EFL Championship Match 45 - Southampton 0 Stoke 1

I Guess The Ref Thought the Keeper Got to The Ball First

When we were in the Premier League and you got to this stage of the season, there was no such thing as a dead rubber as long as you could possibly move up a place or down a place, because of the amount of money that was attached to every place in the Money and Greed League. In the Championship of course, the money is less but we cannot drop below fourth place and we are not going to make third so this is as close to a dead rubber as we are ever going to get. Consequently, I hope we use it to try and learn a few things about how we’re going to approach the playoffs. Can we find an alternative to Stuart Armstrong as the guy linking the midfield and attack? Do we need to give Joe Lumley a game in the Championship to see if it’s better for our playing out from the back. Can we trust some of the younger players in the squad in a physical Championship game? For me, finding answers to these questions is at least as important as winning the last home game of the season against Stoke.

Well, it isn’t the last game of the home season because we now know after our capitulation against Leicester, that we will have a playoff semi-final at St Mary‘s against either West Brom or Norwich. That’s for another day however. Today it’s the aforementioned Stoke City at home, another team that have a new manager from when we played them the first time around with Alex Neil being replaced by Steven Schumacher, who was tempted from Plymouth with The challenge of trying to make a success out of the poison chalice job that has been Stoke City since relegation from the Premier League. If Nathan Jones couldn’t do it, one of the best managers in Europe no less, then what chance has Schumacher got?

When we played Stoke at the Britannia Stadium earlier on in the season, they were a bunch of arseholes and managed to draw us into having a mass session of handbags at the end of the game, which is some achievement bearing in mind what a bunch of soft arses we are. It was quite a memorable game, containing as it did Stuart Armstrong going full JWP and putting a freekick in the top corner, a fantastically executed rugby tackle by Jan Bednarek which didn’t result in a penalty and Kamaldeen Sulemana beating Stoke right back Hoever at every opportunity and being pulled back about six times which resulted in one booking halfway through the second half. I don’t usually advocate Sulemana starting games but I would like to see him starting this one against a fullback who he knows he can piss past at every opportunity.

Team news and what the fuck… the promised dropping of those uncommitted during the Leicester defeat turned out to be hollow words as the one player praised, Che Adams, was left out with Sekou Mara coming in.  With Adam Armstrong also left out, goals might be hard to come by today.  Edozie and Wee Man are the other two forwards.  It looks like David Brooks is in midfield with Smallbone and Charles, who once again starts, with Flynn Downes on the bench.  Captain Jack is back of course but not at the expense of one of our woeful full backs – Bednarek on the bench with Bree and KWP continuing.

We start the game looking somewhat disjointed and not being able to string three passes together, so we are hitting it long up to our forwards who have a combined height of about 15 foot between the three of them. Captain Jack’s plays a ball forwards which is easily picked up and Stoke build down our left with Tyrese Campbell easily breaking free behind KWP and his shot is pushed out to McCarthy and Laurent has an open goal but somehow manages to put it wide.

Some nice play through midfield by Stoke, which is kind of what we’re supposed to do but anyway, the ball goes out to Manhoef on the right and James Bree shows he’s learnt absolutely nothing from the Leicester debacle by standing off and allowing him to get to the edge of the box before smashing it goalwards and McCarthy has to pull out quite a decent save to keep it out.

After a foray down the left wing with Fraser gets rejected, we pass the ball back to the halfway line, eventually to THB and he chips a ball over the Stoke defence and Mara does really well to get there before the goalkeeper and heads it goalwards and get absolutely wiped out by Iverson with a defender getting back to clear off the line. That is 100% a penalty with the referee David Webb looking right at at at it but he doesn’t give it. The keeper has punched him in the fucking face and not get anywhere near the ball for fuck’s sake. How is that not a penalty?  The lino must have been level with it as well.

Taylor and Macca Not Covering Themselves in Glory

Stoke right back Hoever launches a big ball down the right over Captain Jack’s head to send Campbell away against THB, who has to come to cover. THB tries to send him down the line but doesn’t get close enough and Campbell simply rolls the ball through McCarthy‘s legs and into the net. Diabolical defending and piss poor goalkeeping.  1-0 down.

Saints try and get back into it before halftime with Stoke rather presenting the ball to Edozie on the right wing and his ball across the top of the box is perfect for Wee Man to run onto and meet but his side footed effort is straight at Iversen who easily pushes it away.

Half-time and that unsurprisingly, has been dog shit. The ball is not sticking up front at all with Mara either in cable or unwilling to withstand any physical challenge from the Stoke central defenders. The midfield isn’t passing the ball quickly enough and there’s not enough movement. Defensively we’ve been all over the place with Stoke finding an easy way forward all the time as once again, we’re not getting close enough to anyone.  Not good.  We come for the second half and there are two changes with THB being replaced by Bednarek and Shea Charles being replaced with Aribo meaning Will Smallbone as the number 6.

The first attack of the half by Stoke is caused by a Stephens mistake on the halfway line to send Bae Jun-Ho running away and he gets deep into the penalty area before he overdoes it and a combination of KWP and Bednarek stop him.  Saints break out with Wee Man being taken out off the ball and Stoke try and take out Brooks as well but his ball find his way through to Mara, who has an opening on his left foot but it lands somewhere between Row Z and Row FF.  More great refereeing - there were two clear cynical failed attempts to bring a player down by Stoke as we broke forward but the referee decided that neither was worthy of any action.

Edozie is coming more to the fore out on the right and he picks up the ball from Mara and burns past ex-Skate Stevens before pulling it back to Brooks on the penalty spot but he gets a shot all wrong and it was so bad that it probably didn’t go on the stats as a shot.  Straight from the clearance, Stoke surge up the right through Laurent and he finds Campbell who rolls the ball across the top of the 6 yard box to Manhoef and McCarthy throws him self in the way for a quite brilliant save.  Jon-ho picked up the ball on the left and finds Cundle in front of goal and McCarthy cops that one in the face but regardless, another good save.

Saints are still struggling generally to clear the ball and Campbell spins away from Stephens in the box, Stevo clips the back of him and Campbell hits the deck. This time the shit referee comes to our rescue as he gets that one wrong as well.

Mara gives the ball away in really shite fashion twice in about fifteen seconds and you can see Russell Martin losing his rag and immediately, Adams comes on to put Mara out of his misery.  Flynn Downes enters the fray in place of David Brooks as well.

David Webb with the Universally Understood Referee Signal of "I Haven't Got a Fucking Clue"

Adams first contribution is to spin the ball out to Edozie out of the right and he gets into the penalty area before dragging the ball back and hits the deck. Looks a bit soft to be honest and it will be a scandal if that got given, seeing as there’s been two obvious ones not given. Stoke quite rightly play on and it’s down our right and Manhoef is quickly clean through to go and have a shot at McCarthy which he has to push away again.  Manhoef again gets a sight of goal and puts it just wide.

We have one more sub to make and we’re not going to see a re-run of the Sulemana versus Hoever slaughter at Stoke and instead it’s Adam Armstrong coming on for Edozie, who has been our threatening attacking player by quite a long way. Arma has one chance when after a little mazy run by Downes on the edge of the box, the ball finds its way out to Wee Man and Armstrong throws a leg at the cross and well over the bar.  Six minutes of injury time but nothing much happens.  Boring as fuck.

Well that was absolutely abject. The first half that was as boring as a game of football can possibly be and a second half where the opposition has sat in a low block for 45 minutes to protect what they have and played on the counter and we had absolutely no idea, especially when we took off the players who can actually take on a player 1 v 1 or provide any creativity.

As said, Russell Martin’s words after the Leicester game rang hollow as he basically tossed off this game with that starting lineup. That can be justified seeing as it was a dead rubber for us but don’t say you’re gonna bomb out the players who didn’t show much commitment against Leicester and then not do it. I guess he calmed down the next day and realised that he didn’t really have that many options.

As it was, he picked Sekou Mara to start upfront which was probably out of desire to give Che Adams a rest and Mara gonna Mara. I mean, he was absolutely 1 out of 10 shit. He can’t control the ball, he has no strength to hold off a defender and when he gets the ball he can’t pass it.  He shoudl have had a penalty however and our bunch of soft arses should have been all round the referee demanding he spoke to the lino but no, passive acceptance. 

So, were our full backs any better than last time out? James Bree was given another chance and he defended with no more intensity that he did against Leicester.  He’s so scared of getting done for pace he just doesn’t engage.  The one time this season he had a race with a winger was against QPR and Ilias Chair, and Bree did his hamstring.  He was terrible on the left and then we moved him across to the right so we could be terrible in his natural position. On top of his no contact defending, he also managed to get himself in good crossing positions a couple of times, once on either flank and both times put the ball 10 yards behind the goal.  KWP showed a little bit more in the defensive department than he did against Leicester but still not enough.  It’s almost like that at the start of the season he knew he was the best in the league and now he’s allowed himself to be dragged down to their level.

It’s a very low bar but I think there was one positive in that David Brooks looked okay as the potential Stuart Armstrong replacement. It wasn’t brilliant because today nothing was, but I think he proved that he is the best fit to potentially provide the forwards with some ammunition. Put it this way, it was worse when he went off and at least he tried to play forwards.  So lightweight though so I question where you can balance a midfield with him and Will Smallbone in it.

Sam Edozie is a player who gets a lot of flak, but he was one of the few today who actually asked some questions and caused the left back Enda Stevens, quite a few problems. On the other flank Ryan Fraser put a couple of crosses over with his left foot and spent the rest of the game turning back and passing the ball back into the midfield. Considering he was playing against Ki-Jana Hoever, who proved up at Stoke what a dreadful defender he is, should’ve meant that he was driving at him every opportunity, but it didn’t really happen. I know it may sound completely obvious here and maybe it’s a nod towards his commitment, but I can’t really believe that Sulemana didn’t get any time on the pitch considering we were losing from about half hour onwards and he ripped him apart up at Stoke.

The other positive was that Flynn Downes played for twenty minutes, hopefully without any reaction. Maybe half an hour to forty-five next week against Leeds before putting him in properly against whoever our playoff opponent will be.

If it is Norwich then they have form for playing the low block tactics so we are going to have to do considerably better than we did today. It was a comfortable win for Stoke and it was another game with the amount of possession means fuck all because the only goalkeeper that got tested in the second half was Alex McCarthy who had to come up with three big saves to keep the score down. He could’ve done better on the goal we conceded however. THB did half a job in forcing Campbell to have a shot from a narrow angle but he didn’t get close enough to him to block the shop and once the shop has got away, there is absolutely no way McCarthy should be beaten from there.

Did we learn anything today that we didn’t know? Maybe a bit with the Brooks experiment in midfield. We certainly didn’t improve morale about the place and inclusion of Jack Stephens, which was supposed to sort out a lot of the problems if you believe the narrative from Tuesday night, didn’t really help much with him making a fair few mistakes including the old failing of letting the ball just drift over his head.  Maybe this is just me being old school but if I was centre back and captain, I would have been yelling at the full-backs at every opportunity for not getting close enough and I didn’t see much of that.

Russell Martin was at pains to point out at the end about there fixture pile up that we’ve had throughout the last month and the implication is clearly that we have run out of steam. Of course, we’ve lost two key players to injuries and that hasn’t helped and if we cast our minds back to the start of April when the Preston game got postponed because of the fire, we all knew that the fixture pile up would be difficult to navigate.  I keep coming back to that game at Cardiff though. If we had won that game like we should, the energy would’ve continued through adrenaline.  You don’t feel tired when you’re winning.  Leicester wouldn’t have been certainly as much of a disaster as it was and today would’ve been a competitive game that we would’ve taken more seriously. We can only hope that come in the playoffs, the adrenaline rush from playing a really meaningful game means that collectively, we find some more energy and some inspiration and play like a functioning team again.

Leeds away next week.  The good news is that we have a week to prepare, the bad news is that Leeds are going to have something to play for going into that game, even if Ipswich win their game in hand at Coventry in midweek.  Good luck to anyone who paid the £47 to watch that.

Up the fucking Saints.

EFL Championship Match 44 - Leicester 5 Southampton 0

 

Show Him Onto His Good Foot and Stand Off

Flat.

Flat is the feeling in the aftermath of the Cardiff game going into this game against Leicester City away from home. We should’ve been bullish and expectant and confident going into this game on the back of a surge that took us from nowhere to the brink of gatecrashing the top two… But we’re not, are we?

The defeat at Cardiff has pissed on our proverbial fireworks and now the fireworks are only potentially going to be set off by the home team tonight because if they win, with games against Blackburn and Preston to come, they are virtually guaranteed to be going up at the first time of asking. It’s just hard to accept that had we not lost to Cardiff youth team, we would still be in with a very good chance ourselves. As it is, the best we’ve got is paraphrasing the message on Colombian drug lord Jhonny Viafara’s T-shirt… we sorry we spoil the party. Jhonny Viafara was of course famous for scoring a couple of goals at Derby in what was our last visit to the playoffs in 2007, so it’s funny that his name should cross my mind today.

So what of Leicester. Leicester of course got relegated with us last year when they had a squad that still had James Madison and Harvey Barnes. Amazingly, under the management of his own biggest fan, Brendan Rodgers, they managed to lose twice to us last year. Any thoughts that we may have an advantage over them this season therefore, were dashed at the start of the season when we produced a shocker and got beat 4-1 at home. The consolation is that this was well before the players got used to the Russell Martin style of football and in that game we showed exactly how not to do it by giving away two kamikaze goals within the first five minutes. We are better than we were back then (usually) of course but are Leicester? The 17-point cushion that they had at the top of the league in December has been gradually eroded since then and at one point they were actually outside of the automatic promotion places as Leeds and Ipswich surged and Leicester died on their arse. In the past few weeks they have been inconsistent, losing to the likes of Plymouth and Millwall but also winning the odd game to just about keep their heads above water.  They had a massive win last week at home to West Brom when in all truth, they should’ve lost but got a bit fortunate. However, they did find a way to win, as opposed to their opponents today, who found a way to do the complete opposite.

Leicester’s season has been overshadowed somewhat by profit and sustainability charges brought against them by the Premier League and backed up by the EFL. Nothing has happened however except the EFL making a statement that they wouldn’t be any points deductions applied this year. It’s obvious that both governing bodies think that Leicester are guilty (The transfer embargo they were under in January suggests that very strongly) which of course covers both last season and this but hey ho, never mind everyone. As has often been the case in the Championship, if you overspend and break the rules but go up, then it was a gamble worth taking. I’m sure that most teams in the Championship would like to be able to afford a midfield three of Ndidi, Winks and Dewsbury-Hall and the relegated teams from last year would’ve liked to have only had to sell two players.

Russell Martin’s pre-match press conference revealed that we are once again going to try to have to find a way to win without Flynn Downes. Apparently, we have won only two of the nine games has been about unavailable for this season. We have additional problems in midfield today of course because Stuart Armstrong won’t be playing so it is going to be three out of Aribo, Smallbone, Rothwell and Charles. I swear that if it’s the first three, I might not bother watching. Ryan Manning is also struggling with injury and I’d be almost certain that Jack Stephens will come into for him to play his hybrid left back midfield role as we did against West Brom and Ipswich… or not.  No Stephens as it turns out but another chance for James Bree – a player who divides opinions.  My opinion is that he’s bang average and I hope he proves me wrong today.  He’ll probably be up against Stephy Mavididi, who tore us apart at St.Marys.

They opening fifteen minutes are a bit nervy to say the least because Leicester look like they’re 100% up for it and we are not brave enough to get on the ball and start passing it about.  Leicester easily pass through us and get the ball out to Fatawu on the right and it cuts inside KWP very, very easily and luckily for us, picks out McCarthy‘s midriff with the shot

Saints implement their defensive tactic of standing off to perfection as Ndidi picks the ball up on the left and has all the time he needs to set one off at the far post and it fortunately drifts just wide.  None of our players was anywhere near him.

We do actually create a bit of an opening as Bobby Madley ignores Wout Faes grabbing hold of Adams and allows us to play on with Aribo finding Adam Armstrong and he plays it across the top of the area to Rothwell who has to hit it first time but of course, he doesn’t, which means the chance goes to shit.

Another unhindered cross comes in from the right wing it’s too deep this time but Mavadidi keeps it alive and McCarthy palms it up in the air and it’s coming down on the goal line and Bednarek has to get up and head over as Vardy clatters into the back of him.

We’re just about keeping them at arm’s length but we’re not getting anywhere when we get the ball.  This is partly down to Leicester’s press and partly down to Boboby Madley being a fat useless twat.  Winks, Vestergaard and Faes should all have been booked by now for cynical pull-backs in midfield, but nothing.  I’m not too worried at this stage because for all the threat, they haven’t got anything on target to test out McCarthy as yet. 

Famous last words.  It all changes with a ball up to the feet of Adams and Faes comes flying in and gets nowhere near the ball as he takes him out but Bobby thinks that’s play on and one pass later, Dewsbury-Hall slides the ball into Fatawu, who has easily lost KWP and he easily passes it past McCarthy. He looks offside as well but no flag so 1-0 down. Cheers Bobby you dickhead. Goal Fatawu, Assist Madley.

Saints try and get something moving through the midfield after the restart and Che is once again hauled to the ground by Winks right in front of the referee and Bobby once again, can’t tell a bookable challenge from a hole in his arse. A quick free kick and the ball goes to Adam Armstrong on the left and I suddenly get flashbacks to several moments in the last two seasons in the Premier League where he has a defender right in front of him and smashes it at him anyway.

Rothwell has started the game like a drain and has had about ten touches in forty minutes.  He’s either not getting involved or he’s getting involved and giving the ball away.  He then limps out of a challenge and has to be substituted which at least means that his day can’t get any worse and Will Smallbone is on in his place and we can now play with a full 11.  We immediately look better and get to half-time with our one goal deficit mercifully intact. 

No changes and the second half starts with Adams nicking the ball off of Leicester and Saints have a bit of pressure around the edge of the penalty area. Brooks finds Smallbone and a good cross into the box picks out Adam Armstrong’s run but he plays an airshot.  Haven’t had one of those for a few weeks.  More pressure as Smallbone wins the ball in midfield and finds Adams who plays a great ball inside the fullback for Brooks but Justin comes steaming across and breathes on Brooks, which is enough to send him crashing to the ground.

We get momentarily excited as Adams turns about 40 yards out and plays a ball through the defensive line to Armstrong who is clean through and goes on and shoots and it’s of course saved by Hermanson. A quick look at the replay shows that Armstrong was a good five yards offside and the flag was up instantly.

Substitution time with Bree and Brooks being replaced with Edozie and Manning. If Bree shook hands with Mavididi on the way off then that’s the first time he got touch tight to him all game.  With KWP switching to the right, we give the ball away and Mavididi, totally unpressured by KWP, is allowed to easily lift the ball into the middle and Ndidi heads down and in. Of course he’s unmarked because we don’t track runners and we don’t stop crosses coming in.  As a defensive system it needs work. Fucking garbage

And then we give up.  Sub Choudhury plays a simple ball out to Fatawu on the left and having been generously invited inside onto his good foot by Ryan Manning, he takes the invitation and curls one into the far corner of the net whilst Manning watches from a safe distance. Well played Ryan. Dickhead.

I want it gets worse as Mavididi turns KWP and Charles inside out and Leicester eventually work the ball out to Fatawu again. This time Manning shows he’s learned and doesn’t show him inside.  This time he watches on from a distance as Fatawu just passes it into the box with his right foot and Jamie Vardy has made a run away from THB to smash it into the net. You could not see more shit defending if you fucking tried

We do actually manage an attack with decent play by Charles to feed it though to Edozie on the left wing.  He goes past the full back and crosses it but Leicester clear and suddenly we have about seven players ahead of the ball. With no defensive midfielder anywhere in sight it is basically a four against two break with our centre halves on their own awaiting Joe Aribo and KWP to get back, hindered as they are by the caravans they are towing. Dewsbury-Hall finds Vardy who knocks it across and Fatawu gives McCarthy no chance at all.  Aribo and KWP have unhitched their caravans but at least they made an effort.  Anyone seen Manning?.

Che Adams and Aribo are given an early exit from the shitshow and are replaced with Wee Man and Jack Stephens and we manage to not concede any more.

Well that was fun. Actually, it wasn’t fun at all, it was complete shite. It was the worst kind of shite as well because we basically gave up. You can always lose to a team that has more ability than you, as Leicester undoubtedly have, but to show no heart and bottle is absolutely inexcusable.

Leicester were everything that we should’ve been but weren’t.  Even in the first half before the game run away from us, they were being horrible bastards in the middle of the park and making sure that we didn’t get into any rhythm.  They were aided and abetted of course by Bobby Madley who was the usual fucking clown that he always is but Leicester did a job. They were horrible to play against, left the foot in, pulled people back all over the place but it got them the foothold in the game and when they have the ball they look to go forward all the time. They have two wingers in Mavididi and Fatawu who looked to attack all the time and they have Jamie Vardy who even at the age of 37 still constantly harasses central defenders. At the back they were horrible to play against as well, with Vestergaard and Faes not giving Adams room to breathe all game.

There was an aggression about them that we just didn’t have, even in the first half. When Leicester went two ahead, which was slightly against the run a play in the second half, it was our cue to basically give up.  After that of course the goals rained in. Alex McCarthy couldn’t really be blamed individually for any goal which kind of tells you how easy we made it for them. The two central defenders Jan Bednarek and THB did their best to stem the tide and surprisingly, given that we conceded five goals, weren’t too bad though THB got done by Vardy for the fourth goal.

We had three full-backs who made an appearance during the game. James Bree was shit. I know there is a narrative these days that he is actually quite a good defender and okay at this level. No he’s not, he is shit.  He is never close to the man he should be marking. He ball-watches when the ball is on the other side and I don’t think he’s ever blocked a cross in his life. If you write a list all the things that were closer to Mavididi than James Bree then it would include Russell Martin on the bench who was over the other side of the pitch, fans in the away end and quite possibly fans watching on TV at home in Southampton.

He was replaced midway through the second half by Ryan Manning who was equally fucking dreadful.  Show him onto his good foot Ryan!  Well, that didn’t work – now give him loads of time to use his other foot! For fucks sake.  And then there was KWP – what the fuck was that?  Very heavily involved in the first two goals and added absolutely nothing going forward, which was something he shared with the other two.  We know the other two are bang average at best though, so Kyle was easily the worst compared to his expected standard.  Horrible passive bollocks from all three of them.

Our midfield was up against a proper Premier League midfield in Ndidi, Winks and Dewsbury-Hall. Even our first-choice midfield which would’ve had Downes, Stuart Armstrong and Smallbone would’ve struggled but the midfield we put was never going to be up to it. This was despite Shea Charles having a good hour and Joe Aribo being okay. Joe Rothwell managed 40 minutes before he got injured.  At least when he went off we knew where he fucking was cos we had no idea when he was on the pitch. How you can be a central midfielder in a possession-based team and touch the ball so little, is a real achievement.  The worrying thing was the lack of cohesion between the midfield and the attack with Stuart Armstrong not there. Russell Martin has two games to find the answer to that particular conundrum and if he thinks playing Joe Rothwell is the answer then he’s not asking himself the right question.

So what is the answer? Is it moving David Brooks into midfield. Yes, he has the creativity and can go past players but he is also one of the lightest lightweight players you’ve ever seen. If not him then you’re looking at someone like Tyler Dibling.  He could possibly do it but the same light weight problem is going to still be there. I would dearly like Russell Martin to start Brooks in Stuart Armstrong’s position against Stoke and maybe bring Tyler on for the last half an hour to see how he gets on.

Brooks didn’t do very much at all on the wing today and nor did Adam Armstrong who I’m afraid gave a perfect example of what happens when he plays against a slightly better team. He was up against Ricardo Pereira today it was of course a Portuguese international and a genuine Premier League player and Adam Armstrong looks like the Adam Armstrong we had a Premier League level for the last two years. Just not good enough when the standard is a little bit higher.

One of the few bright sparks was provided by Che Adams who battled away on his own upfront and had a decent game against Faes and Vestergaard with very, very little protection from Bobby Madley. He was the only one providing any movement and considering he probably only has a few games left for the club before he moves on, he can be applauded for putting in a proper shift.

Don't You Worry About That Cynical Shirt Pull Son

It seems churlish to be complaining about the referee at the end of a 5-0 defeat. Bobby Madley and his two linesman in the first half we are absolutely stunning. As previously mentioned, he let Leicester get away with multiple fouls in the middle of the pitch without producing a yellow card and the first goal was a thing of beauty from his point of view. 99 times out of 100 is a foul but not today and though the offside was close we really could’ve done with a linesman coming up with the correct decision.  The lino on the other side came up with one of the most incredible decisions of the season when a stray pass across his own goal by Leicester player was chased into the corner by Che Adams who was then given offside.

A truly, truly awful performance from a team who gave up and didn’t care. Gutless and lacking in character. Jack Stephens come out and face to media afterwards as the captain and made no excuses and said the right things about us giving up and it being unacceptable.  Russell Martin was pretty honest and promised that heads would roll but he said that before and then done not a lot about it in terms of personnel changes. To be honest, he doesn’t have a lot of choice but I think we can say for certain that Jack Stephens will be coming back into the side for the games to come and after witnessing that today, I can’t argue against it. We will see what sort of reaction we get at home to Stoke on Saturday.

That was a fucking disgrace today. Fancy us in a high-pressure playoff game when it really matters?  Errr…. Let me think about that one for a minute.

EFL Championship Match 43 - Cardiff 2 Southampton 1

 

Bottle Jobs

We’re in a situation now where every game is more important than the one that preceded it.

With every game that goes by and every three points we add to the tally, the more the pressure grows and the more important the game becomes. After the defeat to Ipswich and especially after the draw against Blackburn, we all assumed that we were done and the media certainly assumed that and more amusingly, the fans of Ipswich, Leicester and Leeds also assumed that.  But, we are still here and win today at Cardiff and we are officially right back in the mix going in to a game against Leicester at the King Power on Tuesday night. That is for another day, obviously.

Today we take on Cardiff City, who are safe for another year in the Championship. They’ve never really been in serious danger of dropping down the season but got the results they needed over the last few weeks to make sure no one was anxiously looking over their shoulders in their part of Wales. When they visited Saint Mary’s earlier on in the season, they kind of just turned up, did nothing, and got beat 2-0 with a brace of goals from Adam Armstrong. Then as now, the manager is Erol Bulut, who one way or another seems to be coming to the end of his reign at the Cardiff City Stadium.  A man with a history of not lasting too long in jobs has apparently upset the owner and every time you read anything on a forum about Cardiff, their fans are usually using words like lacklustre, boring, dull, defensive. We hoped that when we played Preston a few days ago, that they would not put up much of a fight as they had nothing to play for and we must hope that Cardiff make our job easier today. It’s less likely when you are away from home of course but hopefully we get to see where an early goal will take us.

It was confirmed that Gavin Bazunu‘s injury was a season-ending one and his ruptured achilles tendon is it going to mean the best part of a year out. Whilst he’s not everyone’s cup of tea as a goalkeeper, you have to remember this is a 20-year-old kid who has a long road of rehab ahead of him and how you rate him as a goalkeeper is irrelevant at this point.  All the best to Gavin in his recovery. What this means for us in the short term is a choice to be made between Alex McCarthy and Joe Lumley. With McCarthy haven’t been chosen against Preston and keeping a clean sheet, I would actually be completely staggered if it was anyone other than McCarthy in between the sticks today. Hopefully we can restrict Cardiff as well as we restricted Preston on Tuesday night. The 11 that started against Preston all deserve to start today, So let’s see.

Oh shit – Flynn Downes is injured and despite receiving praise for his performance as a sub against Preston, it’s not natural replacement Shea Charles coming in but Will Smallbone as the Number 6.  That might be ok as Cardiff have a host of injuries so their team is going to be a bit scratch and a bit young so hopefully we’ll dominate the ball and the lack of grit in that midfield won’t be an issue.

Saints tear into Cardiff from the kick-off and it very quickly looks like men against boys. Some snappy passing down the left and KWP drifts in from right back and plays an incisive ball into Stuart Armstrong and the Scotsman with the fine hair works the ball on his right foot and curls it away from Horvath but it smacks against the post and out.

More of the same with Stuart Armstrong again on the left, driving forward and feeding Adam Armstrong, who cuts in and shoots, parried out by Horvath to the edge of the box where Joe Aribo is waiting and he does well to keep the shot down and it flies past the keeper for 1-0.  Come On!

And it Was All Going So Well

On, on – starting with McCarthy and Stuart Armstrong picks at the ball in midfield and chips one over the defence and Aribo competes for it against the defender and the ball breaks to Che Adams who is right in front of the goalkeeper and in the red hot for he's in, he could’ve taken it round him or he could’ve slotted it but instead of that he scuffs it straight at the goalkeeper in a demonstration of whatever the opposite of clinical is.  Che has another go a minute later as Cardiff have a throw on the left and cough up possession and Stuart Armstrong plays Che clean through on his left foot and we all know what happens when he has the ball in his left foot… but today is different as he’s in great form…. and under challenge from the last defender he slices in madly wide from right in front of the goal.  Fucking hell.

Again we build up from the defence and Adams plays a lovely ball around the corner towards Brooks but the full-back Tanner gets there first and knocks it back to the keeper at a very awkward height. A shit Horvath touch later and Adam Armstrong piles in with the keeper and the ball breaks to David Brooks with the keeper on the ground but with the ball on his stronger left foot and an open goal to aim at, he moves it left and has an open goal to aim at and …. he takes it left again past an invisible player … and Horvath gets back to scramble it wide with the final touch coming off Brooks himself so we don’t even win a fucking corner. What is ridiculous is the Brooks at two chances to put that in the net and in the end he doesn’t even get a shot away despite have two open goal chances to do so.

No, Don't Shoot, Got to Make Sure

Half-time and despite missing a ridiculous amount of chances, it still shouldn’t be an issue because Cardiff don’t look to have anything and Saints are totally in control.  How many times have we said that though?  The second half starts with Bree on for Manning for what I assume is an injury.  Aribo chips a ball down the right to Adams, who digs out a superb cross fizzing along a 6 yard line and Adam Armstrong comes in at the back post and heads it from five yards but puts it in the only place where the goalkeeper can possibly save it, which he duly does. Anywhere but at the middle of the goal at mid height and it’s 2-0 but you know, this is Saints on a bad one.

Still we carry on with Brooks feeding Adam Armstrong and he takes his time as rolls it to Smallbone on the edge of the box and he has all the time in the world to casually wave his foot at it and pick out a spot on the advertising board five yards wide of the goal, and that’s what he does.

Cardiff have thrown on a couple of subs, one of which is Diedhiou and he’s causing a few issues as Cardiff have their first spell of anything in the game.  Down our left they go and past KWP as he’s trying to stop two players and over comes the cross, Meite swings a leg at it and it’s going wide but it goes straight to Diedhiou at the back post, unmarked and he scores easily.  Would you fucking believe it?  Even with the old cliché’s of “you’ll regret missing those chances” – this one is particularly ridiculous.

We’ve lost control of midfield as Smallbone, Aribo and Stu all start looking tired and the sub is made in this area and it’s Aribo off for Rothwell, which makes us worse and will not give us any further control in midfield.  Predictably, it’s Cardiff in the ascendancy now and after a Bednarek foul out on the wing, Cardiff sling the ball into the mix, in comes the unmarked header, saved by McCarthy and an almighty scramble and we get away with it because THB throws himself into the melee to block.  Proper committed defending.

More subs and it’s just throwing stuff at the wall time now as it’s three wingers coming on.  Smallbone, Arma and Brooks are off and it’s Kamaldeen, Edozie and Wee Man on.  Wee Man is in midfield so the combination is Rothwell, Stu and Wee Man.  So, basically, we have six forwards on the pitch.  Ok then.

Sulemana is on a mad one.  He gets booked straight away for pulling back someone.  Then he commits another foul and could quite easily get a second yellow.  Then he ventures into he penalty area gets in the way and managed to get a knee in the face off Stuart Armstrong.  Bednarek puts him in the recovery position but he manages to carry on after a few minutes, which is mental.  If he’s knocked out then get him off.  If he’s faking it then get him off and play with ten.

Cardiff are coming now and we’re not doing anything because no one can win the ball.  They switch the ball out to the left to Ashford, one of their youth players who looks about 15 and he cuts past Sulemana’s pathetic challenge, but the Saints man does make the effort to jog alongside him.  Rothwell backs off and Stuart Armstrong jumps away from the challenge as Ashford hits and hopes and it flicks off Bednarek and gives Macca no chance.  Wankers.

One last chance as Adams gets away on the right and gets the ball over and Stuart Armstrong takes a touch and then shoots and then collapses in agony as a defender blocks it. Four minutes later and he’s off on a stretcher and thoroughly miserable end to a miserable day.

Wankers. It’s the hope that kills you. Having won those games to get ourselves back into contention, we faced quite possibly the easiest assignment against Cardiff Youth and Reserves and we totally shit the bed.  As soon as there’s a chance to achieve something, bottle it and how very Southampton that is.  I genuinely thought we were destined to keep winning and take advantage of everyone else falling over but oh no.  When will I learn?

On the face of it, it’s easy to blame Russell Martin for going for the Will Smallbone at six to replace the indispensable Flynn Downes but whilst that drew a sharp intake of breath from everyone, is that really the problem here today? The bottom line is like at Ipswich, we were exceptional for the first hour of the game, totally controlling the midfield and creating and endless stream of chances for the forwards and they missed the fucking lot. Is it Russell Martin’s fault that Che Adams is clean through and hits the goalkeeper when it was easier to score? Is it Russell Martin’s fault the David Brooks has an open goal to aim at but instead of that he decides not to shoot and allows the goalkeeper to get back? Is it Russell Martin’s fault that Adam Armstrong can put a header a high or low or just inside the post but instead of that heads into the only area of the goal where the goalkeeper can possibly save it?  No, it’s not the managers fault that those three (and others) pissed away every chance that we created today.

Behold - I Give You 4-0-6

What is Russell Martin’s fault is the way we managed the game from just before Cardiff scored their slightly fortuitous equaliser and in the last half hour.  Russell said afterwards it was absolutely criminal not to win that game with the chances we created and that if you don’t score then you have to defend your own box. He is of course correct. Martin cannot be blamed at all for the fact that we missed a stack of chances but the defending our own box, well, I don’t think he can really hide from all the criticism for that. He picked a midfield that can’t tackle and when he could’ve shored up, even before Cardiff scored, by bringing on the bonafide defensive midfielder who might have given us a platform.  Instead of that he brought on Joe Rothwell who is a contender for the biggest nothing player I think I’ve ever seen. Here we have a central midfielder who can’t run, doesn’t tackle, has no defensive discipline and on top of that, today he couldn’t pass the ball. He reunited the infamous Rothwell, Smallbone, Stuart Armstrong midfield shit triangle combination that has been proven many times not to work.  Then he made it somehow worse by putting Wee Man in midfield.  The 4-0-6 formation won't win many games.

As I said earlier, I do not get it when Shea Charles gets praised for his performance against Preston and Russell talks him up as the Flynn Downes understudy - fast forward a couple of days and Flynn Downes is unavailable and Charles sits on the bench and watches us lose and kill the automatic promotion hopes stone dead.  So, Charles was unused and the subs that were used after Rothwell - Sulemana, Edozie and Fraser were all slightly differing levels of shite, 2 out of 10 performances from all four of them. These are our game changers ladies and gentlemen.  They all made the team worse and we would have been better off making no second half subs.

A terrible day was made even worse with the possible long-term injury to Stuart Armstrong who has now probably played his last game in the Saints shirt. We can only hope at this moment but that injury is not as bad as feared but being stretched off with your shirt over your face is never a good sign.  It’s a sobering warning to players who let their contracts run down as well.

Once again we proved ourselves to be incredibly soft. All the opposition has to do is to have a little bit of possession in our half and they inevitably score.  Yes, both Cardiff goals today had a large element of fortune about them with the first goal being a shot that was going wide that fell to the goalscorer and the second being a huge deflection.  What did we do to make those goals difficult to score?  Nothing.

First goal – yes it’s lucky but he’s free in the six yard box and James Bree is ball watching and KWP didn;t do enough to cut out the original cross.  Second goal was of course a big deflection off of Bednarek but Ashford should never of been allowed to get that shot in, in the first place. As Ashford makes his way across the pitch, three of our players do nothing and just watch.  Where is the body on the line defending? We don’t do it. The body on the line defending was all at the other end where Cardiff earned their own likely win by defenders and goalkeeper chucking themselves in the way of everything and riding their luck. This was Cardiff youth and reserve team. a cobbled together unit that have never played together before and we fucked it, completely. So, I blame the manager for the horrendous game management after Cardiff equalised, but the vast majority of the problem is on the players.

As said, Southampton FC drag you back in and actually have you believing that everything is going our way and things are going to work out and we were going to achieve something amazing, only to find a way to somehow bring it all crashing down again. Playoffs it is.   Tuesday against Leicester could’ve been a massive battle with everything on the line and now it just isn’t. They managed to grind out win against West Brom today and we did the opposite, losing to Cardiff Youth and Reserve team. Pathetic.

The most worrying thing about today was that when the pressure is on, we can’t do it.  Playoff games are massive pressure.  Up the Fucking Bottle Jobs.

EFL Championship Match 42 - Southampton 3 Preston North End 0

His Hair Is Fine, He'll Send You the Wrong Way Every Time

Preston North End visit St Mary‘s today and will make the trip down for a second time in a few weeks, after the first game was called off because of the fire in the industrial unit adjacent to the Chapel End car park. If you look at the league table, Preston are in the last chance saloon with regards to getting a playoff place in that they have to win all four of their remaining games to have a chance of catching the team in sixth place, who currently are Norwich City. Unfortunately for Preston’s hopes, they lost at home to Norwich on Saturday which has really put a dampener on things. Hopefully, they will turn up today and play like a team who know that their chance has probably gone.

In the away game against them, we of course needed a Ched Evans own goal after Gavin Bazunu’s headed flick, to come away with a 2-2 draw but today, we are in the situation where only a win will do.  Ched appealed against the own goal but lost this time.

The main news since the last game is that Sekou Mara has managed to make a contribution to the promotion effort by getting himself suspended.  Throwing a dig at Ryan Porteous should not be an offence but someone clearly thinks it is and so he's been banned for three matches.  We will miss him... I very much doubt.

Team news and I like it. Ryan Manning has come back into the side left back and THB and Bednarek are the centre back pairing.  Joe Aribo remains in the side with Stuart Armstrong coming back in so overall, it’s as close to our first choice lineup as you can possibly get. Or at least it was, until about half an hour before the game.  I had literally just got within view of the pitch when I saw Gavin Bazunu being helped off the pitch, limping rather heavily on his left leg. I am no medical student but that does not look good.  Bizarrely, bearing in mind he hasn’t even been on the bench this season, it looks like Alex McCarthy is going to go and go judging by the warmup that is going on. Weird. I am sure we will get an explanation for Joe Lumley being bypassed. The issue that is screaming is that Alex McCarthy is to playing out from the back, what Joey Barton is to female football pundits.

This is the only game in the Championship tonight so all eyes will be on it.  Eyes from Leicester, Leeds and Ipswich will no doubt be hoping that we cock the opportunity up.  Win tonight and we are just three points behind Leeds with a game in hand. Who’d have thought it?

What were the goalkeeper situation and everything, it was a slightly surreal start of the game and you could immediately see that Saints defenders weren’t as comfortable with knocking the ball back to the goalkeeper as they usually are. Preston‘s first shot was a comfortable low one straight at McCarthy and there was a heart in mouth moment as it popped out but he managed to grab hold of it easily enough. Hopefully that gives him a little bit of confidence.

Because we are not looking to pass back to the goalkeeper as a first option, the defenders are working a lot harder than usual to find a passing angles to enable us to pass forward. Five minutes gone and I’m already seeing that this might actually be to our advantage especially as Preston don’t look that arsed about pressing. Osmajic, who scored a hat-trick a week or so ago, really looks like and absolute lard.

Adam Armstrong has started the game well and in keeping with his recent upsurge in form, gets the ball on the left, the full back Holmes doesn’t get close to him and he plays it across the top of the 6 yard box where Che Adams arrives and side-foots easily passed Woodman and into the net.  Simple.

Arma is having great fun against Holmes on our left who is giving him the space to do exactly what he wants, so he tries to lob the keeper from 40 yards and it’s close enough for Woodman to have a mild heart attack as it lands on the roof of the net.  This game looks so easy.  We’re knocking it about for fun, they aren’t pressing and if we do lose it, we win it back really easily.

It’s The 28th minute and everyone stands up and applauds for Joe Godden, a Saints fan who was killed in a hit-and-run in Romsey a few days ago. With the fans on their feet and clapping in Joe's memory, the ball is fed in to Adams but he steps over it and makes a run and Brooks is of course good enough to find him with the pass and he simply rolls it past Woodman and into the net.  Brilliant goal and a fitting tribute to the fallen Saints fan. Emotional stuff.

Adams, now full of confidence, goes for his hat-trick with a long range lob of his own from the right but this one clears the bar a little more comfortably for Woodman.

USA International Duane Holmes, who is absolutely fucking dreadful at right back looks like he handles it as a cross comes over from the right and all he does is panic and spoon a clearance out to Stuart Armstrong on the edge of the box and he gives Woodman the eyes and the Preston keeper obviously buys that he’s going to go to his right and the magnificently haired one cuts back across it and fires it into the other side of the net with Woodman just looking at him, no doubt swearing loudly.

Preston have nothing in response to the three goals and Manning lines up Holmes again on the left hand side before being unceremoniously carted over on the edge of the penalty area. Surely that has to be a second yellow for the already booked liability but no, leniency shown and Stuart Armstrong again tries to catch out the goalkeeper by shaping for the near post and going far post but Woodman reads it easily enough.

There is still time before half-time as Manning comes forward and finds Stuart Armstrong on the edge of the box and he takes a touch onto his left foot and drills it Lowe past three Preston bodies and past the keeper but it pings off the inside of the post and flies wide the other side. Fuck.  Preston manager Ryan Lowe then decides that Binfire Holmes needs to be taken out the firing line before he ends up on a YouTube video of worst performances ever seen by anyone ever and he is taken off on 40 minutes and replaced with Cunningham.

Duane Holmes with a Binfire of a Performance

Half time and this is a piece of piss.  There’s not been many games over the years where I’ve been here at half-time thought this is absolutely done and we’ve won.  They are so shite it’s unreal.  No one in a yellow shirt wants to run when Saints have the ball and no one has any urgency when Preston actually have possession.  No wonder the manager has been booked and made a sub already.

Talking of which, we’ve made a sub as well with Flynn Downes coming off and Shea Charles coming on in a straight swap.  You would think, a perfect stage to show what he can do.

Away we go and it becomes apparent pretty soon that Saints are just going to do enough. After McCarthy tries to execute a Cruyff turn in comically awful fashion and just about gets away with it, we get on with not letting Preston have a sniff.  Che is crowded out as he tries to complete his hat-trick and then we work a corner out to Bednarek on the edge of the box and Janny B tries to find the far corner and on this occasion, the B stands for Bollocks as it sails wide.

Preston are still shit. They seem to have settled into a damage limitation 4-5-1 formation and are looking to the final whistle without getting humiliated.  KWP chips one over the defence and Adams stretches out a leg to bring it down as it drops over his shoulder. He manages to knock it goalwards but Woodman has come flying out and it’s hit him in the face and gone wide for a corner.  Good save to be fair.  More subs to save legs as Stuart Armstrong and Aribo are replaced with Smallbone and Rothwell.

Adams feeds Smallbone in the box and his pullback is met by Brooks on the penalty spot and he hits it well enough but Woodman, on a one-man mission to keep the score down, takes off and claws it out of the top corner. Brilliant save and you can’t do much about that.  Ryan Manning was all about goals and assists when he was at Swansea last year and he hasn’t managed any goals this season but he takes aim from the edge of the box with his left foot and Woodman is certainly worried about it as it passes about 2 foot wide of the post.

As the early leavers begin to drift away into the night, Edozie and Sulemana make appearances but it’s hard for them to do too much because it’s testimonial pace now.  We’ve settled for 3-0 and so have Preston.  Three minutes extra at the end but the ref may as well blow up early cos nothing’s happening here.

Well that was an absolute piece of piss. An absolutely dominant first half enabling us to just canter through the second half.  Preston were the perfect opposition because with their play-off hopes virtually evaporated last week, they looked like a side who didn’t really wanna be there at any point.  You expect teams like Preston to come down and show a bit of grit and determination but not a bit of it.

It’s a difficult going to analyse really because any praise of any Saints players must be given with a caveat attached, that caveat being the fact that Preston were fucking useless, all over the pitch. The defending was shambolic and there was no attacking threat at all and the attackers didn’t press, so any weakness that Alex McCarthy has with a ball at his feet was not explored.

Taylor Tells Alex Not to do the Fucking Cruyff Thing Again

McCarthy was a big story before the game of course with Bazunu getting injured in the warm-up and in the main he did pretty well apart from thinking he was Alex McCruyff at the start of the second half.  If he stays in the team then his credentials with the ball his feet will certainly be tested more than they were today.   As I said earlier, there was a strange byproduct of the goalkeeping crisis in that the defenders obviously weren’t as confident in knocking the ball back to Alex as they would’ve been with Baz, so as a result we played forward a lot more so in a roundabout kind of way, it actually helped.  The big question is whether that would be as possible against a better team from Preston because as I said with a big caveat at the start, they were dreadful.  Russell Martin explained afterwards that it was a “gut“ decision to pick Alex McCarthy over Joe Lumley. He tried to obfuscate the issue a little bit by saying that Joe Lumley being on the bench does not automatically make him the number two, which seems like bollocks.  Either way, it looks like Baz is going to be out for the rest of the season so you would normally now expect McCarthy, having kept a clean sheet, to have a very good chance of being first choice for the rest of the season. If I was Joe Lumley, I would be very pissed off.

Ryan Lowe, the Preston manager must’ve really been looking forward to his press conference so he took the only course of action available to him really and waxed lyrical about how good Saints were. He couldn’t do anything else bearing in mind his own team were shocking. There weren’t many fans that came down from Preston but bearing in mind the hardy souls who did turn up, would undoubtedly have come down for the postponed game, they can’t have been terribly impressed by the lack of desire and fight shown by the team.  Proper fans though.

The Big Dog is Back

You can only beat was in front of you and our attacking play in the first half was exceptional. Adam Armstrong and Che Adams have both hit form together with Armstrong being a constant threat from the left-hand side, so much so that the Preston right back had to be substituted before he got sent off.  Che took his two goals in style and but for some inspired goalkeeping by Freddie Woodman in the second half, would’ve got his first Saints hat-trick. David Brooks also had a far more effective game than he has had recently.

The midfield just strangled the life out of Preston with every player contributing.  Flynn Downes superb until given a rest and it was pleasing to see Shea Charles play well when he came on.  Joe Aribo again showed what a force he can be at this level and Stuart Armstrong was back to his best, having been a bit ropey last time out.  Joe Rothwell... well you can't have everything can you?  What a strange player he is.

There was a much better balance about the team today of course because we had our first-choice defence out there, containing a right back and a left back and our best combination of central defenders.  None of the defenders had a thing to do defensively as any threat from Preston completely failed to materialise. Three wins out of three since we abandoned the Jack Stephens in midfield and left back hybrid thing.  Left back today was of course Ryan Manning and he was excellent and it should be no surprise to anybody that our first choice back four, that played in the majority of the unbeaten run, looked really solid today.

It was the perfect day for Russell Martin outside of the injury to Baz. Three points, very comfortable, some important players like Flynn Downes got a rest and we move on to Cardiff on Saturday knowing that a win there will put us right back in the mix. We couldn’t, could we?

Up the fucking Saints.

EFL Championship Match 41 - Southampton 3 Watford 2

Mental

Watford for the fourth time this season, having played them in the FA Cup twice and also the return fixture in the league. We are undefeated over those three games but need slightly more than to just remain undefeated today.  The most important of the three games played so far was of course the league game at Vicarage Road which we made a bollocks off in the last minute when THB made a bad decision as to whether to head away a punt upfield or let it run, and then Baz produced one of his famous dives that go nowhere and the ball went into the middle of the goal. It was a real “for fuck‘s sake“ moment…. Two points in the bin.

Whilst the first three games against Watford were amazingly against the same manager, Valerian Ishmael, eventually went the way of all other Watford managers and was sacked a month or so ago to be replaced with Tom Cleverley, the recently retired former Manchester United player who, because he played for Manchester United, won several caps for England, at a time when they really must’ve been fucking giving them away.  Cleverley the manager though, has made a decent start with Watford unbeaten in five though it is of course too late to do anything meaningful about this season with them destined to finish smack bang in the middle of the table. In theory, they should be the perfect opposition for us today, or so I thought, until they battled to a 0-0 draw at Portman Road against Ipswich a few days ago. Watford will bring a competitive edge to this game in the shape of good old Wesley Hoedt at the back and his partner Ryan Porteous, who has been a complete thug in all the games that we’ve had against them so far this season. Hopefully we get a referee who knows what he’s doing.

Yes, the midweek results were truly interesting with us picking up three points, in amongst a defeat for Leicester and draws for Leeds and Ipswich. The question of “is it back on?“, still has an answer of no but let’s revisit it after our next three games. Win today, at home to Preston on Tuesday and away at Cardiff next Saturday and it might look a bit more feasible and the answer to the question at that point we will probably be “maybe“.  I am still very firmly of the opinion at this moment, that we fucked it by not beating Middlesbrough and then losing to Ipswich.

On the subject of the promotion race, currently top are Leicester City, who have had a bit of a cloud hanging over them in the shape of Profit and Sustainability charges hanging over them from last season in the Premier League, when they of course got relegated.  The news has just come in that they can’t possibly face any points penalty deductions this season, mainly because there is nothing written in the rules that says that the EFL can impose any punishments for breaches whilst in the Premier League.  Bit of a joke really. The EFL statement, and I’m paraphrasing here, basically says that you committed these offences last season and you have massively benefited this season as a result, but we can’t do anything about it because it didn’t happen in our league. The final pisstake will be if they get promoted, found guilty and get a points deduction next season. With more and more clubs falling foul of the rules and just dragging it out through a legal process, I feel there needs to be a change of approach from the people who administer the game.  In Leicester‘s case, I don’t feel that they should be allowed to be promoted until they have proved that they haven’t broken any rules. So – put a date on it and tell them they have to prove innocence before then.  That would speed the process up rather than what we have now which is the governing body having to prove that they are guilty which is subject to legal challenge and delay all over the place. I know this is basically saying you are guilty until proven innocent, but the current system we have of sorting out these issues, let alone when they fall between two governing bodies, is an absolute joke.

Back here, Russell Martin has some decisions to make today in his starting lineup, namely restoring Jan Bednarek or the team or not and if he does, is it in place of Martin’s son, Jack Stephens or do we change formation and do the Poundshop Pep thing. Personally, I think he has to bite the bullet and bring Bednarek back in and leave Stephens out as leaving everything else aside, we didn’t do the Poundshop thing on Tuesday and won our first game in four. Bednarek and THB are our best combination and that’s all there is to it.

The one problem I have with playing to conventional back four is that it would include James Bree, who, despite what many seem to think, I don’t think has been playing well enough to warrant being in the side after being partially or wholly at fault for goals against Ipswich and Coventry.  He does not fill me with confidence. The other question pertains to whether Stuart Armstrong comes back into the team in place of either Joe Aribo or Russell Martin’s other son, Will Smallbone. To me, this is an absolute no brainer as Joe Aribo has been our best player over the last three games.  Bring on 2pm.

It's 2pm and the team news and perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s the same lineup that played against Coventry. The only tweak appears to be on the bench with Ryan Manning replacing Shea Charles.  Of more interest in the concourse is Leeds versus Blackburn on the screens with Sammie Szmodics scoring with ten minutes to go and Blackburn holding on relatively comfortably.  More incentive.

Away we go with Smallbone to Aribo in the middle of the park, out left to KWP and onto Adam Armstrong to have a run at Porteous.. but all he does it switch it onto his right foot to sling it into the box and there is Smallbone, completely unmarked, rising to head easily into the net past a static Bachmann, as he looks at a static Hoedt and a static Pollock. What a start. Get in.

Watford really don’t look arsed as Bachmann kicks one short out Dele-Bashiru on the edge of the box and he pisses around with it and Smallbone slides in and pokes it to Brooks.  One return ball later and Smallbone is through and the option of squaring to Arma is there but the eyes light up and he lashes it over the bar.

It’s all us though and it seems like a matter of time.  Aribo and Adam Armstrong combine again to feed KWP who is faced with two defenders but he muscles his way past the much bigger Porteous and takes out the other with a ball across, where in front of his own goal, Dele-Bashiru slices the clearance and it looks like it’s going out for a corner but David Brooks keeps it alive and instinctively knocks it back to the edge of the six-yard box and Che  Adams is there to poke it into the net. Two fucking nil already – love it lads.

Watford look absolutely there for the taking and Aribo dances in from the right, beating three players with body swerves but just as we’re about to witness goal of the season, he loses it.  Watford have their first chance when Hoedt goes through the back of Brooks but no free-kick is give and they break down our left with Asprilla under pressure from KWP, flashes a shot wide.  Watford seem to suddenly fancy it and once more, Asprilla causes havoc, burrowing into he penalty area before dragging it across goal again.

We are suddenly not holding the ball in midfield and Watford are now the better side. We don’t seem to be able to keep possession and Watford keep picking it up in midfield and Kayembe gets into the box but it’s cleared by THB back out to Porteous who hammers it, flicking off Jack Stephens head giving Baz no chance.  Fuck, and Watford are back in it. We’ve done our usual and stepped off the gas for ten minutes and of course, we have conceded.

We have one more chance ourselves before half time as we break and Downes fires up a bomb towards Adam Armstrong, that he brings down brilliantly before finding a bit of room and firing over the bar.  A positive end after a very dodgy twenty minutes or so.

We just have to get back on it after half time.  Another goal and these will pack it in and it’ll be comfortable.  No changes and away we go.  Russell has obviously noticed that the right to left diagonal is one and it’s another big one from THB out to Adam Armstrong and once again, he takes it down well before make his way across the penalty area and over the bar again.

After that, it’s back to being not great again and Watford are swarming all over us trying to force a mistake at the back. We are passing it around like the kamikaze player from the back merchants that we are but there is a collective cringe when Baz has to deal with something horrible and bobbly coming his way.  It’s nearly 2-2 when Lewis hangs up a cross at the back post which Porteous meets and it’s past Baz but THB has got back behind him to hack it off the line.

Early subs on 55 minutes with Stuart Armstrong and Ryan Fraser on for Brooks and Aribo.  The correct players caming off I feel as Aribo has looked tired and Brooks has not been involved since Watford got more aggressive with their press and has been a bit of a passenger.   There’s another decent chance for Watford but Chakvetadze lashes at it and Row Z’s it.

The game becomes a bit of a stodge in midfield until Saints manage a nice bit of play and Adam Armstrong is put away behind the defence on the right and he gets his head up and puts it across to Wee Man, who takes one touch and smashes it past Bachman into the net but the fucking flag has gone up straight away. Unless he’s decided late that Armstrong is offside, I don’t really see what the problem is here but regardless, disallowed.  The free-kick is taken from where Fraser was though, so either Wee Man has been brainless with his run or the decision is plain wrong.  Anyway, Manning on for Bree who looks like he’s limping.

Ten to go and more subs and we look to close the game down.  For reasons unknown, the industrious Adams is replaced with Mara and in addition, Jan Bednarek is on for Smallbone, which means Stephens going to midfield and Downes taking Smallbone’s place.  It all looks a bit makeshift and it almost immediately costs us as a ball forward is misjudged by Downes in the centre of the pitch and substitute Kone picks it up behind Stephens and works his way to the edge of the box and passes it superbly into the far corner. For fuck‘s sake.

Playoffs It Is Then....

It unsurprisingly gets a bit feisty now and there are a couple of flashpoints.  Firstly, Wee Man flies into Bachmann, trying to win a ball he was perfectly entitled to go for and the Watford keeper goes for the full roll-around until it becomes obvious that Wee Man is only getting a yellow card.  Then he instantly goes from ‘dead’ to ‘perfectly ok’.  It’s the sort of thing that should get you booked for attempting to deceive an official.  Secondly, Porteous hits the deck with the finger of accusation being pointed at Sekou Mara.  I didn’t really see it but big bad hard man Porteous hitting the deck under challenge from Mara is as amusing as it comes.

Ninety minutes up and 6 goes up on the board.  The first real action if extra time is Manning getting a good ball over from the left, which Adam Armstrong volleys into the ground but it’s one of those ones it one of those ones that’s dropping in the net and Bachmann makes his first save of the game.  Bachmann has clearly enjoyed being centre stage for the last few minutes and now is wasting time every time he gets the ball.  Arsehole.

With an unlikely tilt at the top two fading away, Saints win a free kick 40 yards out as big donkey Rajovic tries a wrestling throw on Bednarek.  In it comes from Manning and Bednarek’s header is deflected wide for a corner. We are now in the eight minute of the six added.  In it comes from Manning, flicked on by THB and someone at the back post pokes it into the net.  Pandemonium. I’m up the other end and have no idea who has scored but all I know is that no flag is up, the ref is pointing the middle, we don’t have to wait ten minutes for some prick at Stockleigh Park to analyse it and even though all the Watford players are appealing for something, it's a fucking goal.  I can see a big pile of bodies in the opposite corner to me and I can see Bachmann holding his head in despair.  Good. Wanker.  Flynn Downes is announced as the goalscorer and one boot forward from the kick off and it’s done.  Mental again.

Loan players Eh?

This club is going to fucking kill me, I swear.

Being 2-0 up we should’ve course won comfortably but that’s not the Southampton way is it? Oh no, we’ve got a throw in an hour of being incredibly average and allowing the opposition, who have absolutely nothing to play for, to probably be the better side over that period in which they scored two goals.  Having been handed a potential olive branch (let’s call it that) with all the other sides at the top falling over, we look destined to absolutely not grasp it… and then we score in the 98th minute In front of about 80% of the crowd that was there at the start because loads had fucked off home at that point. Ridiculous football club, just ridiculous.

It absolutely seemed like it was going to be a stroll in the park after we took the lead within two minutes as Watford couldn’t really be arsed to close down the cross from Adam Armstrong and no one was picking up Will Smallbone in the middle. Nice and easy, 1-0. It all looked plain sailing straight after that with David Brooks and ultimately Che Adams benefiting from a shite missed clearance in front of goal.  Watford looked like they couldn’t have been less bothered and Saints at that stage looked like they were going to score six or seven.

As is always the case though, when we step off the gas for any period of time, we concede a goal. We step off the gas so often, I wonder if we are trying to save money. We are absolutely incapable of playing below full throttle and not throwing a goal in. There had been warnings before Porteous’ deflected strike hit the net.

In the second half, to me, though we had a couple a half chances and then the disallowed goal for Ryan Fraser.  In real time I of course thought that he should never be offside in that scenario and I was blaming the Wee Man for being a little bit brainless but when you look at a replay, Wee Man has got it spot-on and there is absolutely no way that that should be given as offside.  That would have killed the game stone dead but I never really felt like we were in control and Watford deserved their equaliser which was to be fair, a lovely finish by Kone.  It was a goal that had started with a typically embarrassing effort of a challenge by our centre forward substitute Sekou Mara, who gets worse with every passing game.  Downes and Stephens didn’t cover themselves in glory either.

It looked like everything was shite in extra time but thanks to Watford time-wasting, there was enough time left for us to win the corner which Ryan Manning produced from and THB and Flynn Downes did the rest to send everybody still in the ground absolutely bananas.

As you expect from such an up-and-down game, it was a bit of a mixed bag with regards to individual performances. Joe Aribo wasn’t quite the force of the past couple of weeks and looked tired. Adam Armstrong on the other hand had a really good game and bizarrely, had a really good “first touch” game, which is not always a strength of his to put it politely. I thought the star of the show however was THB, particularly in the second half when we were under pressure.

The substitutions were interesting to say the least. The right players in Brooks and Aribo were replaced but the replacements Ryan Fraser and Stuart Armstrong didn’t exactly set the world alight.  Stu in particular really struggled to get to the pace of the game.  Because we didn’t have Shea Charles on the bench, we made another substitution which resulted in Jack Stephens going into midfield which was a substitution made to close the game down at 2-1 and when that didn’t work, it looked like that substitution, as well as taking Che Adams off for Mara, had been a massive mistake as we now needed a goal. However, we came out smiling.  Was it handball?  Inconclusive I'd say - hits his chest first and you can't really see after that.  Most of the Watford players appealed but I kind of think that everyone is conditioned to appeal these days if it's anywhere near an arm, so I wouldn't take that as too much of a guide.

Russell Threatens to Punch Legal Threats in the Face

Watford manager Tom Cleverley made an absolute prick of himself post-match.  Complained about the time being added on to injury time, which was mainly caused by his goalkeeper wasting time. Complained that there was a handball on the winner, which isn;t really conclusive. He also complained that we apparently should’ve had a red card for a challenge on Daniel Bachmann, who rolled around until it was obvious that there wasn’t gonna be a red card and then got up and was perfectly okay. Go fuck yourself Tom.  Tom didn’t complain too much about the Ryan Fraser disallowed goal which would’ve killed the game stone dead and because that decision wrongly went in Watford’s favour, it enabled them to go straight up our end and equalise.  Get the Fraser decision right and the extra time and the possible handball would be irrelevant.  He made some bizarre comment about there being millions on the line for Leeds, Leicester and Ipswich.  Yes mate, don’t know why you care about Leicester in particular but both of they need the millions to spend paying off the squads that they’ve got that they can’t afford.  Fucking ex-Man United dickhead.  Oh yes, it’s the first game he’s lost so of course he has to make every excuse under the sun. It’s ingrained. Fucking idiot.

I said after the last game that we needed to win this one, Preston on Tuesday and Cardiff next Saturday and if we manage that, then we could be right back in it.  Nothing really has changed but if we are looking at the teams we need to catch, then Leeds defeat at home to Blackburn, Leicester’s defeat away to Plymouth and Ipswich not managing to beat Middlesbrough at home, have meant that it’s two game weeks in a row where we have been the only team in the top four to win. Stranger things have happened. It’s also massively funny to see Leeds and Leicester shitting the bed, whatever happens from here on in.

Part 1 of our three part challenge to get seriously in the mix again has been completed.  Part 2 is on Tuesday at home to Preston.  Up the fucking Saints.