Premier League Match 9 - Manchester City 4 Southampton 0

 

You Go and Play in Midfield... On your Own

In what promises to be a very strange afternoon, we are away at the Etihad to play Manchester City. I say strange because if media revelations during the week are true, we have basically left us with a lame duck manager and I don’t like this scenario we have where we all kind know he’s going to be going in the next few weeks but we are limping on until that point.

Assuming reports are correct regarding the future of Ralph, I would say that the board need to either back him or sack him. Uncertainty is a terribly unproductive thing. The only thing in his latest round of reports that wasn’t in the reports at the start of the season, was that there is a lack of communication between Ralph and the players and the after a defeat, he won’t talk to anyone. If that is true, that's a lot of not-talking in the past few months.  It also raises the question that if Ralph's not communicating with players, especially the young players who we are trying to develop, then surely that is a main part of the job so what the fuck is he doing?

Putting all that aside for one side for a second, today’s task couldn’t be any tougher with the way that Manchester City are playing at the moment. They are basically blowing teams away as they have added a cutting edge to the ridiculous football that they played last season which wasn’t exactly lacking a cutting edge anyway. Erling Haaland has so far averaged two goals a game in a Manchester City shirt and basically is fucking ridiculous. The percentage of chances that he converts it’s ridiculous, especially when you compare it to Raheem Sterling last year, who missed a lot of chances and then scored a tap-in from right in front of the goal.  Haaland though is a different beast altogether - Do you remember the premise of the film Men in Black, which was that basically there were super powered aliens living amongst us. Haaland looks like one of those, crossed with Thanos from the Marvel films, whose tagline was ‘I am inevitable’.

You used to be able to try and keep Manchester City in front of you and let them pass the ball around and then they eventually crossed it into the box.  If you concentrated to the max then there was a chance that you could get to the end of the game without having been buried. Even better was if you posed an attacking threat when you had the ball because their defence wasn’t and still is still not perfect. We ourselves have got decent results against them in the past few seasons using this exact blueprint.  The trouble now is that just sitting in tight doesn’t work because of the presence of Haaland who stretches opposition teams out and create space for the myriad of brilliant attacking midfielders that City have got. I mean, Foden, Grealish, Bernardo, Mahrez… oh and that De Bruyne bloke. So if you sit back, you are going to get beaten, so after defending properly, the most important thing is to have some sort of attacking threat.

For all our newfound defensive solidity, we are still failing to keep a clean sheet against anybody so the chances of us doing it today are next to zero. Consequently, we absolutely have to have a threat in attack and barring a couple of games this season, we just haven’t had that. Our attacking midfielders (and it’s laughable when you compare them to the ones that City have) have not stepped up to the mark and the strikers have not been clinical. Hopefully, with nothing much to lose, Ralph will send us out to give them a decent game and not just passively sit back and wait for what will be inevitable – that word again.

How do you set a team up against city. Well, 4-2-2-2 but with three decent centre backs on the books now, maybe it will be three/five at the back and the best hope is that the midfield has some pace in it to get forward to support a lone striker. Ralph‘s record against the big teams is generally pretty good so here is hoping that he’s got it about him to come up with something today.  Maybe some mad shit like Lyanco in midfield from the start.

No Lyanco but it looks like a 4-2-2-2. Salisu and Perraud are back in and the role of ‘nothing midfielder’ goes to Diallo.  Stuart Armstrong and Aribo are both in which at least gives us some attacking nous if we have any of the ball.  Adam Armstrong is preferred to Sekou Mara.

The first City attack sees a simple ball pinged over the top of KWP for Cancelo to the motor into space and his cross into the middle his controlled and smashed by Mahrez, forcing Bazunu into a decent reaction save.  The rebound drops to Foden who has more time than he thinks and luckily can only hook it back to the keeper.  A few minutes later and another move down the left and again it's Cancelo crossing and again Mahrez meets it, on the volley this time and over it goes.  Pretty obvious where the threat is coming from.

Down the left-hand side again where KWP has the look of a man playing Whack-a-mole on the fastest setting, trying to mark three players at once.  Foden picks it up, a quick look and he switches play and Haaland is clean through. Like Thanos in The Avengers movies, it is inevitable, only this time it isn’t as he smashes the ball pass Bazunu and it hits the inside of a post and pings right across and goes out for a goal kick. I bet he doesn’t miss another one.

Whack-a-mole is chasing around like a mad man but he leaves his post at right back to clatter Foden in midfield and away go City down their left yet again with Cancelo getting to the edge of the box and jinking past JWP before smashing it into the far corner of the net through Salisu’s his legs, giving Bazunu absolutely no chance.

Saints aren’t really doing anything and we try and break out of defence with Stuart Armstrong, who runs into trouble and loses the ball cheaply in the centre circle.  Oh good, de Bruyne has it.  He motors forward before picking out Foden on the left of the penalty area and despite a bit of a poor touch, he just lifts the ball over Bazunu to make it 2-0.

With a couple minutes left the half-time Saints actually have an attack and it’s a decent movie with Stuart Armstrong trying to snapshot from the edge of the box which rises just over the bar.  This counts as a good spell for us and we’re cruising now.  It’s almost Champions League football as Aribo wins a corner and it's a bit of a piss-take that we don’t even get to take it because it’s half-time.  We’ve definitely finished the half in the ascendancy though… ha ha fucking ha!

The game is done and dusted now so I guess we just have to keep doing what we’re doing and working hard and try and keep the score down. Pretty depressing but it’s just the way it is.

I kind of expected the issues down our right to be sorted out at half time but no.  Cancelo again has acres and time to lay the ball back to Rodri, who under no pressure, has time to pick out the unmarked Mahrez on the other wing – first time volley, goal past the unprotected goalkeeper.

Inevitable?  Maybe but not just yet.

The only surprise is that Thanos hasn’t scored yet and De Bruyne slides a beautiful ball through and he’s in on the goalkeeper and tries to take it round Bazunu, who makes a brilliant save using the long lost goalkeeper art of diving at the players feet and getting a hand on the ball. Superb goalkeeping.  You don’t often see a player trying to go round the goalkeeper these days to be fair.

It is but a temporary reprieve though and it doesn’t take long however as Cancelo and De Bruyne combine to give Whack-a-Mole the runaround and Cancelo under no pressure, fires over a cross and guess who meets it and smashes it into the net. Bloody Thanos. Erling Haaland is inevitable.

Luckily, like they did last week against United – the game is won so City kind of canter through it.  Grealish and Alvarez are on from the bench but we are spared Laporte and Gundogan at least.  KWP is spared the last ten minutes to give Larios and return against City and there are appearances for Elyounoussi, Djenepo and Mara for the Armstrongs and Aribo, who I assume were delighted to see their numbers come up.  Bazunu makes another couple of decent saves as the game plays out and that’s all she wrote.

It’s hard to analyse a game against City so where do we start? Well, the brutal reality is that I would’ve taken a 4-0 defeat before the start. City have the same thing about them that the great Manchester United sides are used to have under Sir Alex Ferguson and the great Liverpool sides of the 80s used to have in the teams are beaten before they step out onto the pitch. It takes years to build up that aura but City have it now.  They also have Haaland who does that on an individual level, taking two or three players with him and creating loads of space for the other City forwards.

We didn’t really stay in the game but we didn’t absolutely capitulate like for example, Manchester United did last week.  In the main, we defended with commitment and it was nice to see Gavin Bazunu make a couple of really decent saves.  The central defenders in the main did a decent job against Erling Haaland but we were vulnerable down the wings with Cancelo in particular down the left hand side having a field day against the out of sorts and exposed KWP. Truth is, he wasn’t getting any help from Stuart Armstrong in the first half and the booking he got for scything down Foden in the build up to the second goal certainly inhibited him a bit in the second half.

We closed down well and stuck to the game plan pretty well but it was a game plan that needed a bit more to it in the second half when we were already 2-0 down but we played the second half as if it was 0-0 at the break and didn’t really do anything. Two off target shots from a team that has gone another game without showing that it has any idea of how to attack.

It’s maybe harsh to criticize certain players based on today but Diallo and Adam Armstrong again proved that they are several levels below where they need to be and I seriously forgot that Joe Aribo and Stuart Armstrong were playing in the first half.  It was all ‘against the ball’.  Today was always going to be an ‘against the ball’ kind of day so it somewhat surprises me that Ralph picked Elyounoussi and Djenepo against Villa, which wasn’t that kind of day, yet against City, he goes with Armstrong and Aribo.  To be honest, at half time with the game done and having had no attacking threat in the first half, maybe we should have changed the wide players then or maybe brought on Larios to play on the right as well as KWP.

Ralph admitted himself that we were pretty decent ‘against the ball’ (out of possession) with the way we pressed City, though he did also say we weren’t nasty enough.  That’s the truth – too many nice boys – remember Romeu rattling Grealish at St Mary’s last season.  He also stressed that we didn’t do the job on the ball and that’s the problem. We have become so obsessed with our work against the ball that we have forgotten about playing with the ball and running off the ball to receive it, taking risks by running forward and trusting your team-mate not to give the ball away.  With the ball and off the ball go hand in hand – it’s called ‘Pass and Move’ for a reason.  No movement of the ball means no one to pass to.  Look at City – the same player can be involved in a move five times because they get the ball, knock it off, move into another space to receive it, rinse and repeat.  We mainly play in straight lines and it’s almost as if we have to be concentrating on ‘against the ball’ before we’ve even lost the bastard, so no movement, easy to defend against.  Unlike last year, Pep found a way to beat our press, mainly by using Cancelo as an extra midfielder on the left, which left Stuart Armstrong confused as to which player to press and gave KWP nightmares. Yes, Pep has all the tools but that shows why he’s the best.

3 Wins in 21 - What is This Shit?

If the media reports are false and the sack is not looming for Ralph - does this performance do anything for Ralph’s long-term prospects? Well, you could say that the players were playing for him because they didn’t give up but you could also say that we still looked very stale and the shocking record since the 4-0 Villa defeat back in March now reads three wins, three draws and 15 defeats from 21 games or 12 points out of a possible 63.

With that record in mind I think that The Saints fan base has been incredibly supportive but there is a breaking point and that will come next week against West Ham and then against Bournemouth.  Four points from those two games and it might limp on for another few weeks but you would be hard-pressed to predict that with any optimism. You could also argue that having a new manager would give us a better chance of winning those two games.

It certainly promises to be an interesting build up to next week’s fixture against West Ham.  It honestly wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Ralph was still in the dugout or if he wasn’t.  Either way, up the fucking Saints.