EFL Championship Match 13 - Preston North End 2 Southampton 2

 

Our Biggest Goal Threat (Pink Shirt) Celebrates the Equaliser

A few days after Hull, came a trip across to the other side of the country to play Preston North End at Deepdale. Apparently, this is the first time in 15 years that the two sides have met in a league game.

Preston were on the face of it, a very surprising name up the top of the infant Championship League table for this season but they appear to have hit the buffers in the last few weeks with three defeats and two draws in the last five games. Look a bit closer though and two of the defeats are excusable, coming as they did away at The King Power Stadium and Portman Road, but the Preston fans will be a little bit apprehensive about their 4-0 home defeat by West Brom.

A quick look through the Preston squad reveals not many familiar names and then you get to one who is familiar for all the wrong reasons. I’ll let you look up Ched Evans Wikipedia page if you wish to do so.  I hope that I never have to make the choice as a Saints fan as to whether I can support a player with that on his record.

The last time we played three games in the week, Russell Martin insisted that there would be changes and rotation in the squad and then made one change across the three games. He has once again insisted that we will be rotating but I’m not sure if anyone believes him other than the enforced change at left back with Ryan Manning being suspended. One would assume that KWP will be shuffled to left back and either James Bree or Mason Holgate will come in on the right, but who can tell?

As it turned out, none of us could tell. KWP was still on the right but there were changes all over the shop.  THB was unsurprisingly not risked for a second game in a row and his place went to Holgate with James Bree coming in at left back. There was also a change in midfield with Stuart Armstrong coming out to be replaced by Shea Charles and a further two changes upfront with Alcaraz and Sulejmana out and Adams and Edozie in. The team on paper looks very strong in a physical sense but pretty light when it comes to creativity so I do wonder where on earth the goal threat is going to come from tonight and hope that the Stuart Armstrong-less midfield is not as stodgy as it was earlier on in the season.

Bobby Charlton in his Preston Days

There was a minutes silence at the start of the game to mourn the death of England World Cup Winner Bobby Charlton, who died a few days earlier. Bobby Charlton became Preston manager in 1973 when he left Manchester United so it would’ve been a bit more poignant at Deepdale then it would be elsewhere apart from Old Trafford for the passing of one of the genuine legends of the game.

And Away we go and an early Saints attack ends when Adam Armstrong blindly runs into a defender and we get broken on, down our right hand side with Liam Millar leading the charge and he gets all the way to the edge of the penalty area before cutting in on his right foot and going for the far corner but Baz gets down well to tip it out for a corner.

On 20 minutes it’s Janny B leading the charge of defence and he just keeps going and going, gets to the edge of the penalty area cuts in and it looks like he’s going to swing a big right foot at it but eventually decides that rather than smashing it into the crowd, that he’s going to lay it off and Smallbone finds KWP out on the right.  KWP does a quick step over and moves away from Millar before unleashing a curled left-footed effort at the far post which beats Woodman easily and slams into the side of the net. What a fucking goal that is!

"Now You've Scored, Watch Me Screw Up"

We break our usual pattern of letting in a goal within five minutes of taking the lead and build up well again with Charles winning the ball in midfield and it eventually goes to Smallbone out wide and his low cross superbly picks out the near post run of Adam Armstrong who has got in front of the goalkeeper and gets a touch but he can only divert it wide.

Smallbone has been undeniably better recently but there is still a massive problem with his defending in that he just can’t run. He picks up a booking for a very obvious pull back on a Preston player and then he makes contact again with Millar, who does seem to throw himself to the ground. The free-kick comes in from our right and Preston win a corner.  In it comes and over to the far side before being smashed back in and Will Keane picks up the ball and from six yards, turns and smashes it and Baz produces some kind of splits manoeuvre to block it with his foot.  The Preston players are all going mad appealing for a penalty for some reason, that reason being that the ball has come off of Baz and hit the back of Shea Charles arm.  Shea stood with his back to Baz about 6 inches in front of him. That’s never a penalty in a million fucking years.

Half-time and the ‘Carabao’ line-up we have on the pitch seems to be doing its job so far and we look to have a bit of grit about us in the way we are battling through. You would hope that we would throw a couple of our better attacking players on in the second half, score another and see the game out.  That might happen later but for now, Preston threw on a big striker called Osmijec, whilst Russell Martin took off Che Adams who had been shit, and replaced him with Sekou Mara, who will in all likelihood based on previous experience, be shit.

Straight away we didn’t start the second half well when straight from the kick-off, Mason Holgate got in the way of Baz and they ended up smashing the ball against a Preston striker and seeing it bounce back into the penalty area and Baz managed to get back and pick it up. Not a great marker to put down for the second half.

Osmajic is immediately making a nuisance of them self and Holgate decides to pick a fight with him, which a player with his experience really shouldn’t be getting involved with, bearing in mind that we are winning.  Osmajic responds by diving on the ground like a motherfucker under no contact at all.

Bednarek gives away a needless free kick out on the left with a clumsy tackle on the shithouse striker and in it comes, headed away and Shithouse absolutely smashes it through the crowd giving Baz not much chance even though it was pretty close to him. Shit. 1-1.

Bednarek then has another shocker leaving a pass short to Edozie and Preston break again through Potts that he swaps passes with Holmes and the Shithouse and is clean through coming in from the right, with just Edozie behind him and he gets to the 6 yard box and absolutely drills it straight through Baz to make it 2-1. Fucking ridiculous. Their substitute has certainly made an impact. Ours… Not so much.

Straight away it’s time for two more subs with Stuart Armstrong and Sulemana coming on for Smallbone and Edozie.  It’s nearly 3-1 as we get caught on the break again with Millar getting sent away on the left wing as we overcommit and his cross towards Shithouse is brilliantly tidied up by Bednarek, making up partially at least, for his hand in the two Preston goals.  The referee then makes a decent decision as Millar gets booked for a horrible dive in the penalty area over an imaginary challenge by Charles.

As we get towards the last 10 minutes there’s not a lot going on bar possession. Saints have all of the ball and all of the pressure but when Sulemana gets to the line and gets the ball across there’s no one in the middle and we have very little goal threat at all. Mara connects with one cross from the right but can only plop it into Woodman’s midriff.  Off comes the ineffective Adam Armstrong and Flynn Downes, to be replaced by Charlie Alcaraz and Ryan Fraser in a final throw of the dice.

Sulemana pops up on the right hand side and picks the ball up  when Alcaraz gets tackled and lashes it narrowly wide of the near post, with Woodman being incredibly confident of where his post was as it whistled into the side netting.

94, 95 and Stuart Armstrong is on the edge of the box has a shot which comes off of Alcaraz and a defender and is clearly handled by Jordan Storey.  It’s much more obvious than the Shea Charles one in the first half as the distance is much greater but all we get is a corner. Fraser takes the corner from the left-hand side and in it swings and fucking hell… Bazunu is up, attacks it in a way none of our strikers do and got his head to it and it has somehow ended up in the net. Absolute fucking pandemonium. Baz disappears under a pile of bodies and he is now officially a better striker than Sekou Mara, Adam Armstrong and Che Adams.

Baz Shows the Rest of Our Strikers How to Attack the Ball

In the aftermath of the goal going in it become apparent that it wasn't going to be a Baz goal but rather an own goal by that nice man Ched Evans.  Maybe Ched will appeal to the Dubious Appeals Commission and get away with it.  At the end of the day, whoever the goal gets awarded to, we have got a point and we once again are looking like a team that never quits.  Compare and contrast with the last few years.

Prior to that equalising goal it had looked for all the world like it was going to be one of those ridiculous games where we have over 75% possession, but the shots at goal and shots on target for both teams was the same, showing that most of our possession wasn’t effective.  This is unsurprising that when you consider if you take the two players with the best movement, Sulemana and Alcaraz out of the forward line, there is always going to be a negative impact when trying to pass forward.  By comparison, Che Adams moved as much in the second half as he did in the first and he was subbed at half time.   Stuart Armstrong missing from the midfield, robbed us of both best midfielder at receiving line breaking ground passes from defence and also our most creative player.  His absence was why our play was largely stodgy and our biggest goal threat of the day were our right back and goalkeeper.

The players who are supposed to be to goal threat, namely Adam Armstrong, Che Adams and Sekou Mara, were all varying degrees of dreadful today.  As said, Adams was incredibly static and easy to mark and his replacement Mara gave another really mystifying performance turning up on the right wing, at number eight and as a central striker and being equally useless in all three positions. Adam Armstrong made one decent run going to the near post to get on the end of a Smallbone cross but that was it in regard of goal threat. The lack of goal threat in the strikers means that the myth that is Ross Stewart becomes even more important.

Elsewhere, the other fringe players who came into the team had slightly mixed afternoons. James Bree did okay left-back and in the first half was relatively comfortable but when the pressure came on in the second half, he looked increasingly flaky. Mason Holgate was just massively inconsistent. He had ten minutes of looking calm and composed and then ten minutes of looking completely rattled when the Shithouse came on up front for Preston.

Afterwards, Russell Martin told everyone why the line-up was a bit Carabao, with information about injuries and players who needed the managing of their minutes. Charlie Alcaraz was still feeling tired from his trip to Argentina and back and we all know Stuart Armstrong will struggle to play three games in a week.  In addition, Kamaldeen Sulemana and Ryan Fraser had been struggling with injuries and illness respectively. With all that shit going on, four points from two games in the Frozen Wastelands of the North is not a bad return.

Referee corner once again. This one, Jeremy Simpson, was fucking shit. I don’t know what the rules actually are with regards to pulling a player back after they’ve gone past you or tactically fouling a player when you have been beaten and are nowhere near the ball. I thought that was an automatic yellow card but the referees in the Championship, especially the one today, seem to pick and choose.  Preston left back Cunningham could’ve been booked on four separate occasions and there were other players as well who were just pulling players back whenever they went past them. One player got booked for it, Will Smallbone and deservedly so. Surely, a tactical foul is easy for a referees spot and should always be a yellow card.

For those not in our magnificent hardy band of 1500 or so away fans who made the midweek trip to the North, the game was covered today on the Sky Arena channel which I must admit, was a channel that I didn’t know existed before now.  The coverage was augmented by the dulcet tones of Courtney Sweetman-Kirk, who I had also not heard of until today.  I’m up for people learning their trade and everyone has to start somewhere but if tinnitus came in human form, then this is it. If you’re going to review similar incidents for each side in a completely different way then you are going to piss off half of your audience. There are two issues here, one is the obvious one about being impartial and two is that sometimes, most of the time, less is more, unless co-commentators get paid in words per minute..

Roll on Saturday morning and Birmingham.  Up the fucking 5 games unbeaten Saints.