Premier League Match 14 - Southampton 1 Chelsea 5

 

Count the Twats in this Photograph

What we have here is a meeting between Southampton, with not many good Premier League players and most of them being unavailable, and Chelsea who have about forty Premier League quality players, some of whom haven’t even been given a squad number. Such as life in the Premier League and it would be totally unfair if we didn’t have such a rigorous Financial Fair Play System and VAR to level the playing fields between the haves and they have nots.  My mum always told me not to be sarcastic.

Chelsea have surprised many this season with Enzo Maresca moulding a team together that at this moment in time, is looking like the second-best team in the country behind Liverpool. The players that were ruthlessly discarded at the start of the season, seem to have been discarded correctly and on the pitch, Chelsea are firing despite every transfer window seeming to be a shambolic scattergun monopoly money effort by Todd Boehly.  Not that Chelsea fans care where the money comes from.  There seems something essentially wrong about the huge fees and eight-year deals and amortisation and all that but they haven’t broken any rules that anyone could enforce and that’s the key.  Every time a new rule is brought in, find a way round it.

Leading the way for the Blues this season has of course been Cole Palmer who has gone from being a bit-part player with Manchester City to the future of English International football in just over a year.  Chelsea would appear to have found the centre forward they have been missing for years as well in Nicolas Jackson who, although he misses a lot, scores enough to keep him near the top of the goalscoring charts in the Premier League, so you can’t really knock it.

The midfield looks to be very strong with usually two out of £100 million Caicedo, £100 million Enzo Fernandez and £50 million Romeo Lavia being chosen. Romeo Lavia of course left Saints a year and a half ago with endless potential and a seemingly suspect attitude towards putting in the work to stay fit. After virtually a year out with the yet another injury, he has at times this year kept out Enzo Fernandez, an Argentinian World Cup winner.

By contrast, in midfield today, Saints have anyone who can stand up and vaguely play that position because of suspensions to Flynn Downes and injuries to Adam Lallana and ineligibility of Lesley Ugochukwu who cannot play against his parent club. The three in there today are most likely to be Aribo, Fernandes and AN Other.  Our defence is also going to be decidedly makeshift as well with both starting central defenders, THB and Bednarek being out. Jack Stephens is likely to be partnering out of position fullbacks in the back three today, in front of our fourth-choice goalkeeper.  Yes, the comparison between Saints and Chelsea is plainly ridiculous.

Yes, we shouldn’t have a fucking prayer of doing anything today and even if we do, we’ve still got to get past VAR. The shambles of our last three games has been gathering some interest nationally but no one outside of Southampton really cares and there is one thing you can guarantee, we won’t get given a soft decision today, so it’s just as well that apologies and acknowledgement from PGMOL and sympathy from virtually every national media pundit are worth more than Premier League points.  Oh sorry mum, there goes that sarcasm again.

What I’ve enjoyed in particular about the VAR shambles is the way people have fallen over themselves to justify why Arsenal’s goal against us got given and our goal against Brighton got ruled out. Just fuck off. You’re not fooling anybody.

Back to today and the Chelsea team sheet is as interesting as ours. They’ve made seven changes, but their team still looks very strong, as you would expect as they’ve spent billions on their squad. We look positively mid-table Championship but here we go. Lumley keeps his place in goal and there are starts for Nathan Wood, James Bree, Ryan Manning and Ryan Fraser. Our midfield looks our strongest area with Aribo and Fernandes but they are up against £200 million worth. My first reaction was to think that Maresca is being incredibly arrogant with changing all these players from his usual first choice, but when you see that some of the players bought in are the likes of Madueke, Nkunku and Joao Felix, then I guess all that he is doing is picking a team that he thinks is strong enough to win the game.

We look half decent in the opening five minutes and cause a few problems but the first time Chelsea get our half they win a corner which is swung in from the left by Enzo and Disasi gets up ahead of a really wet, limp attempt at a punch by Lumley and nods into the net at the near post. The word pathetic doesn’t even do that justice.  Lumley is saying that Cucurella fouled him and there’s a suggestion of a nudge but not enough. The only chance of getting that is throwing yourself on the ground.

Saints look unaffected and go forward with Manning finding KWP who puts in Archer behind Gusto. Archers finds KWP again, who manages to spin past Enzo’s weak challenge before knocking into the middle where Aribo has arrived, just like he did against Leicester and easily knocks in the pullback for 1-1.  Get in!  Some proper half-arsed Chelsea defending and we need to look to keep taking advantage of their makeshift defence and new keeper.

Joe Shuts Up the Chelsea Fans Until Our Next Disaster

Before we have any chance to start enjoying it and revelling in the Chelsea fans silence, Lumley has the ball five yards outside his penalty area and knocks a ball out to KWP and it’s fucking suicide-ball again as Chelsea swarm him and Madueke nicks the ball and passes it past Lumley to Nkunku and with Lumley floundering around twenty yards from goal, he rolls into the empty net. Once again, pathetic doesn’t even begin to cover it.

No, The Goalkeeper Isn't Supposed to be There

Lumley then has to have a few minutes of people cheering every time he actually clears the ball but he’s called into serious action as Joao Felix spreads the ball from left to right and Cole Palmer is through and Lumley dives the wrong way but the ball hits his outstretched hand and bounces off a post for a corner. Danger, not over of course as Palmer swings it in and it’s another bombscare as Tosin gets up and his header bounces off the bar.

And then the game dies as a contest as Chelsea cut us open and Felix finds Madueke, who runs at Manning who doesn’t get close enough and the Chelsea and England man easily passes it into the far corner.  A really good finish but again, really easy and 3-1

We are still gamely having a go and Archer picks up the ball on the left and wins a corner.  Bree trots over to take it, but before he does so, there is a scuffle between Stephens and Cucarella and the Spanish hairnet model is rolling around like he’s been shot. Players surround Stephens and the stricken Spaniard who clearly is not injured at all and then the referee gets involved and we are off to VAR.

Tony, Tony, Stockley Park here, this is urgent

What is it?

Hair pull on Cucurella by Stephens

I don’t believe it mate – he’s the captain and everything

We know… however, do you remember the last time someone pulled Cucurella’s hair

Yeah, that Romero thug at Spurs threw him on the ground and Big Mikey Dean ignored it because he was allegedly on the gear in the VAR room

That’s the one, anyway, this is a red card now, as it should have been then.

So Stephens knew this was a red and did it anyway

Sure did

What a twat, red card it is then.

It’s all change and we moved to a back four with KWP at right back and an amazing centre back pairing of James Bree and Nathan Wood, which you wouldn’t even put out in the Carabao Cup.  Another Chelsea corner on the left, another in swinger another absolute bomb scare from Lumley and the ball lands with Tosin to crack it against the post and somehow we get to halftime without any further damage.  This is fucking miserable, and the only consolation is that we can no longer lose this game 9-0 because we have already scored. There are however, with the rain and the red card and the fact it’s an evening game, undeniable parallels to that infamous Leicester home game.

The ten men are doing considerably better than the eleven did at the start of the second half after we survive the opening thirty seconds when Felix has a free header at the back post and somehow puts it wide.  Fernandes and Archer combine to send Aribo away down the left and his low cross is met by Fernandes from six yards, but his effort hits Jorgenson‘s foot and is cleared away.  He really has to score there.
 
After that minor scare, Chelsea step it up and we are not getting anywhere because we haven’t got the ball.  Ryan Fraser and Adam Armstrong are done on the hour mark and replaced with the Chuckle Brothers of Sulemana and Brereton Diaz.  Archer follows to be replaced by Sugawara, which means BBD can go and be useless in another position. We then have a pitch invader who stewards half-heartedly chase around the pitch for a bit and when he eventually fucks off to go and receive his banning order from the ground, our concentration goes with him.  Chelsea come forward with Enzo running through our non-midfield and sending and Nkunku through and he bundles it past the goalkeeper and Palmer rolls it into an empty net.  How long to go?  Too fucking long and Sulemana gives the ball away once more and Gusto finds Sancho on the right and it’s too easy for him to drill it past Lumley at his near post and 5-1.

Chelsea don’t need to score any more so they don’t and thank fuck that’s over. All that’s left is to walk back to the car and oh good, it’s fucking pissing down. Miserable.

Well, we got the beating that we were expecting to get and with the team we were able to put out, no one should be in the slightest bit surprised. We would’ve lost anyway even if we kept eleven players on the pitch for the whole game and it’s worth remembering that we were 3-1 down already, before Jack Stephens did his thing.

Jack Stephens is the captain of the club and in a weakened team, therefore has to step up to the mark and lead by word and deed.  To do what he did is absolutely unforgivable and shows the mentality of a player who should not be the captain and if Russell Martin was a strong leader, he would be stripped of the captaincy during the four-game ban that he now has.  Of course didn’t pull Cucurella‘s hair hard enough to send him spinning into a vortex of pain on the St Mary’s turf but as everyone knows, Cucurella is going to make a meal of it and even if he doesn’t, what the fuck have you gained by tugging on his hair?  Basically, with VAR, you are always going to get sent off so you might as well have smacked him in the face and broken his fucking nose. Getting sent off in that manner he has let down absolutely everyone - the manager, the fans and most of all, his fellow players who then had to play an hour against one of the best teams in the country, with ten men. I’m not gonna be too critical of the players on the pitch in the second half because they had to make up for Captain Idiot, which made performing well that much harder.

Stephens should of course be stripped to the captaincy, and he should be fined two weeks wages. He clearly isn’t captain material. He’s managed to get himself sent off twice this season already, has already missed five games and is now going to miss another four. Let’s not forget that he got sent off for a stupid reckless tackle against Man United and then called the referee and assistant what all the fans were calling him today.  When you add into that the fact that as we all know, he isn’t a particularly good player and his performance in the opening half an hour was non-existent, there’s not really very much in his favour.  James Bree and Nathan Wood played reasonably well today and deserve the minutes on the pitch that Stephens would get in the future.

In the defence there were some decent individual performances from the likes of the aforementioned Bree, Wood, Ryan Manning and KWP, though as a unit, they were all over the fucking place but that wasn’t necessarily solely their fault.  In midfield, both Joe Aribo especially, and Ryan Fraser, were pretty good when they had the ball but neither of them picked up Chelsea players when we didn’t have possession, so Chelsea could always get out of defence and then Matty Fernandes was left more or less on his own trying to stem the side before they got to our back four. With players as good as Chelsea have got, it is a recipe for disaster if the midfield doesn’t track players and makes it too easy for them to get the ball to the likes of Palmer and Mudueke.

Flappity Flap, Bombscare, Goal

Joe Lumley - no goalkeeping, just vibes.  He had a decent game against Brighton, but it was always gonna come crashing down today. He’s basically a League One level goalkeeper and though he made some good saves in the second half, the damage was done with his incredibly wet attempt at a punch for the first goal and heaven only knows what the fuck he was trying to do with the second goal. His non-existence on corners was absolutely frightening and makes you realise how much better Alex McCarthy is as a goalkeeper, certainly in that regard. At least he has some presence when the ball gets crossed into the box and hopefully, he’s fit enough to start against Villa.

In the first half I thought we had acquitted ourselves pretty well and we caused them problems, only to be let down a couple of times by having no quality on the ball into the box. The one occasion that was different being the brilliance of KWP to set up Joe Aribo’s goal. Adam Armstrong, Ryan Fraser and Ryan Manning often found themselves in wide areas and the delivery was 100% picking out a Chelsea player. We did cause them a few problems in the first half until Chelsea upped a gear and just dominated possession and didn’t let us build many attacks at all but then, we got tired as we only had ten.

Russell Martin came out with the brave and proud of the players bullshit and highlighted the positives and I guess he has to do that because we have another game in three days.  He can rightly be proud of the effort of the remaining ten.  He dodged the Stephens questions with the catch-all “no one will be more disappointed than Jack”.  Really?  Will Jack be more disappointed than anyone who came to watch, or the rest of his teammates who then had to play against one of the best teams in the country with ten players?  Behind closed doors, he has got to tear a strip off of Stephens and it would be ironic if Stephens moment of fucking stupidity is what gets Russell Martin sacked given that he is the player that Russell has put the most faith in, despite not really deserving it.

A familiar moan about Russell today is that.he has got to realise that players as limited as we had on the pitch today are not capable of making the right decisions as to where to play the short quick passes out of our own penalty area. They are not good enough and they will make bad decisions. You've heard that phrase about polishing a turd, well we're not even polishing it, we are telling the turd that it's Brazil 1970 and sending it out on the pitch.  We got away with a few in the second half so it could have been even worse, in particular when Lumley knocked one absolutely suicidal ball to Nathan Wood that there was absolutely no need to play.  The noise around Russell Martin is only going to intensify after this defeat. It won’t be 100% because of the weakened team we had to put out and because of Stephens doing what he did, but we’ve given away yet another stupid goal, where the goalkeeper has felt empowered, to play a suicide ball to a player on the edge of our own penalty area in a central position. Maybe the players are too scared to go against the managers wishes but if I was the goalkeeper and the player wanted a ball in that position like KWP did, then I would be telling him to fuck off to be honest, and not giving him the ball there, because the risk against the reward is just not worth it. Lose the ball there and it’s a goal against you, every fucking time and every opposition team is going to be looking for it now. Lose the ball in a wide area and at least you have a chance of defending what comes next. Is it that the players are not good enough to make correct decisions or is it because they are scared to make decisions?  

No one could be surprised if Russell Martin was relieved of his duties simply on results alone.  There has been quite a lot of talk about whether Russell Martin is doing what’s best for Saints or doing what’s best for his career, but I think he’s getting to the stage now where it will actually be quite damaging for him because we are making high profile mistakes in virtually every game and it’s not going to go unnoticed. This will stick to him in the future.  We talk about Vincent Kompany failing upwards when he played a similar style at Burnley and he got relegated and ended up with the Bayern Munich job.  The difference is that Kompany had a stellar playing career to fall back on and that always guarantees you managerial opportunities, even if your team gets relegated.

I’ve said in the past we need to have someone better lined up if we decide to pull the trigger on Russell Martin. Graham Potter is still out there and if that feels too ambitious, then Danny Rohl at Sheffield Wednesday would surely be interested. I really do hope that Sports Republic are sounding out these people, because it would be a dereliction of duty to not be doing so. Personally, I am not happy about us being a laughing stock and that is what we are in danger of becoming if we keep on giving these stupid goals away.  From the outside, we seem to be shrugging our shoulders and accepting that that’s okay. It isn’t.

Aston Villa away on Saturday and tonight, they ended their recent poor run with a comfortable home win against Brentford. We will at least have Flynn Downes, THB and Tyler Dibling available for that game, as well as Jan Bednarek and Tall Paul, which will make us immeasurably stronger. I would be very, very tempted to put Alex McCarthy back in goal as long as he can stand up.  Another bonus of course is that Jack Stephens won’t be able to play because he’s a fucking irresponsible idiot.

Up the fucking Saints