Premier League Match 31 - Southampton 0 Crystal Palace 2

 

Saints Voice Panel Address Sport Republic

Here we go again at St.Mary’s in a game that we have to win.  It’s not about the performance, the potential or the process or any other such shit - it is about the result, plain and simple and the result has to be at Southampton win, otherwise our chances of being in the Championship next season go up to about 95%. If Ruben Selles is not looking at the league table and working this out for himself, then he is the only person who isn’t.

Ruben’s seeming lack of appreciation of the situation, which is borne out in both his team selections and the way the team performs on the pitch, almost had me pondering one day last week that he had been given a free pass for the Club to be relegated and for him to have a go at bringing the club back next season.  If however, we go down with the whimper that we have displayed so far, then he is the last person I would want to be masterminding trying to win over half of the games to get us promoted next season.

Today we faced a Palace side who were one of the nine teams in the bottom half of the league who were threatened by relegation a few weeks ago.  They were 12th and we were 20th but there was only four points between us. Now there is 10 points and Palace are not remotely threatened by relegation at all. I don’t think anyone saw such an upturn when Palace appointed Roy Hodgson to succeed Patrick Viera but here we are with Hodgson having masterminded two wins out of two so far. Not only that, the goals have been flowing and not only that, they’ve been flowing without Wilfried Zaha.  In Zaha‘s absence, the creativity in the side has been provided by Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze who have proved what excellent players they are. Apparently, we were in the mix to sign these players when they left their previous clubs but didn’t pursue it, probably because they thought about attacking first, rather than defending.

The weakness in his Palace side is the full backs, with the slots usually being filled by Joel Ward and Tyrick Mitchell who can both be got it. If we are to win this game then we absolutely have to give these to a hard time.  Their 5-1 win at Leeds last week will have I’m sure, sent Ruben Selles into a tailspin, which will probably be reflected in his line-up this afternoon. I wonder how many players we are going to pick for their defensive qualities?

After the game against West Ham where he basically picked 11 players because what they could do against the ball, I am not holding out much hope. Basically, if Che Adams is unfit to return then in my opinion, Paul Onuachu actually has to play…. But I bet he doesn’t. I also hope that Selles doesn’t buy into the fact that Mara and Djenepo were half decent off the bench last week. It’s laughable to see some people big up Djenepo’s case, saying he deserves to start as if one stumbling run past three players makes up for 3 1/2 years of utter shit. However, if you ask me if you would prefer Djenepo or Elyounoussi in the team, then I would go for the Mali magician every time. That’s where we are right now. We are so fucking dismal as an attacking team that I am calling for Moussa Djenepo to start ahead of someone else.

Once more into the breach my friends. It’s shit or bust time.

Team news and oh my lord.  We have made just one change for the Manchester City game.  In one respect it’s good news because Elyounoussi has been left out but that is massively balanced out and then some by the fact that Joe Aribo has been picked instead. Anyone got the slightest fucking idea why? Has he torn it up in some B team games or has he been brilliant in cameos off the bench? I don’t think so. Is Aribo going to add urgency to the team? I really don’t think so. It’s amazing that he’s managed to leave Elyounoussi out of the team and make it worse.  Unless Aribo is playing right up front then we have no strikers again.

The game starts horrifically as Alcaraz hits a ball back towards Bazunu who then decides not to chase it and Maitland-Niles assumes that it’s going to go out on the left hand side but Jordan Ayew keeps running and keeps it in. Ayew cuts in and shoots and it’s deflected to the edge of the box where Cheik Doucoure smashes over the bar. Great start lads, really alert and on it.

Saints eventually start to play and win a corner on the left which JWP rolls into the near post, Walcott comes short and superbly passes the ball into the path of Aribo who lashes it miles over the bar with his favoured left foot. Great corner move with shit execution at the end.

Palace aren’t really offering much at all but the first time they put anything together the ball is chipped over the top to Michael Olise but he does look miles offside as he goes around the goalkeeper easily and scores.  Up goes the flag and no harm done.

Saints are the better side without looking amazing and certainly without testing the goalkeeper.  Walcott gets down the right hand side and slings over a cross. As usual, we don’t really have anyone attacking the ball in the middle but Sulemana comes in from the wider area and Ward has to head it for a corner.   In it comes from JWP more conventionally this time, it’s cleared out to the right hand side of the box where Alcaraz tries a ridiculous volley which is on target but easily caught by Johnstone.

Some more decent build-up sees Walcott hold the ball up for Alcaraz and though he gets run off at the ball, it drops to Sulemana who perfectly picks out Walcott’s run on the right hand side and Theo smashes it over the fucking bar. We’re not gonna have any clearer openings than that.

The last 20 minutes of the first half were played at almost a testimonial pace.  It was hard for Saints to get anything going in an attack because basically there was no one in the middle up front.  Alcaraz was always running into that area and Aribo was jogging up the inside left channel but neither were showing short and so most of the attacks broke down or we had to go backwards.  Considering this is a game we have to win, we cannot afford to have 20 minute spells where we do absolutely fuck all.

Half-time and though Palace have been absolutely there for the taking, we have not done enough.  There is no tempo to our attacks and no real urgency in our play.  No changes at half time though and as is usually the case when you change nothing, nothing much different happens.  Palace have clearly upped the tempo as Hodgson, whilst sucking on a Werther’s Original, has recognized that we are the easiest 3 points imaginable if they step it up.

Ten minutes in and Palace build up their right hand side with Olise finding Eze. He drills it across field to Ayew who controls easily and then just as easily beats the flat-footed Maitland-Niles' completely half-arsed challenge before crossing it into the middle and it all goes tits up because Bazunu just flaps the cross down and Eze has continued his run and is completely unmarked and knocks into an empty net.  Fucks sake. Pathetic.  Ayew’s cross was going nowhere until Bazunu touched it and Eze had not been tracked as he ran into the box by our midfield. We have 35 minutes to score 2 goals.

FPL: Goal - Eze, Assist - Maitland-Niles, Bazunu

Selles brings on Tall Paul and Djenepo in place of the ineffective Walcott and Aribo and we are now 4–2-3-1.  I would call Aribo sluggish but slugs move faster than that.

Palace look much more likely than us and nearly score again courtesy of an incredibly casual bit of defending by Bednarek, who assumes that the ball is going to roll out of play and allows Ward to get his foot to it and pass it across the 6 yard line but luckily no one was running in.

It’s a short-lived reprieve though as Doucoure again easily finds Eze in space about 35 yards out and he skips round Djenepo before drilling a diagonal shot into the far corner giving Baz no chance at all. Two-nil, season over.

We do have a bit of a defiant gurgle as we disappear down the plug hole and the urgency that we should’ve had from the first whistle is now present and it all stems from an Argentinian kid who we signed in January.  Djenepo finds Alcaraz in the inside right channel and he takes aim and smashes a shot past Johnstone and it pings off the inside of the post and comes out.  Two minutes later, a cross into the mixer from Maitland-Niles sees Alcaraz challenge Joel Ward in the air and has the ball bounces off Ward’s back, Alcaraz tries a volley which narrowly flies over the bar. Another shot comes in this little bit of excitement as ABK ventures out from the back and decides to have a go and brings a full-length save out of Johnstone. It’s a decent effort but no goalkeeper should really be beaten from there.  More pressure as Sulemana crosses the ball in at Tall Paul’s knee-height but it deflects up in the air and Onuachu from a standing start, gets his head to it but can only head it straight at the goalkeeper.

With Saints doing all the attacking and actually putting a team under a bit of pressure, the Polo-Neck Prick decides to take off the main player responsible for the resurgence.  Fucking twat.  It was very difficult to not treat the Family Stand to some NSFW language.  Alcaraz and Sulemana off, Stuart Armstrong and Edozie on.  I fucking give up.  Selles is a fucking idiot.

Predictably, the momentum is killed, the balloon is punctured, the boat is holed beneath the water line and the Selles substitutions have taken the pressure off and handed the initiative back to Palace.  As it begins to calm down again and Palace gain a measure of control you see another issue. Tall Paul comes short for the ball when we’ve got it in midfield and everyone’s got so used to there not being anyone there, they just go sideways and backwards.  It’s fucking abysmal.  Either that or the midfielders have decided Paul is shit and they’re not going to give him the ball.

Palace should score again with Olise teeing up Ayew but he smashes it into the Palace fans of the Northam.   ABK picks of a booking for hauling down Olise and from the free kick, Olise smashes it across Baz and it clipped the outside of the post.

Man in Polo-Neck Wonders Why We're Shit

Earlier on, I used the phrase ‘shit or bust’, which kind of means that one side of the equation is good and the other side is bad.  Well not after today. We are officially bust and that was fucking shit. I’m trying not to get angry about it anymore and just find it funny, and it is funny.

We are laughably, pathetically bad. Manager, players, the works. Laughably, pathetically bad. Palace were bad too, especially in the first half but once they scored, due to yet another questionable bit of goalkeeping by Gavin Bazunu, we were absolutely fucking dead. Palace had enough about them to score a second goal and at that point the referee might as well have blown his whistle. We actually played with a little bit of urgency five minutes after the second goal went in and had a few shots but then the architect of our urgency, Charly Alcaraz was substituted, of course he was.   Can’t have Saints playing with any momentum can we.  Ruben Selles is a fucking idiot.

That in fact, was confirmed before the game when the only change he made from the Manchester City game was to leave out Elyounoussi, which was a good move but then he replaced him with fucking Joe Aribo. When your team needs a bit of urgency, the last thing you need is Joe Aribo who is the most casual, laid-back player we have ever had and I’m including Matthew Le Tissier in that.  The difference of course was that Le Tissier was brilliant and he could get away with being casual because he would do something brilliant to win you the game. Joe Aribo is really not going to do that and once the pace of any game that he plays in, has gone above pre-season friendly pace, then guy just hasn’t got it. The great Aribo experiment lasted until the hour mark when both he and Theo Walcott were taken off.  Theo has unfortunately had his two decent games for the season and he once again added very little after the first 20 minutes.

We were actually okay for the first 15 minutes with Sulemana to the fore. We created a few openings down the left-hand side where predictably, Joel Ward was struggling but it soon fizzled out and our strike force of box-to-box midfielder Alcaraz and lying-on-a-deckchair-casual-as-fuck midfielder Aribo didn’t threaten to give Sam Johnstone anything to do.

Afterwards, Selles said that picking an actual striker wouldn’t have made a difference, which is a prick thing to say when you haven’t scored.  After the first 15 minutes we had no one up front for the midfielders to try and pass to, so we of course went sideways and backwards.  In the second half when we did have a striker on, the midfield had stopped looking to pass the ball forward so even when Onuachu came short for a pass on the floor, it never came.

Selles has conned us all with the two victories he got in his first three games. Hindsight shows that they were against a desperately poor Chelsea side and a desperately poor Leicester side who are going to be joining us in the Championship next season unless there’s some sort of miracle in the Midlands.  It’s unlikely as they’ve appointed Dean Smith, in a move that on the face of it, is nearly as bad as our managerial appointments this season.

More madness was that in this game, a game that we had to win, a game that we had to be on the front foot and attacking, he picked KWP on the left, on his wrong side just to accommodate Ainsley Maitland-Niles who couldn’t have been less arsed if he tried.   Perraud can attack and he can score and you’ll always get more out of KWP on the right.  Everyone knows this and so does Selles so we can only assume he wasn’t interested in attacking.  So, aside from giving Aribo a run for his money as the most casual lackadaisical player on the pitch, AMN’s attempt at defending on the first goal was particularly shit.  His fucking nightmare started in the first minute when he didn’t bother to go and chase a ball that he thought was rolling out for a throw and Jordan Ayew put his foot down and kept it in. Absolute fucking joke. Mercifully, Maitland-Niles can’t play next week against Arsenal.

I can’t mention the first goal without talking about Bazunu again.  He has to come out of the side.  I would argue that it is doing him more long-term damage to be left in the side at this point.  Last three games have seen him at fault on goals in all three and today’s effort was pathetic again, just palming it down into the middle of the penalty area.  I know that McCarthy has hardly played all season but get him in the side now, for Bazunu’s long term benefit.  Bazunu isn’t “Angus Gunn” bad, but he needs to come out of the side now.

So who played well? I thought ABK had a decent game and Romeo Lavia did his best when he wasn't losing Eze but virtually everyone else was shit.  Selles eventually threw on Tall Paul but as has become customary, we didn’t put one cross on his head and the only effort he managed on goal was from a shin-high cross that a Palace defender booted straight up in the air. Basically, we have absolutely no idea.  You wouldn’t think it would be too difficult to practice what to do if Paul is on the pitch.  Long balls up to his chest and crosses into the box.  You don’t need coaching badges or a fucking Playbook to work that out.

We are like the monster in your nightmares that won’t fucking die at the moment, or like that troublesome turd that just won’t fucking flush. Shit results for Everton, Forest, Leeds and Leicester mean that the gap is still only four points, so there will still be those looking at the league table thinking that we can get out of it. We are not going to get out of it. We are fucking shit. I would be perfectly happy if Ruben Selles decides that this management lark is not for him and went back to being everyone’s friend as one of the coaches. Put someone else in charge for the rest of the season and get a proper manager in for the Championship.

The thought of having this joker in charge next season is horrendous to be quite honest but do you trust Sport Republic to make the right decision?  League leaders Arsenal away on Friday.  Up the fucking Saints.