EFL Championship Match 30 - Southampton 5 Huddersfield 3

 

Weston Shore is Better than Bournemouth Beach Isn't It?

It seems like at the moment, the fixture computer has given us a chance to make up for our sins from earlier on in the season. First up Rotherham, now up Huddersfield, who we went away to during this unbeaten run and we had one of those games where we didn’t play particularly well, took the lead and then in almost complacent fashion, tried to coast to the end of the game and fucked it up when an attempted cross deceived everybody and ended up in the net.

As also tends to be the case at the moment, the opposition have changed their manager since the return game with Darren Moore becoming Darren No-Moore and his place being taken by caretaker Joe Worthington, who will soon be replaced we are led to believe, by Michael Duff, the man who took over from Russell Martin at Swansea and who after a few games, was labelled a PE teacher by the Jack Army.  Looking on objectively, you would say that Michael Duff could be excused for not wanting to rush through his appointment in time for today’s game, given how well Saints are playing at the moment.

Since the Watford game, the only news to come out of Saints has been positive with the return of Kamaldeen Sulemana. There is a very real possibility that we will have him, David Brooks and Sam Edozie all on the bench, ready to wreak havoc against a tired Huddersfield defence.  As long-time readers will know, I am yet to be convinced by Sulemana and would place him a very definite third behind Ryan Fraser and Sam Edozie in the left wing pecking order.  I also feel that the fact that he cost to club the thick end of £25 million quid is one of the reasons why he was playing as much as he was before he got injured. Still, clean slate and all that and let’s see what he’s got.

Saints are unchanged, with the team exactly what you’d predict from the last league game.  Away we go and not a great start with KWP dragging an early effort across goal.  It’s not a great opening twenty minutes or so, with very little goalmouth incident going on, with Huddersfield pressing aggressively from the front and in midfield and Saints seeming incredibly lethargic all over the park.  We are not taking our time to build up through the thirds and are instead we are playing a couple of passes and then looking for the chip over the top which might work if we had anyone on the pitch who could hold the ball up.  Che Adams is supposed to be able to do that but he is wearing the Adidas Trampolino boots again, so the ball is bouncing anywhere other than to another player in a red and white shirt.  Rya Fraser is being given 50-50 balls to compete with much bigger defenders for and Adam Armstrong is not seeing much ball at all.

We are struggling particularly in midfield to get a grip on things, and it doesn’t help when Flynn Downes goes down injured.  He tries to play on, has some raw chopped liver, goes down a second time and that’s the end of that for him.  I know that Russell is not going to bring on Shea Charles and my eyes are rolling into the top of my head as Joe Rothwell comes on to replace him.  The eye-rolling is not for Rothwell as such but for the fact it means that Will Smallbone will be dropping back to that defensive midfield position that just doesn’t work when the opposition is getting amongst us like Huddersfield are.

Sorba Thomas picks up the ball on the right side and runs at Manning before switching the ball wide and when it comes in from Rudoni, Thomas hits it and it seems to flick off of Manning and zips into the net.  Thomas then runs behind the goal and goads some kids in the Family Stand and then the Chapel and before doing a TikTok dance with his teammate like an absolute fucking bellend. Don’t know you are mate, so fuck off.

If I didn’t know who he was before, I did soon after as Huddersfield piss through the non-midfield again with Thomas again doing the damage and his low cross finds its way to Kasumu on the edge of the box and he rifles it high into the net giving Baz no chance. Fucking hell lads, for fuck’s sake.

Well, the unbeaten record is severely under threat as we go in at half-time two goals behind and we deserve to be two goals behind. This hasn’t been a smash and grab so far as Huddersfield have come with a game plan and executed it superbly and we have fallen into every possible trap that we could. We have been shit to be quite honest, coming up with no answers to the questions being posed.  However, booing the team off that is in the middle of a 24 game unbeaten run is idiotic..  Personally, I’m casting my mind back to Jonno Pace against MK Dons in 2011.  Who’s gonna be the hero?

Pick the Bones Out of That

Che has been put out of his misery and David Brooks is on and we start the second half with a completely renewed purpose and go flying forward. I kind of sense that we have to get one back fairly quickly.  The previously anonymous Stuart Armstrong makes good ground down the left and plays Wee Man through on the left and he gets bundled off it for a corner.. In it comes from Stuart Armstrong, punched out by Nicholls to the edge of the box and Rothwell producers a kind of sidewinder volley that sends the balls screaming into the top corner. What a ridiculous fucking strike that is.

Huddersfield kick-off and it ends with Baz, so we go again eventually building up through KWP on the right.  He finds Brooks who cuts infield and plays a ridiculous reverse pass between the defenders to pick up the run of Rothwell who takes a touch before drilling it across Nicholls and high into the net again.  What on earth is this.  I am amused that I questioned bringing him on.

The momentum is all with us as Smallbone picks up a ball in midfield and plays a perfect ball to send Adam Armstrong in on goal.  No defender is going to catch him and as he approaches Nicholls, the stadium gets ready and… he produces an absolute wanky chip straight to the goalkeeper who just stands there and catches it.  To be honest, that’s almost as bad as Charly Alcaraz and his chipped penalty.

Sensing that they’ve got a lifeline, Huddersfield settle down again and more non-existent midfield shield from us and Matos strolled up from left back and tries a pot-shot and it hits Smallbone and deflects miles up in the air and it could go anywhere but of course if drops perfectly over Baz and into the net.  Fuck. Off.

Russell goes to the bench again with twenty to go and and we’re just going for it with Sulemana and Edozie both coming on. A few minutes later and Sekou Mara is on to replace Adam Armstrong and you can’t complain about that one at all because Armstrong has generally been poor today and I still can’t get over that chip.

Immediately after Mara comes on, Saints build down the left Manning eventually knocking the ball wide for Rothwell to run onto and his low cross along the 6 yard line towards Sulemana is obligingly toe pokes by Less, the Huddersfield central defender and he sends it flying in at the near post given the goalkeeper no chance. 3-3.

Sekou Turns Up Again

Huddersfield are done and looking increasing fragile now.  Brooks gets bundled over but no penalty given and we recycle the ball back to KWP, whose ball in behind is reached by Brooks who just to get his foot round it and pulls it back to the edge of the 6 yard box and Mara spins and crashes it into the net.  Mental.

With Huddersfield now being cooked, we don’t need another goal but you can never have too many.  Sulemana and KWP knock is about on the right before we lose it but Brooks get a foot in to block an attempted clearance and it shoots across the goal and Mara has a wrestling match with a Huddersfield defender before calmly rolling it back to Edozie, who skips around the one defender who is not on his arse and crashes into the net to make it five.

The board goes up and there are 13 minutes to go, the vast majority of which is being added because of Huddersfield wasting time from about a quarter of an hour mark onwards but the game is dead now. We could score more if we wanted to but don’t need to and Huddersfield are done despite making a whole raft of substitutions.

Well that was absolutely mad. That first half was absolutely terrible with us being second to every ball and not being patient enough to keep the ball and try and break Huddersfield down. It was all too rushed and looking for the chip over the top too early and it was generally pretty poor. The substitution which occurred when Flynn Downes went off totally lost us the midfield with Joe Rothwell coming on and Smallbone reverting to playing as a defensive midfield. Suddenly we had no defensive nous in there and the defence became exposed and in ten minutes we had conceded two goals and gone in at half-time with a massive amount of work to do. The second half with renewed energy and bollockings no doubt dished out, we absolutely steamed into them and with two brilliant goals in two minutes, ironically scored by the first half substitute Joe Rothwell.

Then a key moment straight after that as Adam Armstrong was clean through with just the goalkeeper to beat but tried a chip and enough said and Huddersfield went back in front with a ridiculous deflection that looked miles up in the air and gave Baz no chance at all.

With us seemingly drifting towards a 3-2 defeat, Russell Martin rolled dice again with the substitutions and having talked up the bench and how strong it was before the game, it worked for him. Joe Rothwell again was majorly involved in the third goal with his cross been turned into his own net and the fourth and fifth or down to two more subs, Mara and Sam Edozie. A quite ridiculous afternoon.

Sammy Seals It

I know it sounds daft to criticise the first half substitution because he scored a couple of goals and got an assist  but at the tactical meeting where Russell Martin laid out his football philosophy, he spoke of controlling the game and limiting the opposition. You can’t do that with no midfield when you haven't got the ball. We got slightly fortunate today and that our bench is so strong it’s like a cheat code to make up for any mistakes that happened earlier on in the game, be that from players or manager. We might get away with it a few times in the Championship but you can’t be playing games with so little in midfield because you will lose more often than not.

Usually, it takes a defeat to be classed as a wake-up call but this game today should certainly be classed as a wake-up call for us, even though we won. We didn’t put the work in the first half and were deservedly two down at half-time against a Huddersfield team looked really organised and looked like they had a game plan which we were struggling with. The game plan was a close us down aggressively, especially in midfield and that’s why the substitution before halftime was so mystifying because, and I’ll say it again, playing Smallbone as a defensive midfielder could work if the other team is passively sitting off but if they’re getting amongst you, like Huddersfield were then it’s just a disaster waiting to happen especially with Rothwell not being the most press-resistant player either. The problem for them was that they couldn’t keep going for 90 minutes, which ironically ended up being 103 minutes because of the amount of time that they wasted.

As I’ve said many times before, complacency is the biggest issue when you are on a long unbeaten run and we got away with it today. Coming up next week are away trips to Bristol City and West Brom and we cannot afford to have any complacency because those are two teams who on paper and according to the league table, are better than Huddersfield. The bad news is today that we’ve probably lost Flynn Downes and Stuart Armstrong but we have players to come in and all I hope for against Bristol City on Tuesday, is that Russell Martin gets the balance of the midfield right and if Downes is out injured, then for me, Charles has to play.

It was of course the proverbial game of two halves today but one player stood out as being good for 90 minutes.  At times it seemed like Jan Bednarek was the only defender we had and he led the defence superbly through the game considering the lack of help they were getting from the midfield. Another major plus was David Brooks. I’ve never really appreciated how good he was before, but the guy is exceptional and it’s ridiculous that Bournemouth have let him go out on-loan. The vision that he showed on the second goal to pick out Rothwell’s run was amazing and there was a couple of passes in midfield where he threaded the ball through three players, that were ridiculous.

But Has He Got Jonno Pace?

But, what about the Rothwell Incident (sorry!).  That volley was absolute filth - the technique absolutely ridiculous and you can't strike a volley any cleaner than that. Just imagine if one of the big boys had scored a goal like that.  This years Jonathan Forte has been found - two goals from an unexpected source to rescue a game where we were 2-0 and playing badly.

Ipswich dropped two points today, needing a last-minute equaliser to snatch a draw at home to West Brom but no such problem for Leeds who easily buried Rotherham at home. Leeds will be certainly looking for us to drop points on Tuesday and Friday but win them both and it’ll be a four point gap at least by the time Saturday rolls around.

Up the fucking 25 unbeaten Saints.