FA Cup 5th Round - Southampton 1 Grimsby 2

Can We Get Any Lower?

In a break from our March down to the Championship, we tonight play Grimsby in the 5th Round of the FA Cup, with what is on the face of it, a perfect chance to get to the quarter-final and be one step away from Wembley. It’s a break from the inevitability of the league program and should be treated as such, though considering the fact that Grimsby were in the National League last season, the club don’t exactly seem to have got the pricing point right at near on £20 a ticket. We will see how empty it is.

So, Grimsby are in their first season up from the National League and are faring pretty well in 16th place and do not look remotely in danger regarding a return back to where they came. I vaguely remember us playing against Grimsby in the 70s but that’s about it as our paths never crossed when we were in the Championship and League 1 a few years ago.

The main story in the build-up to the game was of course Harry Haddock.  Harry is of course the inflatable fish that Grimsby fans bring to relatively big games, only Premier League clubs tend to ban inflatables from entering the ground. Apparently, Crystal Palace sent stewards round to confiscate all the inflatable fish.  Inflatables were banned from St Mary’s but a bit of common sense has prevailed and the fish are in. I imagine that if he is watching on ITV4, all the inflatable fish will make this like pornography for John Westwood.

Ruben Selles has promised to put out a team that could play in the Premier League which would be an achievement because in 23 league games so far, we’ve barely seen it. I’m really hoping to see as a few of the shit players that we have as possible. I have a list of 10 who are not capable of stringing a couple of decent Premier League games together in a row So it will be interesting to see how many of Maitland-Niles, Bree, Bednarek, Lyanco, Diallo, Walcott, Aribo, Djenepo, Elyounoussi and Adam Armstrong are own show today. Of course, we should win with whatever team we put out but we have struggled already this season against lower league opposition so I’m not assuming anything.

Team news and not sure about this…. Looks like a 4-2-2-2 from the Spanish Ralph.  Defence looks decent on the face of it with Macca in goal, Captain KWP and Perraud at full back and Lyanco and Caleta-Car in the middle.  Clunk 1 is that Alcaraz will be restricted in getting forward as part of a midfield 2 with Romeo Lavia.  Clunks 2, 3 and 4 are Djenepo, Mara and Adam Armstrong, so hopefully Orisic will find Grimsby of similar standard to those Croatian League sides he used to play against.  I am mystified by Tall Paul and Sulemana not being on the bench as both need a goal but Dom Ballard and Kamari Doyle are both on there.

Saints start with passing the ball around in the usual pretty fashion at the back before Lavia picks it up and threads thread one through to Mara.  The last defender makes a bollocks of it and Mara is clean through against the keeper and in true Saints striker fashion, it’s straight at him and saved but he is offside anyway.

KWP plays of ball between the defenders for Djenepo to run onto and he sorts out his flailing limbs and pulls it back for Mara to drill into the net and for a second, I think that tonight is going to be routine but the flag goes up again because Djenepo is fairly obviously offside, as usual.

Having discovered that playing with intensity carves Grimsby open, we then stop doing it and rely on Lavia winning the ball high and knocking it onto Alcaraz, who feeds Orsic on the left hand side, who in World Cup third place play-off fashion, tries to curl inside the far post but puts it just wide.  Grimsby are clearly better than Morocco.

Grimsby have their first real attack and build down our left-hand side with centre forward Orsi knocking it onto the right winger Emmanuel, who catches it with one hand and throws it in front of him before crossing the ball into the mixer.  Lyanco makes an almighty bollocks of it and the ball goes to a Grimsby forward and McCarthy has to come out and make a decent save. And we’re off to VAR for a possible handball – eh?

“Hi there Tommy-Boy – Stockley Park here with the news”
“What’s up – handball I’m hearing”
“Yep, clear as day, guy with the shit blonde trim in the middle as the ball comes over”
“Oh shit, I missed that”
“That’s not all”
“What?”
“You missed the handball by the winger who crossed it”
“Oh fuck, no penalty then”
“Well, let’s not be hasty.. tell you what, I’ll look up the rules for five minutes”
[5 minutes goes by}
“OK, go to the screen”
“Why?”
“Cos I’ve managed to clip it so you won’t see the wingers handball”
“Nice work and we love a giant-killing… even though it wouldn’t be”
“Why not?”
“Because Southampton are fucking shite”

Up steps Holohan and sends McCarthy the wrong way.

Half time, 1-0 down, shite.  It’s hard to convey just how inept we’ve been.  The four forwards are attempting to rotate positions but it’s achieved nothing.  Orsic and Djenepo are never going to gets shots away when they move into the middle and Mara and Armstrong couldn’t beat a fucking egg, let alone a full-back.  It’s nearly Easter after all.  Bring on Tall Paul… oh he’s not here.

Nice one Duje

A big boot down the middle by the Grimsby keeper starts the second half with Orsi chasing the ball along with Caleta-Car who allows it to bounce through to McCarthy.  The ball is safe but Caleta-Car seems to flick out at Orsi, who goes down like he has been shot by a sniper.  The referee can’t fucking wait and gives a penalty. For fucks sake.  On first viewing you could call it both ways.  The ball is with the keeper and it’s really nothing but he has undeniably flicked out at him. It is unbelievably pathetic from the centre-forward to hit the deck but we are where we are, penalty. Holohan against McCarthy again, 2-0.

Ruben makes his first couple of subs with JWP coming on for Lavia (probably pre-planned) and Edozie coming on for Orsic, who has performed at a similar level to his other games for us.  I feel sorry for Romeo Lavia having to play with these shit players.  Not long mate.

Djenepo has been lively at the start of the second half, relatively speaking, and wins a corner on the left-hand side which JWP swings in and there is Caleta-Car at the back post, completely unmarked and he volleys into the net to make it 2-1.  Thank Christ that didn’t fall to one of our strikers.

More subs as the Shite Brothers up front are taken off and replaced with Walcott and Aribo.  It would be funny if it was any other team.  Despite Aribo being the most languid player ever, Saints are now playing with a bit of the urgency that they should’ve been playing with since the first whistle and KWP puts JWP away down the right and his cross is met by Lyanco and headed back across to where Aribo tries to convert but doesn’t get to it. He was probably asleep to be fair and it was just too much effort.

We get a free kick for a foul on Aribo about 40 yards out and JWP sees a quick dart from Walcott and finds him with a free-kick and Theo brings it down and turns and put it in the net.  Well well, we might have blagged this after all.  We are back at halfway with Grimsby waiting to kick-off but we’re off to VAR again.

“Hi there, Stockley Park here”
“What have you got, they’ve got out of jail haven’t they?”
“Guess what….?”
“What?”
[dramatic pause]
“He’s offside”
“You sure? This is brilliant”
“Yep, everyone loves a giant-killing”
“And we’ve done our best with the two pens”
“Just one thing though…. It’s not really a giant-killing… why not?”
[Together]
“Because Southampton are fucking shite”

Dominic Ballard is on for Djenepo so we have now replaced all four of the shit players we picked to score goals against the League 2 side.

90 minutes up and Alcaraz plays a lovely ball over the top to pick up the run of KWP on the right hand side and he cuts in before drilling a left-footed at about 2 yards wide of the far post. That will be it.

I remember saying after the Wolves game when we surrendered the 1-0 lead against 10 men, that it was a new low in a catalogue of lows. Just when you thought Saints couldn’t dig any deeper into the sub-strata of shite beneath the bottom of the pond, they manage it again, this time losing to a team that is 16^th, three divisions below and a year ago, were in the National League. 

The facts of the game are that we lost 2-1 courtesy of two penalties given to Grimsby by overgenerous officials. On the first one, there’s no doubt Lyanco handled it but also, no doubt  there was a massive handball in the build-up by the guy who crossed it half a second before the handball.  However, it took five minutes to decide that it wasn’t an issue.  Lyanco’s handball was clear, 5 seconds to decide that.  I’m guessing that if a Grimsby player had scored from the cross then it would have been ruled out but as it was a penalty, it isn’t… which is fucking stupid.  The problem with that theory is that there’s no interpretation needed for it so why take five minutes over it?  The second penalty is hilarious for all sorts of reasons as the Grimsby striker looks like he gave Caleta-Car a shove and Duje reacted by basically tapping him on the back which brought the reaction of throwing himself to the floor. Absolute wankers all round.  The Grimsby player for his reaction, Caleta-Car for rising to the bait and the referee for deciding but that was a penalty. The way that incident should’ve played out was the Grimsby player turning round and he and Duje having some handbags and the referee booking them both and play on.  Another madness with it is that if the referee has given a penalty, he has therefore decided that Caleta-Car has hit him so why not send him off? Absolute fucking jokes all round.

I thought we were struggling after the first goal but once the second one went out in at the start of the second half I kind of knew we were fucked.  Even in the first half when we played with any urgency, Grimsby struggled to stay with us at it as you’d expect but we did that for about five minutes and Mara had a goal correctly disallowed for offside.

After that we went back to a very slow tempo passing game which allowed the Grimsby defence to be set. Once we were 2-0 down, we did step up the tempo a little bit and ironically that came through the introduction of Theo Walcott, who showed that long lost art of a forward in a Southampton shirt darting into space to receive the ball.  Duje’s goal gave us a chance but Theo’s disallowed one killed us.

For all the impetus that Theo brought us, we balanced that out with the introduction of Joe Aribo who barely ran 5 yards.  Remember when he was lauded he was the experienced example setter for the young players who we signed in the summer. Absolute waster. The reason we had to bring on new strikers was of course because the ones we picked to start the game were nothing more than predictably atrocious. Sekou Mara is a young kid which is the only mitigation for the way he plays. He kind of thinks he has a bit of swagger about him and thinks he’s a bit of a tough guy but ultimately he doesn’t have much to back up the swagger.  There’s something there but it’s very well hidden. Then we have Adam Armstrong and the biggest mystery to me is how that guy ever scored goals at Championship level. He has nothing and when you can manage to look absolutely pathetic against League 2 opposition than you know it’s never going to happen.  You know players wear those devices to measure various stuff – I’d be willing to bet that the fastest Armstrong moved all game was when he was being substituted.

The main reason we were shocking today is because of our forwards, with Mara and Armstrong being complimented by Djenepo and Orsic. I don’t totally want to write off Orsic after a few games but it looks like he is not going to be of any use this season at all. There was a nagging doubt in my mind when we signed him that there was a reason he was 30 years old and had only ever played league football in South Korea and Croatia and those doubts look like they’re coming home to roost.  Djenepo though, is what he is and has been for the last 3 1/2 years but we gave him a new contract so he still got another three years to improve. That was said with extreme sarcasm.  Those four were our cutting edge for fucks sake.

Ruben dropped a colossal bollock with his selection of the two strikers because basically, they are shit. We know they are shit because we spent £40 million in January on two players to replace them, only they are still getting minutes and the £40 million of attacking talent that we signed to replace the shit players wasn’t even on the bench to bring on in the event of emergency.  We’ve done this in the league as well, all over the pitch - signed players because the ones we had weren’t good enough but we still give minutes to the ones that we were trying to replace because we are all nice and fluffy and inclusive. 

This is allegedly elite level sport for fucks sake. You shouldn’t get given something for nothing and if you’re not producing then you shouldn’t be surprised and should be able to accept that you’re not going to get a fucking game.  So, it’s very nice that we didn’t upset the feelings of some of the shit players last night and we gave them a little run around but at what cost to the people who pay to watch and at what cost for people who were going to see last night’s game as the final straw. There will be a season-ticket holder somewhere who won’t renew as a result of that performance last night.  There will be kids who went last night with the expectations of a win and a few goals and a performance.  Don’t pick the shit players, don’t even put them on the bench in any game, whoever it is against.  Fill the bench up with youth players.

Selles didn’t underestimate the strength of Grimsby, he just underestimated quite how shit our forward players are.  In an attacking sense, the rest of the team didn’t do too bad with Lavia, JWP and Alcaraz all having half decent games and the full backs appeared high up the pitch on numerous occasions and got crosses in for our 6 foot 7 striker…. Oh no, he wasn’t fucking playing. We couldn’t score a goal from open play against fucking Grimsby.  Romeo Lavia is doing really well to not let his standards drop to the level of those around him.  He is a top player already and he will be a superstar and we should make the most of watching him in a Saints shirt for the next 14 games but get used to the fact that he will be leaving, as will JWP if he’s got any sense.  It’ll be particularly hard to watch him playing for someone else.

It would be wrong to leave without talking about our centre backs in a defensive capacity. A few weeks ago, I was talking about Caleta-Car being a calm head and the one who doesn’t make mistakes.  That aged well.  As I’ve already said, the award of the second penalty was a complete joke but he gave the striker the opportunity to hit the deck and he gave the referee the opportunity to give it, by reacting to what is some pretty basic provocation. You have to play the ref and it was clear already that he ref was pretty trigger happy where we were concerned.

Lyanco, for all his heart and desire to do well, has always got a mistake in him and his misreading of the cross for the first penalty is just classic of him.  He can’t be relied upon, much like Bednarek.  You might get one good game out of him, but you won’t get two or three.  That applies to so many of our squad.

Grimsby put a proper shift in and their fans were absolutely magnificent. It’s a fantastic result for them and they have been rewarded with another trip to the south coast to play Brighton who I promise, will give them a much better game than we did. I bet their players came off the pitch unable to believe how easy it was. Their goalkeeper went down with cramp more times than he had to make saves which shows just how pathetic we were and in particular, how pathetic our forward players were.

As the Grimsby players celebrated with their fans at the end, our lot kind of moped about the pitch and some seemed to be clapping the empty Chapel End.  They all looked kind of stunned.  Why do you look stunned lads?  You’re shit and you’re a bunch of soft arses who don’t try hard enough.  Embarrassing bastards.

Another six-pointer of sorts on Saturday against Leicester.  We might win but we probably won’t.  Ruben needs to make some decisions and not even pick the useless ones for the bench but I bet he doesn’t. 

Up the fucking Saints.