Premier League Match 29 - West Ham 1 Southampton 0

 

At the start of the season it would’ve been perfectly believable that we would go into a game against West Ham at the Dildo Dome in April, in last place in the league.  However, no one would’ve believed you if you said West Ham would be just one place above us and if we beat them, the Hammers go bottom of the league. You also wouldn’t be believed if you said that the manager who presided over this would still be in a job but David Moyes is still here, in part because West Ham are doing well in Europe though not in the Champions League or in the Europa League but in the relatively new third tier Europa Conference League. I’m sure they would like to win it but at the expense of staying in the Premier League? Possibly not.

Anyway, despite being 19th in the table, West Ham still have a lot of good players and players who have caused us problems in the past.  Declan Rice has always been excellent in midfield against us and the likes of Bowen, Benrahma, Antonio and Soucek have all had their moments against us before. They of course also now have the snake with hamstrings, with Danny Ings having recently transferred there from Aston Villa as he tries to complete as many moves to Premier League teams as he possibly can before his knees pack up.  Regardless of my irritation at Danny Ings, it cannot be denied that we would be a better team if he still played for us and he has recently given West Ham the cutting edge that they seem to lack, even with Michail Antonio and Gianluca Scamacca this season.

The international break will have given Ruben Selles his first real chance to bed any ideas in so we may see something slightly different today but the bottom line is it doesn’t matter what we see as long as we get a positive result at the game. A draw would just about be acceptable, a win would be amazing and give us a real springboard towards safety this season but a defeat in this game will make things very tough even for the most optimistic of Saints fans.

The international break has seen pluses and minuses on the injury front.  Che Adams came back injured from Scotland duty, and so mysteriously did Mohammed Salisu despite not actually playing for Ghana.  It doesn’t look like ABK is going to recover in time for this game but the good news was that Jan Bednarek got through two games with Poland.  

Because we are playing on Sunday there have already been some significant results this weekend with Bournemouth managing a win over Fulham and Crystal Palace getting a bounce out of the pensioner, with a last-minute win against Leicester which is another result towards my dream scenario of Leicester and Brendan Rodgers getting relegated.  Anyway – it doesn’t matter a toss what other teams do if we don’t get points on the board ourselves.

Team news and fuck me – what the fuck is that?  Caleta-Car in next to Bednarek is fine but it’s clearly the 4-2-2-2 again with Elyounoussi in the side.  Up front is Mara and Walcott.  I know Walcott has been decent for the past few games but Mara from the start is a massive leap of faith bearing in mind he’s only ever played well from the bench and then, only on a couple of occasions.  The three attacking players we signed in January for near on £50 million are all on the bench, with Mislav Orsic joining Tall Paul and Sulemana in wondering what the fuck they signed for us for.
 
Saints start the game reasonably well and West Ham aren’t getting anywhere with any possession that they have. The question remains as to whether we can actually threaten their goal or not and there is a brief flutter as we build up down the right hand side with some patient passing before the ball gets fed in by KWP to Walcott who chips up for himself before volleying left-footed a couple of yards wide of the near post.

15 minutes of not much happens and then there is a highlight when news filters through that Brendan Rodgers has been sacked by Leicester for basically, being a smug arsehole.

Back on the pitch, West Ham are struggling to get out of their half because we are pressing really well and the Hammers fans begin to give their team some shit when they pass sideways and backwards. Fear not though West Ham, as we lose the ball 10 yards into the West Ham half and the ball gets popped forward to Bowen who kicks Caleta-Car as he runs into him and Paul Tierney gives Bowen a free kick for being the one that hits the ground in a heap. If anything, it should be a free kick to us.

Good Marking Lads - Trust the Process

In it comes and there is Aguerd totally unmarked to head past Bazunu from the edge of the box. All our defenders are playing statues in time-honoured fashion and Bazunu has not got anywhere near it.  All the Saints players are appealing for offside and we are off to VAR

“Hi Paul – Stockley Park here”
“Can’t believe they scored from that shit free kick I gave them”
“Well it might be offside mate”
“Cool, let’s hope so, take your time”

(Tierney hears footsteps, a door locking, the unmistakable sound of a man having a shit, then a flush, then another flush)

“Where the fuck have you been?”
“You said take your time… and when you’ve gotta go”
“For fucks sake”
“Double flusher as well mate – Howard Webb was well impressed”
“…and the offside?”
“I knew before I went for a shit – two players offside but it doesn’t reach them so it's fine”

Goal. Fuck’s sake. Why the fuck did that take four minutes?

Straight from the kick-off Saints have a little bit of urgency about themselves, with Lavia running the ball out of defence and finding Perraud on the left. He plays it down the line to Elyounoussi who returns it back into the middle to where Perraud meets it and hits it first time through some players and Fabiański must see it late but gets down well to push it away for a corner.  Top save that.

The next opportunity comes from a free-kick just inside the West Ham half and instead of slinging it into the mixer JWP plays it short to KWP who feeds into a Stuart Armstrong who blindly runs into a defender with eight of our players in front of the ball. West Ham break and luckily for us it’s Kehrer who is on the end of the final pass and his first touch is terrible, allowing the hard-working Elyounoussi to get in front of him and shepherd the ball back to Bazunu.

Another West Ham break sees Bowen put away down the left-hand side and he’s allowed to cut back onto his right foot before curling a ball over Bazunu, off of the crossbar and out. If it’s not over already with just being one goal behind, it certainly would be with two.

Half-time and surely Ruben has to do something about the fact that we are never going to score a goal in a million fucking years the way we are playing.  Out we come and it looks like we are still trusting the fucking process and no changes made.

Ruben wastes everyone’s time for another 10 minutes before he eventually gets rid of Mara and Elyounoussi.  Mara has been so poor and Elyounoussi has done his usual - hard work, no end product whatsoever.  On comes Sulemana and Alcaraz which basically means that we have Theo Walcott playing as a number nine with Alcaraz just behind him. A wide midfielder and a box the box midfielder as our two strikers when we need a goal, for fuck’s sake.

Sulemana tries his best and runs powerfully in a straight line till he gets to the penalty area and tries to lay it back to Perraud but only managed to start of another West Ham break and the ball goes upfront to Danny Snakeings, remember him? He’s done absolutely fuck all today and he runs into trouble again before laying the ball off to Bowen who shoots over.

Sulemana carries on making an absolute mockery of the fact that he didn’t start the game and he wins the ball back from Paqueta in West Ham’s half and sets off towards goal with real intent, before shooting wide.  Our next attack wins a corner and JWP’s delivery goes over the back and it’s picked up by Romeo Lavia on the edge of the box and he works on his right foot before drilling it low for Fabiański to save easily enough.

Danny Snakes Off

It’s time to put some players out of their misery and David Moyes goes first removing Danny Snakeings and putting on Michail Antonio. Selles removes Stuart Armstrong who has been nothing short of pathetic and Theo Walcott, who has tried hard up there on his own, is removed and on comes Tall Paul and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who looks like he’s playing on the right wing.

Alcaraz tries a hopeful effort which Fabianski saves easily and we are broken on again as Bowen gets down the right hand side and hammers over a low cross which flicks off Caleta-Car, forcing Baz to tip it over the bar.

85 minutes gone and Saints build up the left with Perraud. He exchanges passes with JWP  who is now in space and from the left hand side he puts over an inswinging cross which Tall Paul rises and meets and crashes a header onto the crossbar and out. The ball is recycled to KWP who fires over with his left foot. Fuck me… cross it with quality towards the giant guy and we nearly score. Who knew?

There are four minutes in normal time left and 3 minutes extra but West Ham managed those pretty well playing keep ball up our end and winning a couple of corners. No one gets angry, no one goes and kicks anyone and say we slump to yet another 1-0 defeat where we have done next to fuck all in all honesty.

Well what a tedious, insipid, passive, predictable pile of wank that was. Absolutely fucking shit from the moment the team was announced until the first substitutions and better but not great untilthe final whistle.  I hate myself for thinking we might have woken up over the international break and might actually have some new ideas or urgency.

Absolute fucking shite.  Yet again, another 50-50 game against a crap team and we set up not to lose and absolutely shit the bed, losing 1-0 yet again. We are fucking crap and it will never cease to amaze me how all three of our managers this season have done the same fucking thing in so many of these games. Yes we don’t have the best players but for fuck‘s sake, play with some attacking intent. We might lose anyway, in fact we probably will but have a fucking go and you never know.

So, team selection. A front four of Mara, Walcott, Elyounoussi and Armstrong is fucking useless. Utterly predictable that we were going to have absolutely no goal threat whatsoever and so it proved.  Four players picked because of what they do when we haven’t got the ball.  So Ruben – we’ve set up with 10 ‘defenders’.  So, we’re playing for 0-0… and now we’re 1-0 down so now what?  For fucks sake.

I think we had one shot in the first half, which came as a direct reaction of us going 1-0 down and it came from a full-back, Perraud.  Perraud and KWP were our biggest goal threats and they are defenders ladies and gentlemen. Our creative (I use the term in an incredibly sarcastic way) midfield players, Armstrong and Elyounoussi, provided absolutely fuck all. With Elyounoussi it’s entirely predictable and has been said a thousand times before with his lack of quality on the ball. It is now apparently 52 games for club and country without scoring a goal. Stuart Armstrong has obviously been away with Scotland and is absolutely not fit enough to play anything other than one game a week.  It was like he was playing in slow motion today.

Meanwhile, Kamaldeen Sulemana rots on the bench because his recovery runs aren’t intense enough apparently and Sam Edozie, who does actually defend pretty well, is nowhere to be seen.  Theo Walcott tried his best and made his runs in exactly the same way that he did against Spurs but this time he was up there with Sekou Mara who once again proved that he should never start games.

I reckon there can only have been a couple of times where Mara actually retained possession, let alone did anything that might threaten the opposition goal. As the second half progressed with us doing absolutely nothing for the first 10 minutes, in place of Elyounoussi and Mara came Alcaraz and Sulemana which basically meant that Walcott was playing as the main number nine striker, where he has virtually never played in his 18 year professional career.  Eventually, Ruben decided to stick Tall Paul on the pitch and he came up with our best chance when we actually got a decent cross into the box for him to attack, with his very good header coming back off the bar. 

It’s a lack of intensity that gets me. It’s a seeming lack of awareness of what our situation is and what sort of team we are.  I’m sick of hearing this shit about us being process driven. “Trust the Process” – fuck off!!! We cannot afford to waste time not trying to score a goal because we find it so fucking difficult to score a goal. If we don’t get players in the box then we’re not going to score and we’re not gonna win free kicks for JWP to have a shot.  Honestly, when we’ve got the ball, we’re okay in the back two-thirds and that’s it. No fucking idea what to do in the final third. So easy to defend against – can you imagine an opposition mangers' team-talk.  Keep compact behind the ball, don’t give away free kicks in shooting range, wait for them to fuck up at the back.  That’s it.

It’s been the same all season and all three managers. Remember though that Ruben Selles has been there throughout, so he has seen every one of these games and has analysed every single one of these performances whilst Assistant Manager for Ralph and Nathan Jones, yet he’s doing the same thing that has failed in all these previous games.  He says he’s waited a long time for his opportunity and that he wants to put his mark on it – fucking do it then.  Don’t just regurgitate Ralph’s tactics that stopped working – one of the reasons he got sacked.  Selles’ tactics are just Ralph-Lite, which means Selles himself is Ralph Little.

What the Fuck Am I Doing Here?

Today he was playing against David Moyes, a manager who everyone knows is negative but he has achieved what he has achieved in the game by being this way and the one thing you can’t do in a tight game against a David Moyes team is to give them a goal start. Once you’ve gone behind then he’s perfectly happy to keep nine men behind the ball at all times and just play on a break and he is comfortable with that. What you have to do with a manager like Moyes is take him out of his comfort zone and score the first goal, which you are never gonna do if you don’t play with any intent to score a goal.  Yes, we had loads of possession in the first half but how many shots did we have. Fucking none before West Ham went ahead.

We’ve all done it, sat and looked at the last 10 fixtures and thought where we could get the points and yes it’s very tight down there even with today’s result but honestly, we are so fucking shit the other teams results are not going to matter in the slightest. We are fucked and we have been fucked ever since the moment we appointed Nathan Jones.

If Selles doesn’t get it by now, that when we play the other crap teams, we have to have a goal threat, he never will.   Next up we’ve got someone not crap as it’s Manchester City and after that they will be just eight games of this wretched season left before our return to the Championship is complete. I expect it to be confirmed way before then.