EFL Championship Match 2 - Southampton 4 Norwich City 4

 

Gunn at St Mary's? - Of Course It Went In

The days after the Gillingham defeat have been a mixture of sadness, acceptance, annoyance and hilarity.

Sadness. After 20 years at the club, James Ward-Prowse decided to join West Ham and the club accepted a £30 million package for his signature. I have been preparing myself for this day since January to be honest, which was exactly the same time that I accepted that we were going to get relegated.  This is an inevitable consequence.  I was hoping that no one would come in or that he’d fail the medical (not very likely as he never misses a game) but sadly for all of us, he’s off.

Acceptance.  There was no way that at 28, JWP was going to drop down to the Championship if he had any opportunity at all to play for a half decent Premier League club, especially one that was in Europe. As I write, it’s not confirmed as a done deal yet but despite some rumours to the contrary, there’s no way he’s gonna make an appearance against Norwich today.

Annoyance.  Liverpool continued their very strange pursuit of Romeo Lavia by adding another few coppers to the bids they had made previously but then it all went batshit mental when they suddenly decided to offer more than double their highest pisstake bid for Lavia, for Moises Caicedo from Brighton, who of course plays in the same position. Basically, in that instant, they told Romeo that he wasn’t their first choice and it also implied that they were doing what Fulham did with Salisu and what Besiktas did with Lyanco in taking two deals forward and then binning one off if the preferred target went through to completion.

Hilarity.  So, Brighton accepted their offer for Caicedo and then a few hours later, Caicedo himself said he didn’t wanna fucking go there which leaves Liverpool right in the shit and then it got even funnier because as I write, it looks like both the Brighton and Southampton player are going to go to Chelsea.

It is however tough for Romeo Lavia who at the end of the day, is a 19-year-old kid who has had his head thoroughly messed with over the past few weeks.  Liverpool should be ashamed of themselves but we all know that they won’t be.

With news of JWP‘s almost certain exit, Jack Stephens was sworn in as the new club captain and one assumes, on field captain. Jack’s leadership skills have never been in doubt. His problem has always been keeping his performance levels high enough to warrant being a starter in the defence. That should certainly be a lot easier for him to achieve in the Championship. What can’t be argued is that he is a player of very good character who will take the role very seriously and I expect him to do a very good job.

Norwich are of course the club that Russell Martin played 300 games for and it was a widely assumed by those in the yellow part of East Anglia that he would one day be their manager. Not today. Norwich arrive with ex-Huddersfield post David Wagner in charge and are off the back of an opening day last minute win against Hull at Carrow Road.

They bucked to their own trend last year and stopped yo-yoing between the Championship and the Premier League by having a pretty shit season and finishing 15th. They looked decent in their opening game and you would expect them to mount a challenge for a playoff place at least this season. They have some exciting young players like Jonathan Rowe who scored a fantastic goal at the weekend and they mix that in with some gnarly old bastards have been kicking around the Premier League for years like Ben Gibson, Shane Duffy and Ashley Barnes - he with the face of a man licking piss of a stinging nettle. A horrible bastard to play against and despite now being 33, I am sure he will cause a lot of problems. Gibson and Duffy are of course going to be a threat at the set pieces which we are not very good at defending, to put it mildly

We have a JWP sized hole to fill in the centre of midfield and it seems like a choice between Stuart Armstrong and Shea Charles. This for me, is a massive game for us because our home form over the last three or four seasons has been absolutely shocking. I have hope however, that the Russball approach will enable us to have a better chance of winning home games and it’d be great if it started today to get the fans onside.  The atmosphere at St Mary’s for the last couple of seasons has been absolutely apathetic. With more people having bought season tickets this year, it will be great if we can hit the ground running and give everybody something to get excited about.

Five minutes in and Norwich attack down our right and the ball gets played in to Ashley Barnes chest and under a real weak challenge from Stephens, he is allowed to bring the ball down on the edge of the box and switch it out to the right hand side to Stacey. No one is close to him either and he takes a touch and chips over a lovely cross to the back post where the unmarked Sargent heads into the net with Baz having absolutely no chance at all.  Fucking hell – how simple was that and how dreadful was our defending?

Saints respond well to going behind and soon we have the waves of attacking that we saw up at Sheffield Wednesday. Alcaraz wins a corner with a shot from a narrow angle which Gunn pushes wide. We take it short and KWP’s cross to the back post is powerfully headed goalward by Captain Jack and Angus Gunn flaps it out into the middle of the penalty area allowing Bednarek to absolutely crash it back past him to make it 1-1. Excellent finish and what the fuck is this? Goal music? Piss off.

Saints are definitely on the front foot now and win a free kick on right hand side.  In it comes from Smallbone and Shane Duffy, for reasons best known to himself, gets the header all wrong and ends up patting the ball to the ground in the middle of the penalty area. Well, that’s always going to be given and so it was. So far, JWP has been replaced on corner duties by Smallbone and Manning and now it’s time to find out who is on the penalties.  Nathan Tella is the one with the ball but it’s that distraction technique and once the penalty area is cleared it’s Adam Armstrong who steps up to power the ball past Angus Gunn.

Let's Stand Off, Let Him Shoot and See What Happens

If there was a sense that we were now going to keep the ball and see this game out with no issues and win relatively comfortably, it lasted the entire two minutes it took for Norwich to kick off and work the ball to Sara upfront and us to allow him, courtesy of  a combination of Smallbone, Bednarek and KWP standing off, to turn and absolutely smash it past Baz to bring Norwich back level again. The lack of intensity in our defending is almost funny. Training cones all three of them.

With half-time approaching at the end of a very entertaining 53 minutes or whatever, Norwich win a corner on the right and it’s time to demonstrate how much better we’ve got a defending set pieces since the Sheffield Wednesday game but not a bit of it. Over it comes and there is the very average height Jonathan Rowe, completely unmarked about 10 yards out to loop a header over Baz and into the far side of the goal. I actually feel sorry for Baz– I’m not his biggest fan but he has had absolutely no fucking chance with any of these goals and has been horribly let down by those in front of him.

Half-time and there are a smattering of boos but mainly, the atmosphere is very positive. Good stuff.  That half of football was absolutely mental and the one thing you know for sure is that we are not out of this and that there will be more goals.

We get an early setback in the second half as Sam Edozie goes down and has to be substituted but after it initially looked like a bad hamstring strain, he got up and walked off fairly comfortably so hopefully it’s not too bad. Instead of calling on a replacement winger, Russell Martin brings on the big gun in Che Adams and moves Armstrong out of the left.

Like he did last week at Sheffield United, Che makes an impact straight away as he tries to slip a pass through on edge of the penalty area and the ball ricochets back to him off the Norwich defender before he absolutely drills it across Gunn and into the far side of the net for 3-3. Fucking get in. Now come on and fucking win it.

Stuart Armstrong has been dangerous all game with his forward running and he cuts in off the left and goes for the far post but just wide.  It’s more or less his last contribution as he is replaced with Shea Charles who instantly makes us look more solid in midfield, with Smallbone pushed up a bit.

Norwich are not sitting in however and from a free kick on the edge of the box, Baz saves well, Sargent knocks it back across and there’s fucking Ashley Barnes to turn it in but the angry bollocks is offside, I assume because he went early from the original free kick.  There’s another Norwich break as KWP goes down in their half but nothing is given and so we’re over-committed again and once we’ve made yet another balls of tidying up the danger, Sargent is streaking away on the right.  He tries to find Fassnacht who mercifully has a poor touch and Baz snuffs out the attack by diving at his feet.

Smallbone, having already been booked, like 75% of the players who have set foot on the pitch today, goes awkwardly into another tackle on the left wing and I would not remotely be surprised if this is another yellow card but that doesn’t happen but his game is over anyway because he has stayed down. When play restarts, we still have 10 and Norwich stream forward in the chaos about the ball into the box should be dealt with by Manning but he inexplicably gets his feet all fucking wrong and presents it to Fassnacht who buries it past the helpless Baz. Three minutes of normal time to go and we are 4-3 down but there’s no panic because you know there is going to be at least eight minutes added and so it proves.

Sam Amo has come on for the injured Smallbone and started making a massive difference out on the right hand side.  His ball inside finds KWP barrelling into the penalty area and down he goes under a clumsy challenge from behind and another penalty.  Fuck me that looks soft. Looked to me like he was running, knew the defender was behind him and just stopped. Is VAR going to overturn it?  no it fucking isn't cos we're having a proper game here.  Up steps Adam Armstrong again and even though you are usually less confident with a player taking a second penalty in the same game, I am absolutely more confident that he is going to score and bang, Gunn goes the wrong way and the ball rips past him to the other side. With two minutes of normal time to go we are treated to Saints players sprinting back to the halfway line with the ball. We want to win this.

Excited by the Goal Music, Arma Runs Back to the Middle.

Just maybe - another Amo break up the right and he skips past one and feeds it to Charly Alcaraz on the edge of the box and “we’re gonna win 5-4” and he sets off an effort with his right foot and “we’re not gonna win 5-4” as it curls about 6 inches wide of the far post. Fuck that would’ve taken the roof off if that had gone in.

Well that was absolutely mental. Easily the most entertaining game at St Mary‘s since the last one, against Liverpool on the last day of last season. Discounting that one because that that game was effectively a friendly with nothing riding on it, this was the most entertaining game I’ve seen at St Mary‘s since Ronald Koeman was in charge. It could’ve been even better if Charly’s shot had found the bottom corner in the last minute but regardless - what a fucking game.

Let’s start with the bad stuff – our defending was fucking shambolic to say the least. Even if you ignore the four actual goals we conceded, the way we set up and the lack of the intensity in our defending was hilariously bad. I was about to say we had a 4-0-6 formation but in fact it was more 2-0-8. The amount of times we lost the ball with at least half of our team in front of the ball was absolutely ridiculous. Will Smallbone does a great job at intercepting the ball in tight areas but in open field, we had absolutely no one doing anything defensive until they got to the centre backs. We did have a bit of a warning in pre-season when there were some games that our midfield just didn’t do any work defensively when we lost the ball. Replacing JWP with Stuart Armstrong changed the balance of things in the midfield.  JWP was always running back and putting tackles in and was prepared to track his man and play as an orthodox number six. Neither Stuart Armstrong or Charly Alcaraz are capable of that and though Will Smallbone does some really good stuff defensively - at the end of the day I can’t help but feel that he is much more suited to a more advanced position.

Defending?  Nah!

Russell Martin was spot on his post-match interview when he said there’s a balance that needs to be had there between committing bodies forward and having some sort of structure in place for when the other team wins the ball back.  How much was down to the midfield structure though and how much was down to us being just plain old shite in defence?  The four goals we conceded were all different shades of shite.  The first was allowing Barnes to bring the ball down about 20 yards out and lay it off under no pressure.  He laid it off to an unmarked and untracked fullback in Stacey, who crossed to to the unmarked Sargent at the back post.  The second saw Sara pick the ball up and turn and with Smallbone, Bednarek and KWP all watching him from a couple of yards away, he laced it into the corner.  The third was "oh will you look at that, a totally unmarked player with a free header from a set piece about ten yards out" and the fourth was a beautifully cushioned set up by Manning.

However, if given a choice between the safety-first crap and losing anyway, that we had to watch last season, or having the odd 4-all draw, then I’ll take this every day of the week. The attacking play at times was superb, and 31 shots in any game is a ridiculous statistic. So much for the doom and gloom merchants who assumed we were just going to pass the ball endlessly without having any shots.  We could have scored more and should have scored more.  We didn’t work the keeper enough but we certainly had a go.

Norwich were almost as bad as us with gift-wrapped goals.  Angus Gunn flapped out Stephens’ header for Bednarek to score the first and Shane Duffy must’ve known that playing basketball in your own penalty area is not a good idea.  Even though it looked like KWP bought the penalty at the end slightly, it was a clumsy-ass challenge by the left back who had come in from the wrong side. 

I loved the spirit we showed in the game.  We were behind three times remember and still came away with something.  Over the last couple of years, we’ve frequently thrown in a bad goal and then given up or lost without having a shot.  Not today and we got the point we deserved.

When he was talking about the balance of how we attack and defend in his post-match press conference, Russell Martin also talked about the fact that Flynn Downes will be arriving from West Ham and mention the fact that if he had been here, we wouldn’t have let in four goals today. It seems that that one is imminent, and it sounds like it’s going to be a loan with an option to buy.

There were over 30,000 in St.Mary’s today, which is quite remarkable really.  That’s the sort of football that will bring back the fans, as opposed to the pins-in-your-eyes shite of the past two seasons.  The atmosphere was decent as well, which makes a massive change for the better.  However, goal music can absolutely get in the bin.  This is not some new format cricket competition – this is probably the most authentic league in the world.  No VAR, no bullshit and we don’t need the abomination of goal music.  Get rid.  Rumour has it that we had goal music last year but we never actually heard it.

Four points from the opening two games isn’t bad but seven out of nine will be very decent indeed and it’s a visit to another newly promoted side next as we take the road West down to Plymouth.  They look decent in attack so we won’t be able to pull the shit we pulled today and get away with it.  However, they won’t have played anyone recently that attacks like we do.  Bring it on.