Tonight
will hopefully be a night where two runs will end. Hopefully, Bournemouth’s run
of six undefeated will go and our run or five games without a win will also go.
If not and we failed to win today, we will be looking at our remaining fixtures
up to the World Cup and wondering where our next point is gonna come from and
if Bournemouth win, they will feel they are well on the way towards their
target for the season of staying up.
Bournemouth have a new American owner waiting in the wings, which
is good for them I guess but I do wonder if he will spend any more money than
the mysterious (as in ‘no information on the internet’) current owner Max Demin
has done over the last few years. Russian owners who don’t appear to have a internet history are of course, nothing to be even vaguely suspicious about. American
owners are at least less mysterious, but we do have to be slightly wary of the
day when there are 14 clubs with American owners because we will have
franchise, all-Star games, four quarters and no relegation before you fucking
know it. 14 is of course the number needed to vote anything through at the
moment.
Bournemouth of course have something in common with us and
that they have been beaten 9-0 but as of yet, they have only done it once –
amateurs!. Since the 9-0 defeat they got at Liverpool earlier on in the season,
they sacked their manager Scott Parker (who was by all accounts, a bit of a
dick) and appointed Gary O’Neil as a caretaker. Gary O’Neil is of course an ex-Skate and a
bit of a legend in those parts, mainly because he bettered himself and got out.
Putting all that aside for a second, he
speaks quite well and seems like a decent guy and whatever he has done, he has
got what looks like a fairly average collection of players to play well enough
as a team to go six games unbeaten. Granted, it has been a favourable fixture
list with only Newcastle from the top half being played in that time. It is of course, results against the teams in
the bottom half that define how your season is going to go for clubs like
Bournemouth and Saints and that is where they have been doing considerably
better than us over the past few weeks with our crap defeats against Wolves,
Villa and Everton.
They will of course see this home game against Saints as
another game against one of the weaker sides of the division and will fancy
their chances of another three points at the Vitality Shed. Their run does however, include only two wins
and they were both ‘come from behind’ victories against Forest and Leicester
where the opposition both felt that they should’ve won so maybe Bournemouth aren’t
as impressive as the current narrative tries to paint them as.
I am honestly of the opinion now that Ralph has to go if we
don’t win today. This has nothing to do with the locality of the team that we
are playing today but to do with the fact that it will be yet another game
against a team who are going to be near the relegation places at the end of the
year. I guess we a lot will depend on whether Bournemouth can deal with our
array of attacking options which are basically, smash it up the park to Che
Adams and hope to pick up the pieces. It’s
actually quite sad that we’ve gone from this side that played in an
enterprising aggressive way that sometimes got results and sometimes didn’t, to
a team that plays ‘dull as fuck’ football and wins 3 games out of the last 22.
When I said earlier on the Bournemouth have an average
collection of players, that is based on them still having a lot of players who
were with them and they got relegated from the Premier League such as Adam
Smith, Dominic Solanke, Phillip Billing, Lewis Cook, Chris Mepham and Jefferson
Lerma. We should not be going into this game with any sort of inferiority
complex and should be looking to impose ourselves on Bournemouth like we have
on our last visits here when we comfortably won both games, 3-0 in the cup and
2-0 in the game that all but confirmed Bournemouth’s relegation. We cannot go
into this game and play stodgy, boring shit football and allow them to dictate.
If you’re going down Ralph, please go down swinging.
Ralph’s team selection will tell us a lot about how he
approaches this game. Seeing as how we played quite well in the first half
against West Ham, I can see him going with exactly the same starting lineup as
close as he can. ABK is not going to be available today as we are still waiting
to see whether he’s dislocated shoulder, which popped back in, is going to need
surgery or not. Rumour has it that Theo Walcott was in line for a start on
Sunday but a late illness, probably caused by the prospect of actually having
to earn his money, caused him to miss out. I expect he will be back on the
bench today.
Spot on – Duje Caleta-Car comes in for ABK but other than that we are
unchanged. The Bournemouth line up has a
few new players but no headliners.
Tavernier signed from Middlesbrough, Senesi at centre back, Ryan
Fredericks from West Ham reserves at right back. Fuck me, Adam Smith is captain!
“And we’re live on Amazon Prime – Is it a Derby? I think it is. Is it a Derby? – It’s only 30 miles away so
it is”
No it isn’t – fuck off!.
The first real action of the game sees Bournemouth break from
midfield with Solanke finding Billing out on the left. He attempts a crossfield
ping, which Perraud can only head in to the midfield and Solanke picks up again
before screwing well wide. One nil to me because I think Solanke is shit.
8 minutes gone and Maitland-Niles advances in midfield and
plays good progressive ball forward to send Elyounoussi running into the
Bournemouth half. The move nearly dies
on its arse as he tries to slide the ball to Adams but even though it’s a shit ball, Che fights off Senesi and gives it back to Elyounoussi, who now sets off diagonally
across towards the left-hand side. He holds onto it before knocking out to
Perraud, who fires in a first time cross which is met superbly by Adams and
guided is the far side of the net with his head. Brilliant header, great
movement, superb cross. One fucking nil. Have it!
Bournemouth‘s first attempted response is down our right and
Perraud picks up a yellow card for pulling back Tavernier. The free-kick is
shit and is headed away but Bournemouth get it back in there and it eventually
falls to Billing, who shows good technique for such an ungainly looking bloke, to
volley goalwards with Bazunu tipping over the bar. It’s offside anyway. Billing is a very strange player and just
looks very awkward, standing as he does it about 6 foot 6.
After the KWP throw-in controversy against West Ham at the
weekend, it’s nice to see him again do something decent from throw, when he
uses his legendary throwing technique to get the ball back from Caleta-Car,
skin a couple of Bournemouth defenders and head along the by-line. He fires
across along the ground at the near post and Aribo gets across the defender and
gets a toe on it but can only divert it at Neto, instead of in the netto. (Shit
gag – apologies)
Straight up the other end of the pitch and Baz produces a
shite kick into the midfield and Billing picked the ball up and hammers
goalwards from about 20 yards but it straight at Baz, who redeems himself and
pushes away for a corner.
As we approach halftime there are some handbags as
Bournemouth get the arse with us standing up to them and AMN is about two yards
off the pitch when Mepham’s sliding tackle takes out the back of his calf with
the ball nowhere near. They both get booked for the handbags and I find it
absolutely amazing that there appears to be no VAR check for that challenge.
As we approach half-time, the ball is played up to Che and he
spins round Adam Smith who just pulls him down in the same way that Perraud hauled
down Tavernier earlier but this time, the referee decides it’s not a booking.
Smith then confirms that he must be related to the referee in some way, by
diving over a challenge and then handling the ball deliberately as Saints try
and play on. Somehow the referee thinks this is Smith‘s freekick. Absolute
fucking bullshit.
Anyway, half-time and 1-0 and to be honest, Bournemouth don’t
really look like they’ve got anything.
What they have got in their favour is our ‘one half mentality’ like we showed against
West Ham last week. We’ve played decent
football in the first half and though there have been a few errors in midfield –
I’ll take that if it means we’re not solely banging the ball forward.
Having I’m sure been hammered with ‘keeping it tight’
messages at half time, the second half starts with a ball with corner from the
left and Saints do their best to let in a goal at the start of the second half
yet again, by leaving Senesi completely unmarked but he heads it well wide.
There is Bournemouth pressure for the next 15 minutes,
without any efforts on goal and Ralph decides that it’s time to go five at the
back with Lyanco coming in for Joe Aribo. Aribo‘s has been decent and this is a
clear indication that we are just gonna sit deep and challenge Bournemouth to
break us down. The first effort is from Solanke, as he makes a decent run to
pick up the ball in the right-hand channel before turning out and lashing
hopelessly over the bar with his left foot. Two nil to me – he’s shit.
Any Saints attempt to get forward is now coming from deep,
usually through the bullying of a centre back by Che Adams or by Adam Armstrong
running with the ball in the left-hand channel. After one such run, Arma gets
his head up and finds JWP at the top of the D but to be honest, it’s a bit of a
hospital pass and JWP throws his swinger of a left foot at it and drags it wide.
KWP looked like he was injured earlier on then goes down with
what looks like a hamstring injury and has to be replaced and surprisingly,
it’s Stuart Armstrong who comes on with Elyounoussi going to right wing-back. The change is a good one though because all
of a sudden, we are keeping the ball better.
We’d lost a bit of that when Aribo went off but Stu Armstrong is having a
good impact, again proving that it’s good to have a least one player in
midfield who is decent on the ball. Stu proves
the point and then threads a lovely ball inside the full back for Perraud to put
in another low first time cross, which this time met by Adams put the shot
balloons up off of Smith and drops to Elyounoussi on the angle - who puts up a
fucking balloon which skews away into Row Z – actually it’s a about Row G here..
Five minutes to go it’s time for three more changes with
Larios, Diallo and Djenepo coming on for the clearly knackered Perraud, AMN and
Adam Armstrong. Diallo starts particularly well and now we are keeping the ball
really well. This is game management
people, and we’ll be breaking out the “Ole’s” in minute as we’re hardly giving
Bournemouth a touch. They seem to have
given up to be honest and so do most of their fans and there are quite a few
streaming for the exits.
Stoppage time and Bournemouth win a corner as substitute
Stanislas tries to cross it but ends up skewing it and Baz has to shove it over
the bar. In it comes from Tavernier and Baz
drops it but luckily, the imperious Salisu is on hand to belt it away.
95 gone and another chance for us as everyone miss a throw-in
and Djenepo is clean through from the right wing on the angle but instead of
getting his head up and squaring it across to the unmarked Adams, which is what
a normal player would have done, he decides to have a shot and it’s absolute
wank and dribbles through to the goalkeeper. No matter though and the referee puts Bournemouth out
of their misery. Excellent stuff.
Well, the first thing to say is that the players put a shift
in for the manager who will now no doubt continue on and fair play. The tactics
were spot-on today – we played decent football in the first half and took some
risks with our passing out of defence. Sure, we got the ball away a couple of
times but we imposed yourself on Bournemouth when we had the ball and got the
goal. We managed the first 15 minutes of
the second half without too many alarms and then shut up shop for the last half
an hour by changing to go back three with the introduction of the mad bastard
Lyanco. Further substitutions arrived at exactly the right time with Diallo and
Stuart Armstrong in particular not putting a foot wrong when they came on and
we ran down the last 15 or so minutes really well.
Everyone stood up today. Brilliant for Gavin Bazunu to get his first clean sheet and he deserve that bit of luck when he fumbled that cross in the 90th minute because he had another excellent game. In front of him, Mohammed Salisu was absolutely immense in the absence of ABK and they were solid performances in the full-back positions by KWP and Perraud, who put over an absolutely fantastic cross for the goal. Duje Caleta-Car is an interesting player and I see quite a lot of potential in the guy. He seems to be a very solid central defender who keeps things very simple and does the basics very well. He doesn’t seem to attack the ball particularly well in a crowd (defending corners etc) and had an element of Jack Stephens about him in that regard but hopefully he will become more aggressive in his defending the more he plays in the Premier League. If we were ever to play three at the back then he would be absolutely ideal as the central defender, maybe sitting back a bit and letting the others to attack the ball. We might see that against Arsenal with Lyanco and Salisu in there with him. Lyanco - fucking hell. If he’s not charging up the wing and being ahead of the ball when we lose it and he’s been brought on specifically to shore it up at the back, then he’s pulling out a drag back in a congested midfield and striding away with the ball. Absolutely magnificent mad bastard. Cult hero stuff of the highest order.
The final word for the Amazon Prime TV coverage which was largely excellent, hosted by Kelly Somers who I thought was really good, apart from her insistence on saying it was a derby every couple of minutes. It isn’t a derby and it never will be, no matter how many times you say it. See the ‘cauldron of nothing’ atmosphere generated by the Cherries massive. For fuck‘s sake, there’s more atmosphere on Mars. So, full marks to Ralph and full marks to the team because today was all about the result. For the home game against Arsenal on Sunday we will undoubtedly be a little bit makeshift with KWP picking up any injury today and AMN being ineligible to play. I assume that it will be either Juan Larios or Moussa Djenepo at right wing back if it’s a back three. I would imagine that Lewis Payne will come into the equation on the bench.
Today’s win has kept the wolves from the door for a little bit and we can go into Sundays’ going with slightly less pressure than would otherwise have been the case. Bring it on.
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