Premier League Match 7 - Aston Villa 1 Southampton 0

 

Sali Asks If We Can Go Home Now

Here we are again two weeks after our last game and the reason for that was of course, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. This, gave every sports body of the choice of whether to play last weekend or not to play and whilst everyone else played because ... why wouldn’t you?…. football in its wisdom decided to cancel everything from grassroots level to Premier League level, thus causing maximum chaos later on regarding rearranging fixtures into an already packed calendar.

Rumour has it that the authorities were frightened of bad impression that would be given by football fans disrupting the minutes silence or whatever because football fans, particularly those supporting Under-8s grass roots teams, of course as a group, are complete animals who can’t be trusted. Of course, this is true in some cases and the fingers were pointed in the direction of the red half of Merseyside, who played a European game in mid-week and let’s just say, the silence wasn’t immaculately observed. I guarantee that they’ll will be one of the first to moan about fixture congestion as the season goes on.

In addition to last week’s Premier League games being called off, there are also problems this week because there are not enough police resources in modern day Britain to police the Queen‘s funeral on Monday and some Premier League games over the weekend but luckily in the Midlands, there are enough coppers to make sure that tonight’s game can go ahead.

In her 70 years on the throne, the most important event the Queen oversaw was of course the 1976 FA Cup final and once she had presented the trophy to Peter Rodrigues, she decided that she had completed life regarding the FA Cup and never went back afterwards. Rest in peace.

Elsewhere in the world of football, new Chelsea owner Todd Boehly has been causing a bit of a stir by recommending that we need to take “lessons“ from American sports and have, amongst other things, a north versus south All-Star game. Todd… Shut the fuck up.

Tell you what, we will learn lessons from American sports if you implement the following changes in American football. One point for a touchdown to keep the score to a manageable level and the point after only counts in the event of a draw, 45 minutes each way to stop the game being so long and fucking tedious and no specialised attack or defence teams. Just one set of players. How would you react to that proposal from a Brit who doesn’t know very much about American football? Yes, you would think I was a twat and rightly so, for trying to change something I know very little about. It annoys the fuck out of me that this has generated any discussion whatsoever on social media as to who would be in the North team and he would be in the South team. Can you imagine Jürgen Klopp allowing van Dijk and Alisson to play in this?

Moving on, significant international squads have been announced with this being the last international break before the World Cup squads are announced. JWP has made a 28-man England squad and there was brilliant news elsewhere with Armel Bella-Kotchap making the full German squad for the first time. I know it’s only been a few games but I’m not surprised that Hansi Flick has been paying attention to how well our new centre back has been playing. It’s not even worth speculating about what this does to our long-term prospects of keeping hold of the player but I can’t help but be pleased when Southampton players have success as a result of moving to Southampton.

Moussa Djenepo got rewarded for his decent start of the season and been given a new three-year contract which has been pretty universally greeted as a good thing. Personally, I’m really not sure and I would’ve waited until he has proved to be more effective in a more advanced position than the left back slot that he has currently been occupying. If you look at it logically, he is at best our fourth choice left back behind Perraud, Larios and KWP and it’s probably our fourth choice right back behind KWP, Maitland-Niles and the injured Tino Livramento. He of course could well get in the team and contribute on the wing but we haven’t seen it yet and then his previous three years at Saints, has not really looked the part in that position, so I just hope this isn’t another one that we are regretting in a couple of years time because he has hardly played a game.

Once Upon a Time, Many Years Ago

Nathan Redmond left and went to Besiktas in Turkey. Whether or not Besiktas was the right destination for him remains to be seen but he certainly needed a change to give his career a shot in the arm. When you look at the highlights video of Nathan Redmond, there are undoubtedly some great moments and some really good goals but then you remember that that compilation has been made over a six-year period and you realise that there really should have been a lot more given the amount of games that he has played.  Undoubtedly a very talented player and a very frustrating one.  I always questioned his bravery and willingness to go into physical challenges or at times to even go near them as there were so many times when faced one-on-one with the defender, which should be a pacy wingers’ dream scenario, he just turned round and played safe. He did always look very good against substandard opposition though so maybe playing for one of the better sides in the Turkish league will suit him. Good luck to the guy but ultimately, you’d be hard pressed to say that he improved at all from the day we signed him to 6 years later when he left. He was signed as a promising under 21 international, probably with hopes that he’d improve massively and then be sold on for big money, in the same way that his predecessor, Sadio Mane was. Never quite happened. As I say though, nothing against the guy who seems like a really decent bloke and his farewell message was very classy.

This brings us neatly onto today’s opponents Aston Villa, who in their ranks contain Jan Bednarek, Danny Ings and Calum Chambers who all couldn’t wait to get out of Southampton and were all varying degrees of twats in the way they left. Ings has shone in fits and starts at Villa, Bednarek has not played a game yet and a course he can’t play tonight, but I’m sure he’ll be sat in the stands in his Villa tracksuit, giving it the big one if they score. Calum Chambers, like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain before him, has been a professional substitute everywhere he has been, ever since leaving Southampton.

Villa are managed a course by Steven Gerrard who is going to be under pressure pretty soon if results don’t improve. With the amount of money they’ve spent, I don’t expect the owners were expecting to be floundering around the bottom third of the league. There also appears to have been cracks in the manager-player relationship with a public falling out with Tyrone Mings, which was of course denied despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary, stripping him of the captaincy and all that. Philippe Coutinho absolutely buried us last year so let’s hope that he continues his early season malaise tonight. I bet he doesn’t.

The team news and it’s slightly odd.  Diallo is preferred to AMN in central midfield and the new man isn’t even on the bench so I guess that’s an injury.  The three behind Che is a massive cause for concern.  On paper, Adam Armstrong, Elyounoussi and Djenepo looks shit and totally lacking in creativity – meanwhile, the much more creative Stuart Armstong, Aribo and Edozie warm the bench.  It's a shame that Edozie isn't starting because him versus Ashley Young would be very interesting.

The minutes silence at the start of the game was pretty atmospheric to be fair with the lights dimmed and silence for the duration. Now for the game – Unsurprisingly, Philippe Coutinho was the first one to show up in the game, spinning away from JWP in the left-hand channel before attempting to break the net from the edge of the box like he has done many times against us in the past but this time it flies over the bar.  Coutinho also has the first ever on target as Ashley Young hangs up a ball from the right hand side which everyone misses and Coutinho meets the header on the bounce at the back post but Bazunu shovels it wide easily enough.

The first half is absolutely shit, with neither team being able to string three passes together but there’s always a sense that Villa have more quality on the pitch and so it proves as Coutinho puts over a good cross following a short corner Watkins heads goalwards, Bazunu makes what are first looks like a decent reaction save but the ball bounces down off the crossbar and Jacob Ramsey reacts first to turn it into the net.

For some reason that I can’t fathom, we are off to VAR at Stockley Park-

“Hi Rob - Is it offside?”
“Of course it fucking isn’t Tony”
“You sure? – Ramsey was in an offside position on the original cross”
“Is the year 1983 for fucks sake?”
“No”
“Then it isn’t offside”
“OK…. Game’s shit isn’t it?”
“Wank”
“Goal might liven it up though”
“Have you seen the Dead Parrot Sketch?”

Will This Game Get Any Better?

That there has been nothing happening in the game and we are just a few minutes from half-time, we have a go at conceding second as Leon Bailey cuts in from the right hand side and hits a shot that flicks off Perraud and goes wide.  Villa have something to hang onto now and you can tell that they are going to go all out to stop Saints building any momentum whatsoever. First of all Bailey stamps down on Perraud‘s foot, which should have bought a review from VAR but no one is interested this season and then Jacob Ramsey completely ignores the ball to hack down Djenepo. I hate this kind of challenge. It’s one thing pulling someone back as a tactical foul but when you absolutely wipe someone out deliberately then it should be a red card in my book. Half-time, dog shit.

With Perraud having struggled for the last five minutes with his foot after the stamp tackle which wasn’t deemed worthy of looking at by the referee, Juan Larios is on at half-time and so is Joe Aribo who replaces Diallo, I assume in the centre of midfield.

Nothing happens in the actual game in the opening 25 minutes of the half, apart from us actually having a shot (I use the term loosely) from Che Adams but an out and out highlight occurs in the 70th minute when there is a round of applause for the Queen. Both teams sense the occasion and go a whole minute without giving the ball away, mainly down to the fact that KWP has it in his hands waiting to take a throw-in.

Ralph and the Brains Trust use the minutes applause to make two more substitutions with Armstrong off and Armstrong on and there’s a straight swap in the sacrificial lamb position up front with Adams coming off to be replaced by Sekou Mara.  Four substitutes made and we still have Djenepo and Elyounoussi on the pitch. What a time to be alive.

Despite some very small flashes being shown by the likes of Aribo and Stuart Armstrong, another 10 minutes crawls buy with nothing in terms of efforts on goal from us, so Sam Edozie is our last substitute replacing Elyounoussi, who I have absolutely nothing to say about.  It’s Snake Time on 84 minutes has Danny Ings comes on. I guess he has six minutes plus injury time to cement the England World Cup place he was going to cement when he moved to Villa.

The first time Edozie gets the ball, he spins past Ashley Young who absolutely trashes him and takes a yellow card for the team. Oh, how predictable. In comes the free kick from JWP, ABK heads it down and Salisu can’t quite get a touch and we win a corner. As we are in the 90th minute, big Baz comes up from the back but the corner is headed clear and the snake has a chance on his left foot from the halfway line to welly it towards an open goal but all he manages is a pretty good clearance to near the left corner flag.

There is one final opportunity as Stuart Armstrong wins a free kick off of McGinn’s 35th foul of the game. JWP’s cross picks out Stuart Armstrong in the box but his glancing header drops wide.  The End.

There are some games where you sit down and try and analyse the performance of your own team and you just can’t be bothered because you don’t know where to start and you know that once you start, it’s going to be very difficult to stop.

To put what is about to be said in the correct context, Villa were fucking awful and I cannot imagine that they would’ve won a game against anybody else in the Premier League with the performance that they put in today. It was enough to beat us however.

They beat us because what has to be put down as a goalkeeping mistake with Bazunu not getting the original header up and over the bar which led to a spot of pinball before Jacob Ramsey scored. Once that ball and hit the net the referee may as well have stopped the game. It is unforgivable to be 1-0 down for the best part of an hour without creating a single chance and yet it was also predictable from the moment the team sheet landed.

I can’t work out from the game, exactly what the formation was supposed to be but let’s call it 4-2-3-1. The back four was what is now our first choice back four and they performed pretty well, as they did in the last game against Wolves, restricting the opposition to very few chances.

The midfield two of JWP and Diallo has been proven not to work as a combination on many occasions. It detracts from JWP’s game because he seems to have to keep an eye on Diallo as if he doesn’t trust him and Diallo is just not good enough, end of story.

We are playing a formation with one player upfront and so you have to have ball progression and you have to have runners joining the one player upfront, or else you are not going to create anything from open play, leaving you with set-pieces. Our three players charged with that creative role were Elyounoussi, the newly contracted Djenepo and Adam Armstrong. It looked fucking horrendous on paper at the start of the game and it was fucking horrendous on the pitch as well. All of those three were complete shit, offering absolutely nothing in terms of attacking impetus, nothing in terms of support for Adams and nothing in terms of forward runs so players further back could find them in an attempt to build through the thirds. What happened was is that the centre backs had no one to pass to so ended up booming the ball long. Che Adams in truth did not have a great time upfront but what the fuck can you do when everything is throat height, with 6 foot 5 Tyrone Mings up your arse. It is absurd to expect him to do any better with a diet of complete shit.  This has nothing to do with not signing a striker in the summer.  We could have signed Haaland or Lewandowski and it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference.  No attacking plan at all aside from free-kicks, corners and embarrassing throw-ins straight off for goal kicks.

The first half was so bad that we had to sacrifice Joe Aribo as a potential attacking option and bring him on in midfield to replace the hapless and hopeless Diallo. Maitland-Niles wasn’t even on the bench, whereas I expected him to start the game.  Ralph’s reasoning was that AMN is not up to speed with how a central midfielder has to play for us. What the fuck? Does this mean Diallo does know how to play it?  Surely AMN can’t be any worse than Diallo, who simply is an absolute nothing player, repeatedly. Is AMN going to be that much of a liability you can’t afford to even have him on the bench just in case the unthinkable happens and Diallo is shit?  I'd seriously rather we played Lyanco in midfield rather than Diallo.  AT least he'll defend and allow Prowsey to try and link the play.

Stuart Armstrong and Sam Edozie did more in their cameo appearances than the three twats who started and this was entirely predictable as well. Remember all that bravery bollocks we were fed at the start of the season. Well maybe Ralph could pick a team with at least a modicum of flair in it instead of leaving them all on the bench, then maybe we might take the initiative at the start of games instead of just hoping to get back into it in the last 20 minutes.  Perhaps we could also play with a bit of bravery and go through the lines, rather than booming it long all the time.  That’s not bravery – it’s risk-averse shit.

So, the team selection was shit and the substitutions were shit. It was certainly a day to make three, possibly four substitutions at half-time because it was the most predictable thing ever that the game petered out to 1-0 Villa win

With positives being in short supply I have to say that I was impressed with Juan Larios, who battled well at left back and showed a bit of quality running forwards. Sam Edozie manage to get on the ball once and ripped Ashley Young a new one, forcing the veteran to cart him over and take a yellow card. If Edozie had been on since the start then Young would probably have got sent off but Ralph wasn’t brave enough.

It also has to be said at the back four is shaping up pretty well with all of them putting in a pretty solid performance until Perraud was forced off.

The Threads May Be Brave but the Model Isn't

Ralph looked like damaged goods in this game. It looks like he has been damaged by the heavy defeats we have suffered in the past and his overcompensating with an over defensive set up. One of the more significant defeats was the one at Villa Park last season. As a result, it’s all gone a bit Gareth Southgate. Okay, he has ditched the back five but we are still over defensive. He needs to trust his back four and his midfield two, to do the majority of the defending and the four players at the top end of the pitch have to be picked for what they can offer at the top end of the pitch with the ball. Today, 10 out of the 11 players were picked because of what they can do defensively. Again, look at the number 10s. Djenepo has been playing fullback all season and that has got him a new contract, let alone a place in last night‘s team on the basis of his defensive discipline. Adam Armstrong has been selected, not because he is a goal threat or creative, but because he covers the left-hand side and will run all day and Elyounoussi has now played seven games in a row without offering a single thing going forward but he has covered the space well defensively.

Bearing in mind that we fucking lost and we were pathetic and didn’t have a shot on target or game, would it really have been worse to have Edozie, Stuart Armstrong and Aribo starting instead of Djenepo, Elyounoussi and Adam Armstrong?  Of course it fucking wouldn’t and we might have put Villa on the back foot and we might have got their fans on their back have we managed to score early. Ralph’s conservatism (the opposite of bravery) allowed Villa to grow into the game, lose their nervousness, realise that there was nothing to be scared of from this Saints line-up and scrape their way to a 1-0 win.

The manager needs to have a long hard look at himself after this defeat.  I thought there was an element of misfortune about the Wolves defeat but this was self-inflicted and piss poor from Ralph and the Brains Trust.  Two games running against poor team low on confidence and we've allowed them to play themselves into the game instead of going for it.  Just not good enough and a change of mind set is needed.