allow Pereira to get down the right hand side and pull it back and Perez again is stood in acres of fucking space with the defenders making a nice wide circle around him and he buries it to make it 4-1. Beyond belief really.

To say that today’s half arsed capitulation was expected, is a bit of an understatement. The only thing that surprised me about it is that we weren’t 2-0 down in the first half but that we delayed that inevitability until deep into the second.  You always go into the game with a bit of optimism but the way we lined up killed that stone dead.

Redmond and Adam Armstrong up front. That’s a strike partnership to strike fear into any defence with them having the grand total of three league goals between them this season. Unsurprisingly, neither of them ever really looked like scoring.   Arma struggled like he has all season and Redmond is never a forward in a million years.  What a surprise it didn’t work.

The midfield pairing of JWP and Romeu was constantly outnumbered as usual and got very little help and Stuart Armstrong as always was the best of the wide players and created our goal. None of this is a surprise. Nor is it a surprise that we fucked up defensively with all of the defenders being culpable at some point and in Alex McCarthy, we had a goalkeeper who was going for the Stekelenburg award for not actually making a save of any description. That’s probably a bit harsh because he did make a decent save in the build up to the first goal.

A few weeks ago we were the lucky team who were treated to Mike Dean refereeing his last FA Cup game and today we were treated to Jon Moss for his last ever game as a referee. Predictably, he was fucking dreadful. The opening goal sums everything up about him.  Rat Bastard Vardy decides to roll around on the ground because of nothing and then Moss absolutely fucks us. It wouldn’t be Moss‘ final game without him finding some way to fuck Southampton over as he has done consistently over the years. Of course we should’ve been switched on and defended it better but of course, the whole situation wouldn’t have arisen if Jon Moss knew what the fuck he was doing.  Again, no surprise.  The guy is a fucking fat joke, he always was and he always will be and I can’t wait till next year when we get fucked over by him again when he sat in a VAR room eating his fucking dinner, watching replays whilst spitting food down his front.  He’ll be the first referee ever to fail the fitness test to watch a game on television. Useless twat.

Rat Bastard’s contribution on the first goal just confirms what a shit he is and to make matters even worse, the Rat of course managed to score the second goal and get away with that horrific dive in the first half.  Moss sent Rat Bastard off for diving a few years ago which probably helps him get away with it now.

Moss When He Actually Sent Rat Bastard Off for Diving

All Friends Now Though... Wankers.

We did give everyone a bit of false hope when we got one back from the penalty spot after some decent play by Stuart Armstrong but it was ultimately amusing that we had to fight to get the ball back off of Schmeichel in order that we could let a goal in really quickly.  It was really down to dreadful play from both full backs. By KWP for not reacting when the throw was given against him and against Salisu who was playing centre back when he should’ve been left back and totally losing fucking Ayoze Perez who now has about 40 career goals against us and about three against everyone else combined.  The fourth goal was the icing on the cake in terms of our shit defending as we had four players within 5 yards of Perez but no one actually marking him when he scored. Maybe not icing on the cake as much of a fly on top of the turd.

Talking of turds, it was overall another shit performance to go with the diet of constant shit we’ve had to endure for the last 12 games. The only game we’ve won in that time was against Arsenal and we were pretty shit in that one as well and the only reason we won was down to a masterclass from Fraser Forster, who has now played his last game for the club. Those were the three points that kept us up.

Thank fuck the season is over. I don’t think there’s been a rebuilding job needing as badly in the summer, since the summer of 2009, when the club very nearly went out of business. There are so many squad issues that need addressing and after the finish of the season that we have had, there is the issue of the manager that needs addressing also. Ralph certainly appears to have lost his momentum and at the moment appears to be acting like the whole thing is getting him down. We’ve got this playbook allegedly which is all about enterprising pressing football and we’re not doing any of that at the moment. If we are not going to play that way or if the man who wrote it has decided that this is not the way to go forward then what's the point of it? Football changes of course but it doesn’t change that fast. The shite first goal was of course the talking point after the game and it gave Ralph a convenient thing to talk about rather than anyone focusing on his shit team selection, lack of plan and crap substitutions.

Big summer ahead and I fully expect things to look very different in terms of personnel around the first team, come the first game of the season in August.

Up the fucking Saints.