Premier League Match 19 - Everton 1 Southampton 2

First Win Here in the 21st Century Ya Fuckers !!!

Wins in the cups are all very nice but it’s now time to stop pissing around and get some results in the league. Nathan Jones has to prove that he can win games against teams from the bottom half of the Premier League, starting with Everton today.

Make no mistake, Everton are a piss poor football team and our only rivals when it comes to most out-of-form club in the Premier League. Their manager Frank Lampard is really hanging on by a thread, having done the usual and failing to get any sort of tune out of Everton.  They sailed pretty close to the relegations rocks last year and Lampard got some credit for getting them out of it, but this year it looks a different story.  Last year, they had Shithouse Richarlison up front who though not prolific, scored enough goals and gave them a presence which kept them out of trouble. They replaced him with Neil Maupay, who is about 25% of the player, though he is a shithouse of similar standard but that’s as far as it goes.  I guess that Everton and Lampard thought that Dominic Calvert-Lewin would get back to his best this season but he hasn’t been near it, troubled again by the injuries that seem to be ever-present.  Everton are going to struggle to buy the way out of it as well because of the FFP restrictions placed on them after many years of spending beyond their means to not get very far.

The recruitment of Conor Coady and James Tarkowski at the start of the season suggested that they would be stronger this season and indeed, they beat us at St Mary‘s in one of Ralph‘s more clueless games earlier on in the season. Under Ralph we played a few teams at a low ebb earlier on in the season and every time, we were passive at the start of the game and allowed them to play the way into the game and we ultimately lost. We absolutely cannot afford to do that today because if there’s one crowd guaranteed to turn against their team if things are not going well, then it’s Everton. So, Saints need to be at it from the first whistle like we were against Manchester City in the week.

The City game obviously gave everybody a massive lift at Saints and a further lift was provided the following day with Rasmus Ankersen and Martin Semmens being interviewed by Radio Solent, which if nothing else, at least told us a little bit about Sport Republic and the way they see things. It also confirmed what we all suspected, which was the Rasmus Ankersen is responsible for the recruitment at this moment in time.  It will be interesting to see the level of involvement of Mislav Orsic and maybe even Charly Alcaraz today. The only thing I really disagreed with with the answers from Rasmus, was the assertion that the Championship is the 6th biggest league in Europe, as justification of Nathan Joneses managerial experience.  The financial side of the league is completely irrelevant and there is no way that the Championship is a better standard of football than somewhere like the Dutch or the Portuguese league. I would say the Championship is on par with the top divisions in countries like Austria, Belgium and Switzerland. After all, we’ve just signed a player from the Croatian league and we’re more excited about him than we would be about a player from the Championship.

The City game of course saw some exceptional performances by players who don’t usually get in the starting line-up so will be interesting to see if the likes of Djenepo, Mara, Adam Armstrong and Diallo stay in the team this afternoon.  It’s stating the obvious but we cannot go back to our tactics of launching the ball like we did on our last league game because that will be playing into Everton’s hands.  Everton are a huge great physical team so we need to compete with them on that front and try and play when we can.

There were empty seats in the directors box today because Everton‘s board have been advised that there is a safety risk if they turn up.  The story is that one of the female board members was put in a headlock by a fan at the last game.  Nobody has a picture of it or a video of it but apparently it happened.  Hmmmm, sounds like bullshit.  Reports also emerge as the game kicks off that Everton fans have done their usual and put on a nice firework display outside the Saints team hotel last night. Fuck me lads, could anything be more tinpot if it tried? You really need to try and keep our players awake to give yourself a better chance? We are bottom of the fucking league and have lost 6 in a row. 

After a frenetic opening a few minutes, the first real incident of any note sees Onana pick out Mykolenko on the left hand side and his ball behind the defence is controlled by Demarai Gray, who runs out of angle before lifting over the bar.

Saints build up and down the left-hand side through Edozie, who plays it across the top of the penalty area to JWP who decides against shooting and instead shifts it on one more to the right to Elyounoussi who hammers it across and sees it deflect of the undercarriage of Mykolenko, bounce down, fly over Pickford, over Che Adams and narrowly wide of the post.  In comes the corner from JWP and Salisu meets it well 12 yards out but it’s straight at Pickford who short-arm jabs it away.

There is not a lot of quality with what’s going on but an decent amount of effort. Lyanco sets off on a diagonal run across the pitch from right back, at no point looking like he knows what he’s going to do with it but he’s right out on the left wing by the time he loses it.  A mad-bastard swipe to try and stop the attack misses when Everton tried to counter but immediately, Diallo wins the ball back and sets off, gets the ball back from Edozie and I’m sure he has images in his mind of curling the ball into the top corner of the net but instead his effort is closer to the top corner of the Gwladys Street end.

On the half hour, Demarai Gray takes on KWP out on our left but KWP sticks to his task well but concedes the corner.  Over comes the corner from Gray and Onana, all 7 foot 6 of him has a relatively simple task of head it into the net. Bollocks.  Who the fuck had him then?  Saints defenders are kind of looking at each other with Salisu and Elyounoussi looking the most sheepish.

It nearly gets worse as Salisu plays Diallo a hospital pass in midfield and he is clattered and loses it in the ball goes to Alex Iwobi, who attacks the Saints box before trying a curler from 20 yards which goes closer than Diallo’s effort but a couple of feet wide is the same as a couple of miles wide.

Caleta-Car’s clearance finds its way to Che Adams, who holds off his defender and flicks it round the corner to send Edozie scampering away down the left.   He gets his head up and finds JWP on the edge of the box and his first-time side footed effort is arrowing into the bottom corner but Pickford gets down and one of his little T-Rex arms is just long enough to push the ball onto the post. Great move, great save by the angry little bastard.

Half time and though we’re behind, I don’t feel that we’ve been too bad.  We need to compete more with their physicality.  Just because Onana is fucking huge, there is nothing to say we can’t smash into the bastard.  Everton seriously have nothing else so we just need to believe in ourselves.  One goal and this will turn.

Tactics Frank

As we come out for the second half it looks like Saints have had a little bit of a reshuffle without making any substitutions. KWP has gone to right back and all the centre backs have moved over one with Salisu now occupying the left back birth. We also seem to have pushed Romeo Lavia a bit further forward.  Whilst Everton are working out the changes that have been made the ball goes to KWP the right-hand side just inside the Everton half and he picks out Adams with a lovely ball and he knocks it inside deliberately to meet the run of JWP.  The main man skips past the sliding Godfrey before rolling it past the angry little bastard in goal into the corner of the net. Get in there you fucker. 1-1.

Booooooo go the Everton fans.  You can hear it straight away but the crowd are now giving it some to the Everton players. After a mistake by Salisu, Iwobi tees up Demarai Gray who tries one from 30 yards with a straight down Baz’ throat.  They do go close with the next opportunity is Diallo tried to play too much and gifts the ball to Godfrey.  He picks out Calvert-Lewin, who takes time off from thinking about his next modelling assignment and shit clobber wardrobe that makes him look like a twat, and shoots from the edge of the box and like Elyounoussi’s first half effort, it hits Salisu, bounces down, loops up over Baz, hits the bar and drops down, as everyone of us of a Saints persuasion collectively shites their pants.

The youngsters races are run as Sam Edozie and Romeo Lavia are both replaced with Adam Armstrong and fresh off the plane from Argentina, Charly Alcaraz.  Alcaraz’ first involvement is a decent pass square to pick out JWP about 35 yards out and he screams in another shot which is on target but Pickford gets down together well and hold in those little arms of his.

There is another minor heart attack moment as Onana swings in the cross from the left wing and Baz goes out for what should be a simple claim but somehow, he flaps at it and it hits Godfrey at the back post and goes wide.  Fucking hell Baz.

All game Everton have been hitting the deck and staying there pretending to be injured, in the hope of getting a free kick and Demarai Gray tries it again in a challenge with Che Adams for the referee having none of it and Saints break through Adams, who spreads play out wide to KWP on the right hand side and though his cross is headed out Adams picks it u again and Anthony Gordon bundles into the back of him.  Anthony Gordon was clearly last in the queue when they dished out brains.  This is 25 yards out on the left-hand side and you would say, the perfect position.  Everton line up the wall and as JWP draws back his right foot to shoot, Mykolenko decides to try and head towards the post and all that does is completely confuse Pickford and the ball flies over the wall, over Mykolenko and into the net whilst Pickford stands there looking round the other side of the wall.

It was at this precise moment... that Pickford realised he was Fucked.

Jones throws on three subs to try and shut the game down with Perraud, Maitland-Niles and Mara coming on.  Perraud’s first contribution is to get absolutely skinned by Anthony Gordon down the right-hand side and his cross is volleyed goalwards by Tarkowski but Alcaraz repays the first part of his transfer fee by blocking the ball with his head for a corner. The corner is headed out by Salisu and Gordon feels the presence of AMN about 5 yards away from him so throws himself to the ground like the absolute little prick that he is.  The end.

Fucking hell, we’ve only gone and won at Goodison Park for the first time since 1997. Finally, we played the opposition and not the ground or the atmosphere. Everton have been shit for years but we have always contrived to find a way to fuck the game up but today we got over the line and again, like on Wednesday against City, I never really felt that Everton were gonna get back into it once we went in front.

I thought we played pretty well for the first 20 minutes. We were passing the ball and standing up well to Everton‘s physicality which at the end of the day, is all that they’ve got. For the second part of the first-half we allowed them and Amadou Onana in particular to boss the game in a physical sense and even though we didn’t play particularly well for the 20 minutes leading up to half-time, we still came in at the break having created more openings and more chances than they had, we just let in a shit goal through people not doing their jobs properly at the corner.

The goal of the start of the second half totally turned the game in our favour.  The crowd started getting on Everton’s backs and we started to play football again. You could say that the first goal came from long ball football and in a sense it did, but not in the shit long-ball football sense, where the ball is just smashed aimlessly up the park. KWP picked out Adams with that long pass and he knocked it down to JWP who did the rest. Superb football.

I thought we were comfortable in the second half and very unlikely to not get at least a point but the absolutely brain-dead challenge by Anthony Gordon on Adams gave JWP the chance to add another free-kick to his total and pick that one out Jordan Pickford.  The fact that it was against a goalkeeper who will have trained against him in the past is even more sweet. Pickford might be an arsehole but he is a good goalkeeper and without him, Everton would be more fucked than they already are.

Again there were great scenes of togetherness at the final whistle between Nathan Jones and the players and I’ll repeat what I said at the end of the Manchester City game, it shows that the players are buying into whatever is he selling them and that can only be a good thing. If JWP is making sure that the manager gets his moment with the fans then that means the skipper in OK with the new manager which is good enough for me really, for now.

It’s another brilliant day for the man from the Welsh Mining Village and another game towards changing the perception which had been set in his first few matches. We tried to play football the right way. Okay, it wasn’t always effective, but the intent was there and there weren’t many hopeful punts forward.  I have to admit that I was surprised by some of the team selection. I expected Adams to play ahead of Mara because of the physicality of the opposition but I was slightly surprised that Edozie was included even though he has done well in recent games.  I couldn’t understand the Elyounoussi selection but then I realised that Jones always wants the option of going to 3 at the back and Elyounoussi got picked because he can play at right wing-back allegedly so we can switch to that formation without burning a substitution. Personally, I think his lack of pace means that he isn’t an option there.  Jones is happy to make a substitution to go to 3 at the back in the second half but in the first half he wants to players to be more flexible. The half-time switch that he made to move Salisu to left back and KWP to the right hand side, paid dividend straight away with KWP’s ball up to Adams being more accurate than it probably would’ve been off of his left foot.

The substitutions worked again with Lavia and Edozie being taken off at the right time and it was great to see Charly Alcaraz getting given a half an hour even though he spent most of his time slipping over.  I thought that virtually all the players put in decent performances. Baz had a couple of ropey moments ago but had no chance with the header that beat him. The back line again featured a massive performance by Caleta-Car and Lyanco had another really good game dealing with the aerial threat that Everton posed.  Lyanco and Salisu played full-back on their respective sides for part of the game and all was good.

A Male Model and a Big Bastard Beast of a Defender

Then of course we have JWP who is entering Matt le Tiss territory for being the person you know is gonna show up when the chips are really down. A superbly taken first goal followed by a standard freekick second goal. I say standard which is ridiculous because it’s only standard for him and 99% of players couldn’t do that. I’m not a religious man but there must be some explanation for JWP.  When Alan Ball took over as Saints manager, the first thing he did was to put le Tissier, our best player, in his best position and take away any defensive responsibility he had.  Nathan Jones has done roughly the same thing with our current best player and he's now free to do what he’s best at.

I also thought Che Adams had a good game upfront, battling away with three Everton centre backs for most of it. He knocked the ball off for JWP’s equaliser and he was the one barged in the back by Anthony Gordon to win the free-kick that we won the game from.

Everton are pretty one-dimensional and if you stand up to their physicality then they really haven’t got a lot else.  They scored from a corner but I never felt like they were going to score from open play as they don’t have the creativity.  When your best passer is the goalkeeper, you are struggling. They have Onana who is just a massively powerful big unit in midfield but other than him there were no threats. I guess that Anthony Gordon was brought on to provide that threat but all he did was give away the free-kick that meant that Everton lost the game instead of drawing it. Even without Gordon on the pitch, Everton are dreadful for pretending to be hurt after every challenge – Demarai Gray, Alex Iwobi, Dominic Calvert-Lewin – fucking get up.

It’s a sad situation going on there at a historic football club but it’s rotten to the core with shocking decisions having been made repeatedly for years. I like Frank Lampard and I’m sure he’s going to have a long successful career in the media after this managerial stint comes to an end, which may well be pretty soon.  Saying after the game that he didn’t think it was a tactical game in the 2^nd half was weird.  Saints changed tactics at half time and scored straight away.  Maybe you should pay attention after all, Frank?

What a difference a week makes down here. A slightly sketchy win against Palace followed by two excellent wins against Manchester City and Everton. No time to take the foot off the gas though because after all this with two of those games being in the cup, we are still bottom of the league but now it’s only on goal difference. The club is looking upwardly mobile now and we have to keep this going now to force our way above is the likes of Everton, Bournemouth, Leeds and Leicester and West Ham, who are all heading in the other direction.