Premier League Match 14 - Southampton 1 Newcastle 4

 

Quality Goal, Quality Player, We Don't Have Them

The phrase “Champions League chasing Newcastle” hasn’t been a thing since the days of Les Ferdinand and Alan Shearer but here we are with them in fourth place in the Premier League table. If you just look at the football side of things, which we will for the moment, new manager Eddie Howe has taken over from the deeply unpopular Steve Bruce and transformed the team with astute signings in defence and a sprinkling of magic in midfield and upfront. In addition to that, he has transformed players who were previously seen as nothing but journeyman under the previous manager and moulded it all together into a team that works incredibly hard for each other and has a clear game plan. So far this season, they have been decent to watch despite still having the old Eddie Howe tendency of wasting as much time as they possibly can. Expect to see Nick Pope taking a minute and a half over every goal kick regardless of the match situation.

So, Eddie Howe has done remarkably well given the pressure he was under to deliver given the riches available to him, courtesy of the new owners, who have been in place for about a year. The new owners are of course the PIF which is (allegedly) a front for the Saudi Arabian state. Don’t get me wrong, they would’ve been jealousy and angst from other clubs, regardless of where the money has come from. In the 90s there was jealousy over Jack Walker’s backing of Blackburn and he was from the town and a self-made millionaire. This is of course slightly different.

I can’t help but think that nation states owning football clubs is a bad thing, especially when those nation states have diabolical human rights records like the Saudis do. Newcastle and their fans have not only embraced the new ownership but they have shithoused other Premier League fan bases by adopting the Saudi Arabian national team kit as one of the change strips for the season.   I’m all for shithousing bur even I think this is not showing much self-awareness. I think it’s sad in a way that the Newcastle supporters of embraced all this so readily and position in the league table probably allows them to think that the end justifies the means. The bottom line for fans of other clubs is to imagine yourself in their position. More than not would embrace the new ownership, regardless of where it’s from, if their team improves as a result.

It does undoubtedly help if you can spend £130 million in each of the last two transfer windows which is what they have done with Isak, Botman, Targett and Pope joining this summer and Wood, Willock, Burn and Trippier joining the previous January.  Oddly, they’re not as keen to get this game called off as they were last years.

So, plenty of players to look out for today if Saints are going to get a result, chief of them seems to be Callum Wilson who has hit the goals again and he needs to with the absence of £60 million signing Alexander Isak.  He’s a decent outside bet for a World Cup place.  Our nemesis Alain Saint-Maximin has not been in the side recently but probably will be on Sunday because Joelinton is suspended.  One major reason for Newcastle’s rise up the league has been the form of Bruno Guimaraes in midfield but all good teams as we know, are built from the back and having Nick Pope in goal with Kieran Trippier, Sven Botman, Fabien Schar and Dan Burn in defence has certainly given them the basis to move forwards as a club.

Saints defence is usually pretty decent as well but we don’t have the sprinkling of magic that Newcastle’s top end players would bring us because of course, we don’t have the money. We are hoping that our 18-year-old with five Premier League games is fit to start in midfield and we are hoping that Che Adams hits the gaps either side of the goalkeeper this week instead of just smacking it straight at him. We do have other strikers in for now, given that Theo Walcott and Sekou Mara both bagged hat-trick‘s in an 8-1 win for a ridiculously strong Saints B team against Middlesbrough Under-12s. Goalscorers thrive on confidence though, so it won’t have done them any harm.

Remarkably, Walcott is in the starting line-up in place of Aribo and there is a return for Armel Bella-Kotchap instead of Caleta-Car at centre-back.  Romeo Lavia has made it back as far as the bench and away we go. The right-back tombola has been won by Juan Larios.

There’s an early cross from the Newcastle right which evades both Willson and Bazunu before Saints first effort which comes courtesy of a big boot forward by Bazunu which drops to Perraud.  He drives at the edge of the box before bringing a good save out of Pope with a low right-footed effort.

We get away with one is Baz produces a shite of a kick which just presents the ball to Newcastle deep in our half but luckily the ball forward to Longstaff finds him offside and though Baz makes a good save, it wouldn’t have counted anyway.

Juan Larios is having fun at right back. Not only is he on his wrong side but he then tries to win a header against Dan Burn who is a full 1 foot 2 inches taller than him. It doesn’t end well.  It gets worse for Larios on the half-hour mark as it goes down and doesn’t get back up again and eventually goes off to be replaced by the returning of Romeo Lavia. Whilst this is great news that he’s back, I can’t imagine that they wanted to pay him for an hour in his first game. Anyway, AMN has gone to right back.

As we get used to the reshuffle, Baz aims a kick out towards Elyounoussi on the left wing but whilst Elyounoussi waits, Trippier just walks in front of him and heads the ball down. Longstaff picks it up and drives forward knocking it up to Wilson and Salisu tries to pile through and win the ball but doesn’t, leaving himself on his arse.  It’s knocked off to Almiron who has now driven into the box, past Maitland-Niles who kind of just falls over pathetically in front of him and then he passes it into the far corner of the net like the man on form that he is. Fuck me that was easy and about 4 mistakes from us.  Shit.

There’s a golden chance for 2-0 but Longstaff heads over before there in a bit of play that sums us up as Che Adams and AMN combine really well to send Stuart Armstrong away on the right hand side and his cross perfectly picks out Elyounoussi at the back post, who has an open goal to aim at but puts it wide. What a load of shit for fuck‘s sake.

Half-time and not very optimistic about the second half.  It’s only one goal but how hard is it to see us scoring.  Anyhow, we start the second half and reasonably bright fashion with Armstrong being bundled over by Willock about 35 yards out. It’s right on the out of range for a JWP freekick but he has a go anyway and put his foot through it and it’s a decent enough effort but Pope sees it easily enough.

Another free kick right on the edge of the box out wide, as Trippier handles a cross from Elyounoussi. JWP‘s cross is headed away, sent back in with a decent ball by AMN and Elyounoussi tees himself up for a volley from about 25 yards out which flies comfortably over the bar.  Good optimistic effort from a player who couldn’t score from 2 yards earlier on.

Newcastle look a little bit rattled to be fair and Botman presents the ball to Walcott, who was still playing, in the centre circle, and he drives forward before picking out Elyounoussi on the left, who picks exactly the right ball to Adams on the right hand side but instead of taking a touch, he tries to smash the cover off it and drills it a couple of yards wide. Another glorious chance.

Che and Ralph Arguing Over Who Has Had the Bigger Mare

Newcastle have been crap since half time but out of nowhere, a build up down the left through Jacob Murphy and he plays a simple ball inside to Chris Wood, on as a substitute for Wilson at half-time and he turns and passes the ball into the corner of the net giving Bazunu no chance at all.  We’ve completed the set – made Chris Wood look like a cultured striker.

Are we gonna do anything?  Yep, we’re gonna completely fuck the game off and three minutes later it’s all over as Saints press to try and win the ball high, fail and one pass from Trippier sends Willock clean through and he calmly slots it past Bazunu into the corner of the net as well. Fucking hell. So easy.

With the horse well and truly bolted and 3 miles down the road, Ralph decides to have a look at the stable door and it’s triple substitution time with a Edozie, Aribo and Aribo on for Stuart Armstrong, Walcott and Che Adams.

For 15 minutes or so nothing really happens and no one can be arsed.  The atmosphere is dead and no one has the energy or spirit to do anything.  As we approach 90, Salisu changes the mood a bit, playing a lovely ball through the right hand side of Newcastle‘s defence to send Perraud away and he cuts inside the sliding Burn before burying it past Pope with his right foot. He really has been our best player by a mile.

So we have a consolation goal but of course that can’t be the end of the story as Bruno Guimaraes shows what a good player he is by being involved in the build up all the way up the pitch before taking a simple return pass and from 25 yards, he just passes the ball into the corner of the net. What the fuck are our defenders doing?

Fucking hell that was grim. Predictable and grim. It was so fucking boring to watch with absolutely no expectation of us getting anything positive out of the game even when it was only 1-0 and we had two chances. The miss by Elyounoussi sums up both us and him and the miss by Che Adams is a striker without any confidence. We pushed the desperation button marked Theo Walcott and that unsurprisingly, achieved the square root of fuck all. Apparently, our plan was to attack down the sides in between the centre backs and the full backs but you wouldn’t have known it because no one made that run and no one played the ball down there. That sums us up, no attacking identity and no plan. Every week it’s just throw it at the wall and see if anything sticks and if it sticks then we’ll try the same thing next week. If it doesn’t then we will make up some other shit during the week and hope that works. We are a shit football team.

On first viewing I can’t blame the goalkeeper for any of the goals that went past him today as they were all very good finishes by Newcastle. We made multiple mistakes on the first goal, with the finishing layer of shit being applied by Maitland-Niles falling over like he was on fucking ice skates.  The three goals we conceded in the second half we’re all remarkably similar with easy build ups through the thirds and the person with the ball just passing it into the corner of the net. Was it the defence or was it the midfield? The answer is that when you let in a simple go, it’s the whole teams fault.  There seemed to be a lack of intensity and a lack of desire to keep the ball out of the net.

Let’s do the the positives because that won’t take long. Romain Perraud was excellent at left back and is the only player for me who plays with the correct level of intensity when trying to attack. He looks like he wants to get forward, he looks like he wants to score a goal and he’s our left back.

Another positive was the Maitland-Niles looked slightly better at right back than he did in midfield.  He has all the tools to play at right-back but I wonder if he has the brain.  It was a positive to see Romeo Lavia back on the pitch but he was understandably very rusty and was clearly feeling his way back into the game and him playing whilst being sure on dynamism was probably one of the reasons we got ripped a new arsehole so much in the second half.

I’ve seen it said in their interviews after the game that Newcastle didn’t play particularly well and that’s probably true. They played as well as they had to play to beat us easily. A team in form with a clear plan and players playing with a good intensity and at the right levels is always going to beat a ramshackle bag of shit like us.

Ralph: Time to Go

Ralph sounded dejected and defeated after the game and how else could he sound to be honest. It was fucking shit.  It doesn’t look like Ralph is going to survive much longer (Update: He didn’t) and I’m sure he will be looking on from his holiday sunbed when we sign the striker that he desperately wanted in the summer.  It’s not just a striker though, it’s creative attacking players and we have the perfect shit storm at the moment in that we don’t have much creativity and when we do create one or two chances a game, we don’t have anyone clinical to stick them in the net. Any manager would struggle to get much of a tune out of the squad but then again, that’s why Ralph is paid between £6 and £7 million a year. You could pay me a tenth of that and I don’t think we would be a worse team or lower in the league.

There is no joy in watching us anymore. It’s just a struggle.  You can’t be invested in this team because there’s nothing remotely to get excited about. At least when we pressed teams, we made it difficult for them and we got in their faces. If they didn’t fancy it then we found them out. Nowadays, we just don’t do anything and we allow the opposition to dictate the pace whilst we stand off. If we win the ball off them and there’s the opportunity for a break, then we don’t break up with any pace and we always end up with the ball with all 11 opposition players behind it and then we have no creativity to get through anyway. It’s fucking awful football to watch.  Last Days of Puel all over again.

Next up is Sheffield Wednesday, on Wednesday in the Carabao cup third round. This game is likely to disappear another subplot of who is the manager. It surely can’t be Ralph as it appears that sources at the club are briefing journalists that they have decided to sack him.

We will see what tomorrow brings (Update: they sacked him)