Premier League Match 31 - Tottenham 3 Southampton 1

 

Rambo and Janny about to lead the Lap of Defecation

A Team Photo For the Ages

With Wolves winning against Ipswich yesterday, Saints go into this game away at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium knowing that defeat will mean mathematical relegation. Apparently, a week 31 relegation will be the earliest anyone has ever been relegated from the Premier League. We are fucking massive.  I was watching local TV last night and the presenter mentioned that all the pressure was on Saints in this game.  As if it makes any difference – I’ve known we were going down from about October.

Spurs are currently only one place above Wolves in the table, such as been their struggle this season under Ange Postecoglou.  This week, after another defeat, he described himself as a lone voice supporting Tottenham and that he could do with some promonent Spurs support from the media.  As if that’ll make any difference to losing loads of games.  He’s also on his own when it comes to trying to make Tottenham any better because he gets fuck all help from Daniel Levy.  Levy will no doubt relief another manager of his duties at the end of the season and in fact, lose to us and it might well happen even earlier.  Postecoglou’s inevitable departure, whenever it is, will be yet another manager who’s been successful elsewhere who has gone to Spurs and died on his arse. I’m sure even the most hard-of-thinking Spurs fan will know by now that it doesn’t matter who the fuck is managing the club whilst Levy is there.  I guess they’re all waiting for the day here either retires or dies.   In Levy’s time, they managed to have a 30 goal season striker for about ten years in Harry Kane and didn’t manage to even get close to winning the Premier League title. The closest they got was actually the year that Leicester won it in 2016, when Spurs ended up finishing third and the two horse race.

Postecoglou appears to be one of these modern breed of managers who only has one way of playing and if Plan A doesn’t work, then we move on to Plan A with slightly different players. They will press high and have a high defensive line and whilst this doesn’t really work any more against decent sides, it will probably be too much for us.  We certainly couldn’t deal with it when they came to St Mary’s earlier on in the season and what turned out to be Russell Martin’s last game in charge as Spurs stuck five past us by half time when our method of coping with the Spurs press was to not do any running.  Ange was under pressure going into that game as well but a 5-0 away win does tend to keep the wolves from the door for a short while at least.

Some Spurs players have been coming under fire this season, especially the likes of Son Heung Min, who has been one of the best players in the Premier League for about ten years. I keep hearing about him being finished but anyone who bothers to look up his goal scoring record against Southampton will be expecting him to get on the score sheet today.  He’ll probably have a big fucking dive at some point as well.  Brennan Johnson has been in the rumour mill as well for allegedly deciding that someone who has just had a hundred blokes run through her, was girlfriend material.  The injury crisis that Spurs have been shitting on about all season, has now abated so we should see a more or less first-choice team. 

Our defiance of relegation for another week hinges on who is going to be available for this game and Ivan Juric’s pre-match press conference reported that whilst Ryan Manning and big Les have recovered from their knocks against Palace, Tall Paul is a doubt. So, it looks like we’re going to have to make at least two changes with Flynn Downs and Tall Paul probably being replaced with Joe Aribo and Cameron Archer which if it comes to pass, will take us from a competent team down to a shit one…. and that’s before we start bringing on substitutes.

As it turns out, the predictions were correct and it was Archer and Aribo, though strangely, Tall Paul was on the bench.  Ivan has changed the formation as well with Dibling coming in for Jack Stephens, so it looks like a variation of 4-5-1.

Away we go and the plan that we’ve clearly been sent out there with is ‘Do fuck all’, which we carry out to the letter as Spurs knock it around with no danger of a challenge ever coming in.  Ten minutes of that and Ramsdale pulling off a superb point blank save from a bullet Romero free header from six yards and we have our first attack with KWP and Dibling combining well up the right and the latter picking out Sulemana at the back post and his volley flicks off of Porro’s foot, hits the post and comes out.  Having all got nosebleeds from actually putting together an attack, we then don’t bother with getting back and Spurs play it simply down the left and Spence overlaps and then gets his head up and cuts it back and Lily Phillips 101^st dick of the day slams it into the roof of the net.

There’s no reaction unless you count sticking to the original ‘do fuck all’ game plan.  Spurs pass a free kick wide to Porro who slings in a cross and once more, Romero meets it and this time Ramsdale saves it with his face.  Joe Aribo in particular is carrying out the ‘Do Fuck all’ plan  with great care and diligence, jogging about in midfield.  His other job apart from jogging about is to mark Romero at set pieces and that’s going predictably well as the Argentine wins another header from a corner and heads across to where Bergvall swings a leg and mis-kicks it past Ramsdale for 2-0 but we’re off to VAR.

Hi there Michael, Stockley Park here – we have a potential offside situation

OK, talk me through it

Well it’s like this… we know that semi-automated offside tech is coming and we don’t want it

Why not?

Cos it’s gonna make our job less important

Is it?

Yes, and it’s going to make it more difficult for PGMOL to you know… control things.

OK, I get it that you're hurting, but hurry up we need a decision

Not so fast Michael… Ange slagged us off last week so we’re going to make the twat wait.

[4 minutes go by]

Hi Michael, we want to give it because it’s Spurs at home to Southampton but it’s offside.

Well why don’t you say it’s not offside… no one cares any more, after this long.

Because it won’t matter a shit cos Saints are shite and they'll chuck in another goal in a few minutes.

Why the fuck did that take over five minutes.  I also get the impression that they just guessed at it in the end.  Ultimately it won’t matter a shit and sure enough, a powder puff challenge from Bednarek and Spurs get away down our left and in comes the cross which is headed out by Fernandes.  THB gets bodied out of the way by Solanke and the ball bounces up for Maddison to head on and Johnson pokes it in, whilst Manning, Bednarek and Big Les all look at the sky with seemingly no idea that there was any danger.  Johnson does like an easy poke into a wide-open goal.

Half time and no changes because what’s the point really.  Positional change though as Aribo and Fernandes look to have swapped, presumably to get Aribo out of midfield and into an area where his jogging about will be less damaging.

Weirdly, Saints are the better team in the opening ten minutes, which shows how average this Spurs team are when faced with anyone putting in any effort.  All of a sudden, there is a bit of intent and some hard work. Zero composure around box however as we work a nice crossing position for Manning, which he shells into the Spurs fans behind the goal in fucking useless fashion. More of the same as Sulemana brilliantly skips past Porro and then wafts the cross straight to the goalkeeper.

Smallbone and Welington coming on for Manning and Aribo as we do a like for like at left back and the midfield engine room gets bolstered by another player who has no engine.  The shambles amongst the lesser players then infects Ramsdale as he pulls off a good low save from Solanke and then tries to reclaim the ball on the left of the penalty area and slides out of the box with it, comically trying to palm the ball back into the box.  No yellow card because the referee is an idiot.  Maddison then decides against tackling Fernandes and instead, pulls out a kind of forearm smash and that’s not a booking either.  The free kick is curled in from Fernandes, but there is no desire to attack the ball from anyone.

70 minutes gone and Ivan feels the need to furnish us with one of his amazing substitutions, so off comes Dibling, who has had a much better game than of late, and on comes Sugawara, who I’m beginning to think must have some sort of clause in his contract.  Archer is also put out of his misery and replaced with Tall Paul, who looks even more immobile than usual.

In truth, we have been the better side all of the second half and Spurs have been useless.  If we weren’t shit, it would feel like if we got one, we could well get a second but with so little commitment and intent in attacking areas, we are never gonna score.  This might help though… bloody hell it’s Ross Stewart on for Big Les, which means we have one more striker on now, and no midfield.

89 gone and Sulemana crosses to the back post and Fernandes has got in there and he controls on his chest and fires under Vicario to mean that we only need two more goals in about three minutes and seven consecutive wins and other games to all go our way, to stay up.  With 6 foot 3 Ross and 6 foot 7 Paul in there though, I’m sure we’ll be launching balls up there.

Nah, instead of that we do fuck all except allow a Spurs attack when sole midfielder Fernandes loses the ball and though he’s going nowhere, Welington dives in on Johnson, who goes over and Welington fires an “I’m completely fucking guilty and that’s a penalty” look at the referee.  19-year-old on-loan sub Tel, doesn’t let Johnson go for his hat-trick and though Rambo gets a touch, he can’t keep it out.

Ivan looking Forward to His Next Meeting with Johannes

And so the predictable relegation is confirmed and I’m not even bothered because I’ve known since October/November. I can still be bothered about this game though because that first half was as pathetic as it gets with no one willing to put a challenge in and a game plan that simply seem to involve standing off as the only feature of it. The defending on both of the goals was horrific, particularly the second one where three out of our four defenders - the ones paid to defend our goal - all acted like there was no danger present when Johnson scored.

Tottenham have one good header of the ball and that’s Romero and we let him have three free headers in the first half, two of which were brilliantly kept out by Ramsdale and the third one led to Bergvall’s disallowed goal which was offside more by luck the judgement on our part. In the second half it was a different game because we showed how ordinary this Spurs team is by keeping the ball and playing with a little bit of intensity through midfield. The intensity only went as far as the midfield though because we pushed Joe Aribo further forward to support Archer, so we actually had some midfielders who are willing to run.  There was no intensity up front of course with those two, however.  There was the occasional input from Sulemana and Dibling from the wings.  We should’ve sensed a chance to get back into it on about the hour mark and really gone for it but of course we didn’t and didn’t get the goal back until the 89th minute. Even if we’d given ourselves ten minutes to get an equaliser it could have been different as the crowd had turned and Spurs looked there for the taking but of course we give away another one with a brain-dead bit of defending by Welington who jumped in on Johnson, probably didn’t touch him but made it look incredibly like he was guilty of something. Not sure where VAR was but the referee Michael Salisbury was always going to give it.

I know it ultimately doesn’t matter but what the fuck was the referee on today. Unbelievable inconsistency all the way through and shit for both teams. That little Bergvall shit in midfield for Spurs, sliced KWP in half in the first half to cynically stop an attack and didn’t get booked, leaving him to commit about three more fouls and deliberate handball.  Lesley Ugochukwu got booked for a minor shirt pull however, which is the same cynical stopping of an attack but without any violence.  Ramsdale not getting booked for handball outside his box does not make up for it.  Absurd refereeing.

Because I don’t have a direct hot line into the brain of Ivan Juric, I have no idea why he changed from the relatively solid defensive system that we employed against Palace and went with a back four today. Maybe it was to match up what Spurs do but he has not really shown any indication that he was going to do that until today. Flynn Downes became a better player through not playing today because you could see the stark difference with the lack of energy and lack of intensity in midfield in that first half in particular. Joe Aribo had a maximum speed of about 3 miles an hour and his average speed was the same. Lazy bastard.  Big Les didn't look fit and was hampered by the one yellow card that Michael Salisbury decided to give out.  Mind you, there's no defensive system int he world that can function with THB, Bednarek and Manning putting in the performances they put in today.  The odd good moment for each but as we all know, defending is about consistency.

Matty Can't Wait to Get The Fucking Horrible Shirt Off

On the positive side, Matty Fernandes again showed a massive amount of energy and commitment and it’s a testament to him that in this shit show of a season, and his first season in English football, he has not allowed his head to drop or standards to slip. I only hope we can hold onto him for next season but ironically performances like today’s won’t help. Tyler Dibling was a surprise selection to start but he had his best game for the past couple of months and was always looking to get involved.  As I said, there was the odd flash from Sulemana on the left, but he is the proverbial jigsaw in that he falls apart in the box.

So, relegation confirmed after 31 games for the first time for anyone, ever.  No one will remember that though but they will remember the lowest points tally ever, which we are of course one point shy of.  We’re not getting it in our next game either which is Villa at home.  Today was a pathetic performance which kind of summed up the season and the remaining seven games, particularly the four at St.Marys are going to be played in a surreal atmosphere now that relegation is confirmed.  Ivan Juric paid tribute to the fans today who stayed and clapped the team for their ‘effort’ today.  He’s right, the travelling fans are magnificent and those players, with a couple of exceptions, don’t deserve them.

Up the Fucking Saints Fans.