More
points to be possibly had today, with a trip to the Vitality Shed to play
Bournemouth in a game that has become bigger for us because of our result
against Ipswich at the weekend. Much though Cherries fans would like us to
believe it’s a bigger game for us because we are playing them, it’s simply a
bigger game because we only have one point from five games so far and this is
an opportunity against another team in the bottom half…. not an easy
opportunity of course, but an opportunity nonetheless given the glimpses of
life we showed against Manchester United and Ipswich.
I’ve watched a couple of Bournemouth games this season on the TV and in one of
them against Chelsea at home, they were very unlucky to come away with a
last-minute 1-0 defeat. To be honest, they were the better side and have a team
with a lot of pace in it. Where they are struggling of course is up front,
having lost their main striker, Dominic Solanke, to Spurs for a ridiculously
high £65 million fee. They paid £40 million for his replacement, a Brazilian
called Evanilson and he hasn’t scored yet, so a fixture against Saints is a
dream for him. Hang on, £65 million and
£40 million… for the last few years Bournemouth have always traded at
ridiculously high levels of transfer fee, which is completely at odds with the
11,000 capacity shed that they playing in. Have no fear though as apparently, they are
going to increase the capacity to a whopping 16,000 in the next few years. Just
how much is their income? How are they doing on PSR? So many questions about
Bournemouth’s past and their financing under the mysterious Max Demin, but he’s
gone now so a bit like Leicester City, they have got away with it.
As I said, on the pitch they seem to have a decent side despite losing Solanke,
well managed by Andoni Iraola, who survived a dodgy start last year to keep
Bournemouth well away from the relegation zone at the end of the season. The
results this season haven’t been fantastic however, with their only win being a
ridiculous comeback from 2-0 down with 10 minutes to go at Goodison Park. You
certainly aren't going to do that every week and I guess questions have to be
asked how they managed to go two behind to Everton in the first place. So, as I
said, this is an opportunity and it feels like one of those games where if we
play well and don’t give anything away, we will have a very good chance to get
some points but if we shit the bed, we will undoubtably get beat again and the
pressure will grow.
Saints have arrived in a place where we are struggling to score goals and our
major hope in attacking sense is an 18-year-old. Said 18-year-old is attracting
a lot of attention in the media since scoring his first goal last weekend with
all the usual suspects and their client media piping up. Hopefully Cameron
Archer can take some of the attention away from Tyler Dibling today and have
people talking about him next week and how he’s finally got off the mark. Maybe
we’ll be talking about Ryan Fraser scoring against his old club.
Team news is in and it’s weird. It’s one
of those ones where you don’t know how to react. You don’t want to be negative
before the game has started but on the face of it, you look at it and wonder if
you’re going to be saying “I told you so” at the end of it. Big Les is in for
Adam Lallana which I assume is a fitness issue (despite our last game being 9 days ago) and Max Cornet is in the side in
place of Cameron Archer which I assume means that he’s going to be playing as
the central striker.
As kick-off approaches, I got a sense of foreboding that Russell's gonna be doing
something fucking dumb and that we were probably going to play without a
proper number 9, like we did in those three games at the start of the season
when we were shit and didn’t score. On the bench were all four strikers who
were supposed to be our guys for goals this season – Archer, Armstrong, Brereton
Diaz and Stewart. That kind of says it all about how much the manager rates
them. Also on the bench was Tall Paul so we could be throwing all five of them
on if it goes really badly. This game has suddenly just got even more massive
for Russell Martin because it is absolutely guaranteed that if you make left field
changes which most people will think are weird, and it doesn’t work, you are
absolutely wide open to criticism.
As the game started it was even more weird than I imagined. Fraser and Cornet
were on the wings and both Matty Fernandes and Dibling were pushing up from
midfield. Basically, it was a return of the 4-6-0 formation which is a
striker-free variation, similar to the 5-5-0 formation that had been so abysmally shit
for us in the first three games of the season.
Regardless of my scepticism, it started pretty well with Wee Man, with a
cacophony of not many Bournemouth fans giving him pelters, lifting a ball down
the left flank for Big Les to gallop away from Adam Smith and his pull-back
into the middle was met on the edge of the box by Cornet and his first time
effort skewed off of Senesi’s head flew very narrowly wide. Unlucky.
Like me, Bournemouth seem a little bit confused by our formation and a shit back pass to Kepa, is scuffed away by the keeper as far as Wee Man thirty yards
out and he knocks it forward before smashing it but Kepa gets down well to pull
off the second save easily enough. Would’ve been a beautiful moment if the Wee Man
scored but never mind.
Not Scored For Your New Club? Have No Fear
So, mainly us so far, with Bournemouth not producing much. On 18 minutes, a hopeful ball is knocked forward by Bournemouth and Downes runs into Semenyo and Michael Oliver can’t wait to give a free kick. The ball stops rolling and Tavernier chips it first time over the Saints defence and Evanilson latches onto it and gets a toe to the volley, sending it across Ramsdale and into the far corner. For fucks sake. Downes and Ugochukwu are still throwing their arms around about the free-kick being given against us and no one was switched on. Pathetic.
It’s nearly 2-0 straight away as soon as Senesi puts Outtara away down the left-hand side and his low cross is crying out to be tapped in until Taylor comes across from left back to clear it away. We seem to have gone full Man United at home and gone to shit at the first setback. The respite is brief however. Senesi up to Evanilson who holds it up and turns, finding Christie who spreads it wide to Semenyo and his low cross is hit by Cook and deflected by Outtara in front of Ramsdale, giving the keeper no chance again. It’s not offside because we’ve done what we did against Ipswich in that we have seven defenders in the six-yard box and none on the edge of the box and one of them then hasn’t pushed out. Fucking ridiculous.
Bournemouth now look like they’re gonna score every single time they go forward and Semenyo is found out on the right hand side and he easily beats Ugochukwu and turns Downes and THB inside out before firing across Ramsdale and into the far corner again. It’s embarrassing and the fact of the matter is that the manager has fucked it from the start of the game and the players have compounded the error by giving up. Wankers.
It’s absolutely grim and more by luck than judgement, we get to half-time just the three goals behind. No doubt the changes that should’ve been made when the team was being picked or even when we went one down, will now be made. There is an unofficial “three-goal rule” whereby you are excused from leaving the ground/turning off the TV if you are three goals behind but those with a morbid curiosity to continue would see three half-time substitutions with the bringing on of a centre forward in Ross Stewart, midfielder in Joe Aribo and a dustman in Ben Brereton Diaz. Max Cornet and Ryan Fraser are unsurprisingly removed, as it is Big Les who had a good five minutes and was then Big Hologram. Unsurprisingly, we have reverted to the formation that we should’ve had from the start. I know formations aren’t important to Russell but maybe they fucking should be.
The game is completely dead and you can tell from the start of the second half that Bournemouth are just going through the motions. Saints get on top and actually look like we have a business in being out there on the pitch. We win a free-kick over on the right hand which is swung in by Dibling, met by THB and well saved by Kepa. Taylor retrieves it back to Fernandes and his cross is met by the stooping THB, getting his head to the ball and sending it bouncing into the far side of the net. 35 minutes left to make the game interesting.
THB's consolation Goal with 40 minutes to go
Tyler is really struggling even though we’ve gone back to a normal formation, but shows a bit of life to drive up the pitch, leaving players in his wake but when he loses the ball when he reaches the Bournemouth back line, one pass forward to Cook, then another pass forward to Evanilson and he’s clean through on Ramsdale but takes a shot early and thankfully straight at the keeper.
Lallana is on for Fernandes, despite him playing pretty well in the second half once the formation changed, and Lallana immediately sets about making us tick and his ball finds Dibling on the right. The pass in towards Lallana is half cleared as far as Downes and his first time volleyed pass finds BBD on the left hand corner of the 6 yard box but all he can do is knock it sideways across the goal and no one can get to it. Once he chose to use his right foot instead of his left, that was always going to happen.
Archer is now on for Dibling, with no time to make an impact, though we do look a bit lively as Stewart comes short to pick up a Downes pass and puts it out to Sugawara on the right. He finds a yard and slings it over and Stewart throws himself at it and nearly connects and we win a corner. It might not seem like a big deal but it stands out because that was proper attacking.
Christie has an effort on the volley from 25 yards which goes into the side netting and I’m amazed it didn’t go in and we have one final chance to get anything happening when the impressive Aribo gets bundled over at 25 yards out and Sugawara added to the fucking terrible game he’d had by curling a free kick straight to the goalkeeper about six foot above all the players he was aiming at. Absolute shit. So, all in all, after the THB goal, we didn’t have a shot on target despite Bournemouth going through the motions and not attacking much.
Well fuck off and that was fucking shit. First of all, I’m not having any talk about “well we won the second half”. Fuck right off. Bournemouth just strolled through the second half because they had already won the game. The only relevance lies in the first half because Russell Martin had nine days to pick a team and come up with tactics and the first half was an indication of how well that went. Absolute wank. It took Bournemouth about ten minutes to come to terms with our weird tactical set up when the centre backs realised that hey could push up as far as they liked on Dibling and Fernandes and they wouldn’t be able to handle it or influence the game. In our opening ten minutes of “surprise”, we of course didn’t score but once they’d sussed it, they pissed all over us for the rest of the first half, scoring three goals that they didn’t particularly have to work hard for, whilst Russell Martin sat on his hands and didn’t correct the rather obvious flaw in the plan. With a striker in front of Dibling and Fernandes, the centre backs would have to drop deeper, giving the young lads more space and facing the right way ... duh!
Teams like Saints who are struggling in the bottom half of the league, need to play with a central striker. Not playing with one, for me is almost as stupid as playing without a fucking goalkeeper. We are not Spain 2012, we are not Man City without Haaland. When your team is not top level, not having a central striker means that you are incredibly unlikely to score and you are incredibly unlikely to even get near the opposition goal in open play because you have no focal point. I know the modern game has changed but there are some undeniable football truths out there for fuck‘s sake. The biggest crime of the selection was the effect it had on two of our brightest players with both Tyler Dibling and Matty Fernandes becoming lost and getting in each other’s way and losing the ball with their back to goal on the half way line with big centre backs up their arse. Neither played well in the first half because they are two players who are getting used to playing in the Premier League and suddenly they’re having to play in a way that is completely different to them on top of that. So, two of our brightest attacking players were in affect neutered by our own tactics.
The second half can only be used in the context of learning. What I learned from the second half was that the formation was better (but then we knew that before the game). Also, KWP has to come back into the team because he’s better than both of the full-backs who we had playing – it’s that simple. Joe Aribo is miles clear of Big Les, who does the odd good thing that it’s just not enough in a struggling team, to disappear as much as he does. Maybe you can get away with it at Chelsea when you are on top for the majority of the game but not here. Ross Stewart did okay as a centre forward and he certainly has more about him than a lot of the other options. Ben Brereton Diaz is officially an embarrassment. He didn't even win a free-kick for his dive today. All I can say is that the standard of Chilean football must be absolutely honking if he gets a game.
If the game wasn’t lost with the original selection, it was lost the second we didn’t react to going behind and conceded a second goal. The first Bournemouth goal was courtesy of a quick free-kick that we didn’t react to, even though we knew Bournemouth like a quick free kick. Big Les and Downes were too busy turning their back and waving their arms around at the referee, to bother to stop the freekick being taken and THB compounded the error by not paying attention to either the free-kick or the striker he was supposed to be marking. As said, the second goal was a combination of the Ipswich mistake - defenders too deep and no one on the edge and, the Manchester United mistake - Flynn Downes not pushing out like your taught to do when you’re about 10 years old. Two goals and two big involvements by the centre forward. Who’d have thought it Russell?
The third goal was down to the skill and directness of Semenyo who turned three of our players inside out before firing into the far corner giving Ramsdale no chance yet again. Good goal but half-arsed in the extreme from us.
Semenyo Gives Thanks For The Space We Gave Him
Our goal came when we actually put some pressure on the opposition box with THB is header being saved by Kepa, recycled and crossed back in by Fernandes for THB head home. So, whilst the first half was as miserable as it gets, the second improved a tiny bit, helped by Bournemouth who were just seeing the game out. Having scored, there was not enough urgency to get back into it. Out attacking efforts were summed up in the 86th minute when we got a throw about 10 yards from the goal line. It’s an attacking opportunity – you can take a long throw into the mixer or you can bounce a throw back to the taker who can cross it. Not us though, oh no. Two goals behind with four minutes to go and we throw it backwards and two passes later it's all the way back to Ramsdale because we are a team that can’t read the game situation and can’t think on their feet. Four minutes to go plus injury time and we think going back to the goalkeeper is a better option than getting it into the box. For fucks sake.
We scored when we put the ball in the box and for me, the best part entire game was the bit in the second half when Ross Stewart knocked the ball out to Sugawara, then span into the box and nearly connected with the cross. Again, those undeniable truths in football - getting the ball in the box with players flying in is a pretty good way to try and score a goal but that’s not in the Russell Martin playbook - well it might be but it just doesn't happen enough. I go back to Ralph Hasenhuttl and the red zone, which is central in the middle of the penalty area to roughly the edge of the 'D' – that’s where you need the ball and that’s where you need some players.
As I feared before the start of the game, it turned out to be a diabolical day for Russell Martin and if there was an approval rating for managers amongst the fanbase, he’s probably gone from about 85% before the game, down to a solid 25% after the game. When you have nine days to think about it and then impose weird left field shit tactics and get hammered by Bournemouth, that is always going to happen. There was nothing much wrong with the way that we played against Ipswich and the team and tactics did not need changing. Yes, it turned out that the Lallana wasn’t fit to start but starting without a centre forward was absolutely fucking ridiculous. He said something afterwards which basically implied he wanted to win the game off the bench with the strikers, which in turn implies that he was limiting our chances of scoring until the strikers come on. Saints are not good enough to take an hour off from trying to score a goal. It’s in the territory of crazy ramblings of a delusional man. The people who slag the possession style of play no matter what, will be screaming and that is an issue (the 86th minute throw-in move) but much more than that, trying to be too clever is what I’m most angry about. We have been searching this season for a combination that might get us points in this league and since we switched to a back four for the Manchester United game, there has been some promising signs against both United and Ipswich. Russell Martin talks a lot about not having fear in the Premier League but he fucking does, because why else would he radically change the tactics for Bournemouth?
I agreed with a lot of what Russell Martin said in his post-match interviews, namely that the players basically gave up after the first setback. When the questioning was turned on him though and focused on the fact we had five strikers on the bench and none on the pitch, he didn’t really have any answers other than to get tetchy about it. Fuck around and find out, especially if it doesn’t work.
There were two quotes of note from the Bournemouth camp. One was from Antoine Semenyo, who basically said that you just have to keep pressing the Saints defenders and they will give you something. The way he said it implied that his manager had basically said it’s inevitable that they will give you something. The manager himself Iraola, came out with an absolute pearler when he said “I’d rather have chances than possession”. Spot-on mate. If you have to choose one it has to be that one. Having lots of possession is fine but only if you have chances to show for it.
So, six games in and four of the games were decent points winning opportunities and we have a grand total of one point. I was optimistic we’d get it right before tonight, but this was massively deflating. In addition, now the fixtures get rather difficult with a visit to the Emirates to play Arsenal. Great. Following that, it's a defining game against Leicester, then a write-off at Manchester City and another defining game against Wolves. If we don't win either of the 'easier' games in the next four then Russell Martin's approval rating in the Sport Republic Boardroom is going to be very questionable indeed and if he repeats this striker-less shit, even against City or Arsenal, then my personal approval rating of Russell Martin will probably be zero.
Up the Fucking Saints
No comments:
Post a Comment