Premier League Match 32 - Southampton 0 Aston Villa 3

Save Two Penalties, Still Lose 3-0

There is an element of new beginning about today’s game against Aston Villa. First of all, we had the news in the aftermath of the Tottenham game that confirmed our relegation, that Ivan Juric would be leaving the club.  Ivan had some redeeming features, namely his honesty and he seemed like a decent guy but fucking hell… he was useless. No idea about English football and just did not adapt quick enough to what was glaringly obvious.  His attempt to implement a style of play that was never going to work with the players that he had, was particularly special, and even though he was doomed to relegation from the start, he didn’t make a particularly good fist of trying to make any sort good impression. There was always a bit of a ‘supply teacher’ vibe about him and now, the supply teacher king is dead, long live the caretaker king. Well, for seven games anyway.

Simon Rusk has once again been put in caretaker charge, only this time he has a new assistant in the shape of Adam Lallana, who will be taking up his first coaching position. Rusk proved in his one game so far, away at Fulham, that he is all about setting up a solid team and hopefully Lallana’s will add some sort of attacking plan to the proceedings. I am however, half expecting Lallana to get injured getting out of his car and being unable to take his place in the technical area for the actual game.  Rusk made mention of that Fulham game in his press conference, in that we have to be hard to beat. It’s all very well having that intention, as long as you’ve got something else should you go one behind, which if this season is anything to go by, we probably will at some point?

Juric Six Months Ago, before He Became Saints Manager

Villa are not the easiest of opponents to be playing today. We are fortunate in a way that they are involved in the Champions League Quarter-final having played the first leg against PSG a few days ago and having the return in the middle of next week. Being 3-1 down after the first leg, they are going to have to throw the complete kitchen sink at it in the return, to have any chance at Villa Park. Unai Emery though, is nothing but the master of the one-off game, so don’t count them out.

Villa are another one of the recent batch of clubs who have done some PSR manoeuvring in order to build up their squad, swapping an unheard of youngster with the similarly financially up against it Everton, for relatively stupid money.  Pure profit on the sale and a relatively small outlay when amortised over the length of the contract.  It’s shit, but their squad is now ridiculously strong. In their last league game against Nottingham Forest, they had Matty Cash, Lucas Digne, Pau Torres, Ezri Konsa, John McGinn, Jacob Ramsey and Marcus Rashford… all on the fucking bench and they still managed to beat the team in third place in the Premier League this season.  If there are any weaknesses in the Villa team then you would have to look at the central defenders but in order to look at them, we have to get somewhere near them.

Today’s team saw slight surprises in that Fernandes partners Big Les in midfield and there is a place for Cameron Archer, for some reason.  Hopefully Rusk has seen something that no one else has.  There’s a place on the bench for Jay Robinson, which is thoroughly deserved after his recent performances for the Under 21s.  Villa have rotated a few but it’s Rashford for Watkins and stuff like that.  It’s laughable really.

Saints game plan is obviously going to be to keep things tight and we are doing precious little attacking in the opening few minutes as Villa pass the ball around in our half in front of us. Our first break comes with Fernandes and Big Les breaking up the play in the middle of the park with Les sending KWP away and Archer Makes a good run from inside Mings and fastens onto KWP’s perfectly weighted ball. Archer takes a touch too wide and has a choice of picking out Tall Paul at the back post or drilling it at the goal but in the end does neither and his half hit shit cross and shot hybrid is easily cleared by the diving Martinez.

The pattern of the game remains unchanged however with Villa probing around the edge of the penalty area with crosses into the box being headed away until one goes out to Asensio on the right and his cross into the mixer is nodded down and Tielemans looks like he’s going to get an effort on goal from an angle but Ramsdale comes flying out to block.

Again our game plan is kind of working as Lesley breaks up Villa once again in the middle of the park and finds Archer who feeds out right to KWP, who works himself a yard before slinging across to the back post to where Tall Paul comes flying in, but he can only head the ball into the side netting and smash himself into the advertising board.

There’s a maginally interesting incident just before half time as Archer goes for a cross from Manning and ends up tangling with Konsa.  Play goes on upfield and Konsa grabs Archer’s shirt and there are brief handbags.  Hmmm.  I mean, that doesn’t get given as a penalty but when you think about, it really could be given.

Half time and there’s not been much action to talk about.  Villa are getting frustrated with lots of flopping to the floor and appealing to the very obliging Thomas Bramall and we are digging in well.  It’s ok but purely because it’s 0-0 so the end result has justified the means but it is only 45 minutes.

The previously limping Tall Paul doesn’t appear for the second half and on comes Dibling with Archer moving into a central stirker role where there will be defenders and all that shit he doesn’t like.

The second half starts it must the same vein as the first with Villa having all the play and after a couple of half clearances and Onana lines one up from 30 yards and drills across goal towards the far post but Ramsdale beats it away quite comfortably.  Villa are getting closer though with Rashford beating Archer’s laughable attempt to shield the ball and making his way along the byline before pulling the ball back to no one. From the next cross into the box, Bednarek rises highest, and it comes off the back of his head and goes narrowly over the bar.

Rusk then does something fucking mystifying with Smallbone coming on for Sulemana and Ross Stewart for Archer. This means Smallbone going into the midfield and Fernandes going out to the left-wing.  It seems mental and within a minute it’s proved to be mental, as Smallbone’s shit touch plays KWP into the shit against two players. Smallbone compounds his error and  jogging past KWP thinking he’s going to be magically beat the two players up his arse to get the ball to him somehow, but of course we lose it and then we are short of bodies in midfield - one ball into the box by Maatsen and Bednarek goes trashing through Watkins and that’s the clearest penalty you will ever see.  Fuck sake.

A Rare Glimpse of Something Positive

All that work to be completely undone but not yet as Ascensio takes the penalty and Ramsdale springs to his left to push it away.   One of the highlights of the season right there.  Crap penalty to be fair, but we get a life.  However, before we can get used to having a life, Mings gives the balls to Tielemans just inside Saints half and no one presses him, which is a really great idea against an experiences international playmaker.  This allows him to chip the ball over the top to meet the run of Watkins and Watkins sticks out a foot and brilliantly diverts it over Ramsdale, off the bar and bouncing down into the net. Fuck off. Brilliant goal but bloody hell.

The Saints press is now of course fucked and once again it doesn’t work as Smallbone goes chasing on his own and two passes and Les is on his own in midfield and Villa play through us and Rogers finds Malen on the right and he drills it across Ramsdale to kill the game off at 2-0.  Excellent efficiency of finishing by Villa but absolutely shit from us and all over the place.

Sugawara is on for Manning because of the clause that he’s obviously got his contract, but he wins a corner which is headed out as far as Fernandes who drills it through the crowd and Martinez is forced into a save. Sugawara’s resulting cross from the rebound is headed wide by a defender who the referee mistakes for THB and gives a goal kick.

89 minutes and on comes Jay Robinson for his debut for Fernandes and another Villa attack with the ball bouncing about and Stephens trashes through the back of McGinn and that’s a penalty as well.  Watkins wants it of course but it’s Asensio again and it’s same again, carbon copy shit penalty and Ramsdale saves again but this time, no one follows it in apart from McGinn, who runs it into an empty net. Ramsdale is fucking furious and absolutely deservedly so.

Well that was a game of two benches.  They bring on three players who all score and we succeed only in making our team progressively weaker and today was a classic case of proving that we should not make substitutions when the starter is still able to move.  Simon Rusk made the same mistake that Russell Martin and Ivan Juric have made before him in not recognizing the importance of the midfield to the defensive effort and not realising the glaring limitations of some of our players.

For an hour, our set up had frustrated Villa, and we were looking good for a goalless draw, until we took Matty Fernandes out of the central midfield.  His partnership with Big Les had played a major part in restricting Villa and no change was necessary in that vital area of the pitch.  The second part of he equation was of course bringing on Will Smallbone to play in a midfield two.  How much evidence do these highly paid football people need to come to the conclusion that HE CAN’T FUCKING DO IT!!! It took about two minutes for a bad touch to put KWP in the shit and give the ball away which led directly to the first penalty, which of course we got away with as Rambo saved from Asensio.  A few minutes later and Tielemans has the time that he’s not had all game to chip the ball over the defence that Watkins volleyed in.  Straight after that the game is dead with Smallbone trying to win the ball too high up the pitch, getting turned and not being able to get back as Villa simply play Malen in, bang, 2-0.
Sixty minutes of good defensive work undone by bringing on the substitutes and changing the foundation of the defensive effort.

It really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone at this stage.  It’s almost the same as putting Ryan Fraser in goal– you are putting an unsuitable player in there and guess what, that area of the team is vital.  Once again, you can’t play Smallbone in a two-man midfield, you can’t really play Aribo in a two-man midfield but here we are. Everyone tries it and it never fucking works and it was obvious last season that it would never fucking work but still we do it. I know Will is a nice lad and he’s one of our own but for fuck‘s sake, you are asking him to do something that he just cannot do. It’s not Will’s fault, it’s yours and Will gets hung out to dry every fucking time and today it undid all the hard work and all the work that was done on the training around during the week.

Jay Makes His Debut - Shame Most of the Crowd Missed It

A word for Aaron Ramsdale who was again completely powerless for every goal that went past him and to save two penalties and still lose 3-0 just about sums his season up.  The dereliction of duty from the defenders to allow McGinn to get to the rebound from the penalty save in the 93^rd minute was particularly shit and not backing up your team mates whatsoever. There were some good performances before we went behind, with Jack Stephens being the pick of the defenders and the aforementioned Fernandes doing some excellent work defensively.  It was nice to see Jay Robinson get some minutes at the end as well, just a shame that like with the second penalty save, there were only about 15,000 in the ground to see it.

A predictable on the negative side was Cameron Archer.  Coming in from the wings is probably his best position and one that I was keen to see him in once up on a time, but not anymore.  The lazy bastard was given an undeserved start and rewarded the manager with a performance which involved about two runs into space all game and little making himself available and just general cluelessness with anything involving not having the ball at his feet.  Absolutely petrified of any contact from defenders, doesn’t shield the ball and no idea on linking play. Absolutely none of it. Tall Paul was clearly not fit and he’s clearly a player who needs to be 100% fit to take the pitch, or else there really isn’t much going on. Ross Stewart played half an hour and looked as rusty as you would expect a rusty player to look who had been caked in rust for three years.

So whilst we were solid until the substitution from hell, we offered nothing much going forward, struggling to string together even a couple of passes with any regularity.  In the first half we worked a couple of good crossing positions for Manning, who then skidded the crossover about six inches off the ground instead of trying to pick out the fucking giant Centre forward we’ve got.  On the other side, Archer had a glorious chance to find Paul for a tap in but instead picked out the goalkeeper and Fernandes, whenever we took out time from defending, wasted a couple of breaks passing the ball straight to defenders instead of into the gap to allow KWP to run onto it. 

Referee Thomas Bramhall was predictably fucking hopeless being as he was, the referee in our fiasco up at Wolves earlier on in the season. Ridiculously uneven handling of the first half, when Villa were basically allowed to dive about and get every decision go their way.  I have no issue however, with either of the penalty decisions.  Neither challenge took out the Villa player with the tackling leg, but the back leg trashed Watkins and McGinn respectively on the follow through.  Always going to get given.

If we are to pick up the two points that we need to not be the worst team in Premier League history, then Simon Rusk and Adam Lallana need to find a way for us to have more goal threat, as keeping it tight will only get you so far. This isn’t going to be easy, given the shower of shit that we have at the top end of the pitch, but we all knew the game was dead once we went behind today.

Overall, as said though it was a game of two benches.  Their squad is amazing right down to the twentieth player and ours stops at about ten, on a good day.  They were always going to be too strong for us but we don’t help ourselves, and the positives are that we were decent for just over an hour and that this is one more game ticked off in this godforsaken season.  Next up is West Ham away, who have moved into the ‘Worst of the Rest’ position of 17^th in the table.  Lose that and Leicester will probably go down next weekend but we of course have our own targets.

6 games to go, 2 points needed.

Premier League Match 15 - Aston Villa 1 Southampton 0

Joe's Not In His Goal Again

Villa Park is the ground that brings back great memories for me as it was the ground in 2003 where we won an FA Cup semi-final before they rebuilt Wembley and ruined all FA Cup semi-finals by putting them in the National Stadium. For me, it’s one of the best grounds in the country, given, that it is old and traditional. Still, it’s not a time to daydream back to 2003, but time to focus on the Premier League 2024/25 and Southampton’s place in it which as we all know, is currently rock bottom.

Under Unai Emery, Villa started the season on fire, were very close to the top of the league and had a remarkable start of the Champions League campaign, beating Bayern Munich. They seem to have hit a bit of a wall recently and were tumbling down the table until they arrested the descent by beating Brentford during the week, whilst Saints were getting soundly beaten by Chelsea. Villa have a very big squad so should handle the upcoming Christmas rush pretty well given that the Champions League is on hold for a while. Saints on the other hand, not so much.

Villa’s standout player for me this season, has been Morgan Rogers, who they signed from Middlesbrough. Considering we spent last season in the Championship and our coaching and recruitment staff clearly knew everything about the Championship, I find it somewhat annoying that we weren’t even linked to a player like that, who moved for a relatively modest amount of money (£8m rising to £15m) and has stepped up to the Premier League and even the Champions League, with no problem whatsoever. It’s especially galling that he was a Manchester City youngster so Jason Wilcox would have known all about him but of course, Wilcox was gone by the time Villa signed him.  He tends to play just behind Ollie Watkins up front, who a few years ago they also signed from the Championship, when he moved there from Brentford. Now he’s scoring goals for England in the Euros semi-final. Meanwhile, we signed Ben Brereton Diaz.

The good news is that after, the triple suspension against Chelsea, Tyler Dibling, Flynn Downs and THB will be back today, with Captain Jack of course going in the other direction. The Chelsea defeat seems to have sucked any remaining optimism out of the Saints fanbase and personally, I am expecting absolutely nothing out of this game.

Some storm with a silly name is battering the UK today and Everton vs Liverpool has been called off.  No such luck further South however and Villa Park is on.  Team news and I look at the eleven names and I see five that shouldn’t be on a Premier League team sheet. Once again we have squeezed in another defender and as a result of that, Joe Aribo is left out, which is ridiculous given that he was by far our best player on Wednesday.

Saints make a reasonably positive start with Fernandes picking up the ball on the edge of the box and having a dig and it deflects wide to KWP on the left and he sets it up for Manning to drill goal but it hits Carlos on the heel and deflects away without Martinez being tested.

The wind is quickly proving to be a bit of a problem but it’s not the reason that we fanny around with the ball in the left back area and an Archer panic clearance bounces straight across the top of the penalty area to Morgan Rogers, who shoots and it’s deflected and with Lumley completely wrong footed, we are grateful that it goes wide of the post.

We make a massive opportunity at one end the pitch but it ends when Archer’s cross is deflected up in the air to Martinez and Villa break to the other end and Duran is put through and he’s in a foot race with Lumley, who goes old school and dives at the strikers feet with his hands and comes up with part of the ball at least. Really good goalkeeping to be fair. ,

Another chance, or rather another opening that should lead to a chance, goes begging as we win the ball high up and the ball is poked through to Downes who has an absolute nosebleed when he realise he’s clean through and instead of shooting from the edge of the box, he tries to cut inside the last defender and the defenders gets a bit of it with the ball squirting off to Archer, who smacks it against the nearest defender.

Tyler Dibling has been quiet but diligent so far and does some good defending to see the ball out for a goal kick when hassled by Rogers.  Lumley plays suicide ball giving it to Wood who is all of 6 yards out, who gives it back to him and Lumley shites his shorts and tries to find KWP in exactly the same way that he did it against Chelsea and to the shock of no one, in exactly the same way that he did against Chelsea he gets tackled and Villa have the ball ten yards out and we’re diving in all over the place and we get lucky as Lumley dives at Duran’s feet again and the follow-up shot from McGinn is deflected up in the air by KWP and Lumley catches it. We are a fucking nightmare, honestly.

Lumley boots the next one long and it goes through Martinez. One long ball from the right back area and Wood holds off Duran with THB behind him but THB, instead of launching the ball into the crowd, decides to take a touch and Duran nicks it off him, advances on goal and from the edge of the penalty area with Lumley out of position and flapping like a budgie, curls it into the net very, very easily. Absolute fucking rubbish and you can’t help but think that everyone was unsettled by the incident that happened just before.  Shite.

We’ve killed ourselves again and nothing much happens before half time when Russell decides that we don’t need all these Championship players on the pitch and so Bree is replaced by last weeks’ man of the match Joe Aribo.  Saints immediately look better but Villa are looking to kill the game off with Digne’s cross causing absolute havoc before we break with Archer nodding the ball down to Dibling just outside our penalty area and he just takes off through the middle of the pitch and he eventually slips the ball left to Archer, who takes a terrible touch away from the goal and his eventual effort is easily blocked.

Not long after that, Archer (and not invisible captain Armstrong) is replaced by Sam Amo, who is a welcome addition because he has got the nod ahead of the Chuckle Brothers. The first time Sam Amo gets the ball, he jinks away from Digne and puts in a lovely cross with his left foot, which is just in front of Armstrong, but it at least makes Martinez work.

Time running out and we take off Flynn Downes to stop him getting sent off and we decide to play with one less anyway and bring on Ben Brereton Diaz, which as we all know, is a complete waste of time. We get lucky again as a long ball comes in from the Villa right and Watkins, for some reason decides not to head it, but let it run across him and the chance disappears,

Digne puts Watkins away on the left and he’s got the whole pitch to run into and pull it back to Ross Barkley, but Nathan Wood chucks himself in the way and deflects it away from goal. Good defending by the big man.

Not Today Ollie

As time runs out there is our usual lack of urgency and cutting edge.  We are having good possession in the Villa half, but we are doing absolutely fuck all with it and then we give the ball away with seven players ahead of the ball and Rogers breaks again and feeds Watkins.  The England man has options but decides to go it alone and Nathan Wood again, backs himself and puts in a brilliant tackle.

Russell responds by taking off another Championship player in Manning and replacing him with fuck knows what in Sulemana and there’s another mighty scramble in our penalty area as Villa has four players queued up to score but it ends with McGinn hitting a shot straight at Lumley, who is already on the ground. Shambles.

93, 94 and we win a free kick as Sam Amo gets brought down by Rogers.  Winning a free kick should be enough for Saints fans to start doing a conga round Villa Park, such has been how shite we’ve been.  Joe Lumley is up in the box and Fernandes chips sit into the mixer and it’s nodded out.  Sulemana puts it back in there but that’s the end of that.  Wank. Again.

To summarise Saints performance Jeff, “They had most of the possession, didn’t do anything with it, gave away a shit goal, did nothing and lost”. Let’s not kid ourselves that Villa were an amazing side as they were average at best and we proved how average they were at times, with our domination of the ball but who got the three points at the end of the game?

At the start of the game I looked at our eleven and saw five players who are never good enough to be Premier League footballers right now.  Ironically, one of them was our man of the match today, with Nathan Wood proving the Jack Stephens will not be missed in the slightest. Wood was absolutely heroic in his defending especially at the end of the game. He looks like he absolutely loves defending and unlike previous games where he has looked a bit lightweight, today he looked like an absolute unit and was prepared to throw himself into any situation to keep the ball away from our goal, showing great skill on 1v1 defending as well. It’s an excellent, example of a player waiting for their chance and then absolutely taking it when given the opportunity. 

The lack of Premier League quality in our team is there for all to see, especially up front. The forwards were not helped today by tactical tinkering that saw Archer playing off the left and Dibling through the middle. At the start of the second half we put Dibling to his more natural right-wing berth and Archer went in the middle with Adam Armstrong out left. It was better but it was still shit. Archer and Armstrong were completely useless for the entire game and Dibling had a bit of an off day which absolutely can be excused. He was however, at the heart of anything decent that we did going forward, in the second half, which wasn’t much.

Adam Armstrong was born offside. He comes from a place in the north called Offside, which is a little hamlet in between the villages of Shittouch and Nobrain. There was one move in the second half where Dibling had to hold onto the ball because Armstrong was offside and though Tyler held off the Villla players for a couple of seconds, Armstrong never got back in an on-side position at any point to enable him to be passed to, Eventually Tyler had to pass it and the flag went up. Absolutely fucking brainless. Elsewhere in attack, Cameron Archer was terrible on his return to Villa Park, barely getting in touch of the ball and when he did just handing it straight back to whichever Villa defender was nearest to him.  Our options off the bench where the Chuckle Brothers, who didn’t get much time but predictably, BBD and Sulemana had enough time to show that they are shit but not enough time to show that they can do anything remotely decent.  One positive from today was that Sam Amo was used before them and he put in the best cross of the day straight after coming on. We’ve got to the point where we are so bad in attack that we celebrate when someone puts in a decent cross.  Zero shots on target.  Zero.  Our xG was 0.34... which is basically fuck all and it was a flatline from the 15th minute.

Bloke Calculating our XG Went to the Pub on 67 minutes

What the fuck are we doing in midfield? Why is Flynn Downs playing as a number eight? Yes, he runs harder than Fernandes but Fernandes is much more suitable and creative to play further forward and Downes is much more suitable for anchoring the midfield which is what he’s done his entire career. It’s fucking dumb and it makes no sense.  It’s probably because Fernandes is better at keeping possession, which is of course more important than having any creativity further up the pitch.

Five defenders again. We started a Premier league game with both Bree and Manning in the team.  This was through choice.  THB made the mistake the cost us the goal but we didn’t need five defenders today and at half time we corrected it and looked better, even though Ryan Manning playing at left back in a back four in the Premier League is something that should just never happen. Aribo came on at half time and immediately showed that he should’ve been starting.

Russell Martin bemoaned the fact that we didn’t have any shots with the possession that we had - that’s your job, isn’t it, mate? Find a way to get the ball to the centre forward in a position where he can have a shot.  All this possession in the middle third with ten opposition players behind the ball doesn’t fucking work does it? It’s the same old shit that has been pointed out countless times this season.

Russell Martin came into the club when we were at a low point and did a brilliant job in giving us an identity, winning games in the Championship and ultimately getting us promoted.  The play off final was my best day as a Saints fan of over 50 years standing and basically, I loved Russell Martin for what he did for us that day and going to that game with my son and my Dad was the best day ever.  However, the longer this goes on, the more that goodwill is disappearing. I don’t expect a team that wins all the time but I do expect a team that looks like it has a clue.  We are once again a laughing stock. You could hear the Villa fans getting excited every time we had a goal kick and that’s fucking ridiculous. They get excited because they know they’re likely to have a shot of goal in the next minute when we’ve got a goal kick.  That’s insane.  A goal kick means that the attack is over, not that the next one is just about to start.  Villa rested Ollie Watkins against us, Chelsea rested Nicolas Jackson against us – teams now feel that they don’t need their best striker and can rest him against us.  Bournemouth’s manager and players were taking the piss out of us openly earlier in the season.  Laughing stock.

Russell also said something amazingly dumb after the game when he pointed out that we played out, lost the ball and got away with it and then Lumley kicked it long, the crowd cheered but thirty seconds later it was in our goal.  He’s being a disingenuous fucker because he’s failing to point out the goal came about because THB tried to play too much football when he was last man and fucked it up. Many fans have been saying that he was blaming the fans for the goal going in. He wasn’t but he is saying that fans don’t know what they’re talking about and that’s not a good thing to be implying either, even if you think it’s true.  Russell talks frequently about the players being brave and him being proud of them.  I tell you what, fans travelling to the Midlands in yesterday’s weather is brave and I’m proud of the 3000 who made the trip to support the bag of shite that he puts out there.

Onward with this depressing shit show to Tottenham at St Mary’s Next Sunday. Spurs are in a bit of a crisis themselves but not as big as ours. It’s a clash between two teams who you want to play against when you have a rut to get out of. I bet they get out of theirs. Mind you – guess which manager is more likely to get sacked if they lose? 

Up the fucking boring depressing Saints.

Premier League Match 20 - Southampton 0 Aston Villa 1

 

Drone Footage of JWP and Martinez with a Spinless Twat, is Available on Ebay.

Villa at home and the only question today is would we build on our one week of good form or would we sink back into the complete doldrums of looking relegation square in the face? Even though we are bottom of the league, it does feel that the tide is maybe turning but as we all know, it’s very easy for it to become another false dawn. Obviously, we are not going to win every game from here on in, but we do need to preserve this run of decent performances for as long as possible.

Around the time that Saints sacked Ralph Hasenhüttl, Villa sacked Steven Gerrard who proved once again the old adage that a great player doth not necessarily a great manager make. See Frank Lampard for details. Whilst Saints took a punt on a lower league manager with no top-level experience, Villa did the opposite and appointed a virtual guarantee of improvement in Unai Emery with all his European Trophy wins on his CV. Oh look…. Villa have now got approximately double the number of points that we’ve got, having accrued 7 in the four games since the World Cup, compared to our 3.

One thing that’s always irritated me slightly about Villa is the fan base, still living off something that happened in 1982. We will hear a song about it today.  Fair enough though, if we’d won the European Cup I’d be singing about it too.  They are historically a huge club and I love Villa Park for the fact that it’s old and traditional and I hope they never move from it.

With a seemingly never-ending quest to sign a player who can add more goals to the team, we were heavily linked with Villa’s Danny Ings last week and let’s just say we’ve gone from hoping he won’t score against us to hoping that we sign him to acknowledging that he has followed the money yet again and gone to West Ham where you would imagine, once all their strikers are fit, he will find himself in exactly the same boat that he was in at Villa. The occasional start plus appearances from the bench. It’s almost like actually playing regular football is too much effort.

Danny Ings Negotiating West Ham Move 

Villa of course have arch-shithouse and World Cup winner Emiliano Martinez in goal and I absolutely 100% support his antics in the World Cup final. I’ve always liked Tyrone Mings, who has his fair share of haters but he has always played well against us. They also have that little Polish basketball player Matty Cash at right back though he is not in the team at the moment and at left back they usually have Lucas Digne who is a horrible little shit. They also have Calum Chambers of course, still grifting his way through his career as a substitute.

Nathan Jones team selection will be interesting. I suspect he will want to keep it as close to the Everton starting 11 as possible though he has made mention of Mohamed Elyounoussi carrying a knock so I’ll be interesting to see who starts there, hopefully there will be a place for either Mislav Orsic or Charly Alcaraz.  In the event, it’s Adam Armstrong who comes in which I guess means that Sam Edozie is going to spend at least part of the game playing wing-back, which will be interesting.

There is some weirdness straight away as we were in a corner on the right and side and it’s not JWP who takes it but Romeo Lavia and the element of surprise extends to Lyanco heading it down but it’s straight at Martinez.  King Shithouse boots it and then ball is eventually played down our right hand side and it runs through to the penalty area and Bazunu comes out in instalments and by the time he eventually decides to 100% go for it, he dives at Ramsey‘s feet and gets enough on the ball for it to never be a penalty despite the big appeal.

Our first attack of any real note sees Lyanco advance at the right hand side and put in a ball very similar to the one they put in for Mara to score against Manchester City, this time he finds Che Adams in front of Martinez and he takes his eye off it and somehow it hits him and bobbles past the keeper and KWP puts in the rebound but the flag is straight up and no complaints from anybody.  Emphatic finish from Che either way.

The first real bit of danger from Villa comes down or left as Bailey plays it square across the penalty area to Ramsey who shoots straight at Baz but the ball bounces clear to Bailey who shows horrendous technique to lash it high into the Chapel End.

With five minutes to go to half-time, Caleta-Car gets in a wrestling match with Watkins about 25 yards out and the referee gives a free kick. Before it can be taken though the ref spots that some utter fucking prick has flown a drone into the ground and it’s currently hovering up by the scoreboard at the Chapel End.  Having pulled both captains towards him, the referee then takes the players off for the most entertaining thing that’s happened in this first half of zero creativity.  The only sad thing is that the players come back on eventually and the game resumes and it’s still shit and we reach half-time goalless and more or less incident-less.

No changes at half-time with Saints surely trying to create more than the ‘next to fuck all’ they created in the first half.  Villa attack with a long ball down the left which Caleta-Car knocks back to Baz, but as Baz goes to clear it, the ball takes a bit of a bubble and he skids it along the ground and straight to a Villa player 35 yards out. One pass to Bailey and luckily, Bailey just dribbles the ball through to the grateful Baz. This game is utter shit.

On the hour mark it’s triple substitution time, which I’m hoping we’re going to use to take a bit of a calculated risk to win the game.  Apparently not though as it’s Che Adams replaced with Mara and Lavia with Elyounoussi, in what amounts to straight swaps.  Romain Perraud has come on for Sam Edozie so there goes our brightest attacking player which means that KWP is moved over to the right hand side.

KWP immediately starts to threaten, once moved to his favourite side and works his way into the box before finding JWP, whose ball across picks out Adam Armstrong on front of the penalty spot and he absolutely has to score but smashes kind of half hits it straight at the goalkeeper.  We pick it up again and get it out to the right hand side again and KWP skins two players before seeing his cross headed back to him.  He puts it back into the mixer and Elyounoussi brings it down and in a crowded penalty area, Adam Armstrong knocks it back to JWP who hits it and it takes a massive deflection before looping over Martinez and going into the net. Fucking get in there.  Celebrate good times, come on!  Meanwhile, Villa are all around the referee and eventually the graphic of doom comes up on the screen that VAR is getting involved.  Luckily, I’m still getting the transcripts.

“Hi there Micky Salisbury, it Hoops at Stockley Park”
“Hoops me old mate, what’s up, I didn’t see anything?”
“Ramsey has hit the deck mate, must have been something?”
“I’m glad you said that mate, cos I’ve just had 10 Villa players in my face and they were very insistent”
“Just having another look…Oh he’s barely touched him Micky and he’s chucked himself on the ground”
“Yeah ok Hoops but they looked very angry”
“Can’t give that mate, it aint clear and obvious error”
“Put it on screen and send me there mate”
“Why, he’s hardly touched him?”
“No one who matters will give a shit if I bin the goal”
“What do you mean?”
“Well Villa are angry and threatening and Saints are Soft Southern Bastards who will just accept it”
“… and?”
“All anyone will remember about today is the fucking drone”
“And you handled that like a fucking boss Mickey”
“Yep, got all the players off for their safety and averted a crisis over Premier League broadcast rights”
“Genius Mickey – will we get a special envelope for that?”
“Yes we will… you with me Hoops?”
“Fuck Yeah!”
“I am the new Big Mikey”
“Steady mate, there’s only one Big Mikey Dean, he’s passed out on the floor in front of the monitor next to me”

Stockley Park is Different Since Mike Dean Went There

And disallowed, apparently for a foul by Elyounoussi. On the first viewing, live and right in front of me, that looks absolutely fucking ridiculously soft.

Villa’s next attack sees Sekou Mara fucking ridiculously barge into the back of a player to give Villa a free kick 40 yards out just to the right of centre. Luiz swings it in and Ollie Watkins gets free to nod past Baz.  Fuck offfffff….. how fucking predictable, a goal from a free kick after a dodgy VAR decision against us. There is a cursory VAR check for offside but of course it isn’t and so 1-0 down with 10 minutes to go.

With five minutes to go we eventually put Adam Armstrong out of his misery and remove the third centre-back, with Caleta-Car going off and we bring on Mislav Orsic and Moussa Djenepo.  Elyounoussi puts Djenepo away down the left-hand side and he cuts in onto his right foot before hitting a shot which was going over anyway but Martinez pushes it wide to make sure.  And that’s your lot.

For now, I’m going to focus on the things that we as a club could affect. Today we played a Villa side who were really not that great, in fact they were pretty shit, with absolutely zero creativity in their team, exactly the same as us. We lost because we cannot defend set pieces and we know this and yet we still give away stupid fucking needless free-kicks and put ourselves under pressure and it’s fucking embarrassing. We also lost because we had absolutely zero creativity and zero attacking threat. We have too many players who have absolutely zero quality on the ball and today we had a manager with absolutely zero bravery. At 0-0 with an hour gone he made a triple substitution which was basically two like-for-likes with Elyounoussi coming on for Lavia and Sekou Mara coming on for Che Adams. I say like-for-like but in fact they are massive fucking downgrades. He also brought on Perraud for Edozie so basically, we went more defensive as he had been our only promising attacking outlets. The change gave us energy and did put KWP over on the correct wing and like last week at Everton, he immediately sets up the goal, which of course, ended up not being a goal, courtesy of the fucking cretin in the middle.  

Of the subs, Elyounoussi’s contribution was to commit the fateful very soft foul to chalk off our goal and Mara did the Anthony Gordon and brainlessly gave away a free-kick which led directly to the winning goal.  If Jones had wanted to go for the win then Orsic and Alcaraz would have come on with half an hour to go but in the end, Orsic got 5 minutes and Alcaraz got zero.  Adam Armstrong, who had been completely useless with the ball, stayed on the pitch until the 85th minute when Jones thought it was time to give the Croatian international Orsic, who we bought because he scores goals, a go.  At least he got 5 minutes because Alcaraz, who may have provided some creativity and thrust, didn’t even get off the bench. Before he started making the substitutions which didn’t work, Jones changed the shape at half-time so JWP moved back from his number 10 role into midfield, thus neutering our creativity even more. It was not a great day for the manager who now has five defeats out of six in the Premier League and I don’t give a shit if Nathan counts the Liverpool game or not.

Michael Salisbury… Having given the goal, it has to be a clear and obvious error to overturn it and if that’s a clear and obvious error then we may as well fucking give up and go home. Elyounoussi makes the slightest contact with his heel and Ramsey collapses like he has been fucking shot. The referee then gets surrounded by Villa players and shites his pants.  How a professional referee can go to a monitor, look at that and decide that it’s definitely clearly and obviously a foul is absolutely fucking beyond me, especially when you consider that the guidelines this season are that if at all possible you go with the on-field decision.  As soon as he went to the monitor, we all knew it was going to happen though didn’t we? And we all knew that we would end up losing 1-0. Jacob Ramsey’s Match of the Day interview was interesting in that he basically questioned whether it was enough contact to go down but then said that he thought it was enough, so he went down. What this means is that he basically decided to put himself on the deck which in my book means it’s not a foul. If an opposition player puts you on the deck then it’s a foul but if you put yourself there, then it’s one of those dive things. The VAR referee Simon Hooper should’ve had the strength to say no this isn’t a foul but he bottled it and gave it to the referee and the referee had been surrounded by angry Villa players and jogged over to the monitor with the smell of his own shite in his nostrils and a cloud of flies around him.

So, the manager was shit and the referee was shit.  Now for the rest of the players.

Baz had a difficult game in goal, no doubt hindered by the injury he seemed to be carrying which prevented him kicking the ball properly.   He hardly had anything to do in fairness but still managed to look very shaky.  Of the defenders, I thought Lyanco was our man of the match by a long way but then he lost his man for the winner.  Caleta-Car and Salisu were solid enough.  KWP was average on the left but was a different player when moved to the correct side.  Edozie made a decent fist of it when he ended up playing at wing-back but playing him there negates what he’s good at and lessens the minimal attacking threat we have anyway.

JWP struggle to get into the game further forward and our midfield basically died when Lavia went off. Diallo is one of those who works hard and he did a lot of good defensive work today but when he’s got the ball it’s an absolute fucking lottery as to what he’s gonna do with it.  He can’t hit long passes out to the full backs and too many of the 10-yard balls go astray as well. Basically, he isn’t good enough.  Today the same could almost be said for Che Adams who held the ball up well but again provided nothing where it actually mattered.  The one chance he had, he managed to fall over the ball and it was offside anyway.

Where's the creativity? Where are the goals going to come from in that line up?  Ok you have 3 centre backs so not them unless it's from a set-piece.  Out wide you have KWP on the wrong side which inhibits him and Edozie on the other but he's having to keep his eye on playing wing-back as opposed to being a winger so that inhibits him.  Two defensive midfielders in Diallo and Lavia, one who gets a nosebleed when he tries to attempt a forward pass and one who is not going to get into the opposition box.  Then you have JWP who got moved deeper at half time.  That leaves us with Che Adams and Adam Armstrong.  Then you have the subs - Elyounoussi, selected because he can defend spaces but offers very little in attack and Sekou Mara, who is substitute for a reason.

After the optimism brought by three wins in a row, this game comes and brings with it a major downer and a realisation once again that we are really up against it. The balloon has been punctured somewhat today with what is basically another pretty poor performance, again with no goals and not much prospect of any. We weren’t just aimlessly kicking the ball away like in the Nottingham Forest game but we were giving the ball away the hell of a lot, looking like we didn’t have much idea.  Ten-ish days left of the transfer window – get some more goals in this side or we are going down.  It’s that simple.

Back to the cups now with the Carabao Cup Semi-Final first leg against Newcastle, where if we turn up and play like we did today, we might as well not bother going for the second leg at all.

Premier League Match 7 - Aston Villa 1 Southampton 0

 

Sali Asks If We Can Go Home Now

Here we are again two weeks after our last game and the reason for that was of course, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. This, gave every sports body of the choice of whether to play last weekend or not to play and whilst everyone else played because ... why wouldn’t you?…. football in its wisdom decided to cancel everything from grassroots level to Premier League level, thus causing maximum chaos later on regarding rearranging fixtures into an already packed calendar.

Rumour has it that the authorities were frightened of bad impression that would be given by football fans disrupting the minutes silence or whatever because football fans, particularly those supporting Under-8s grass roots teams, of course as a group, are complete animals who can’t be trusted. Of course, this is true in some cases and the fingers were pointed in the direction of the red half of Merseyside, who played a European game in mid-week and let’s just say, the silence wasn’t immaculately observed. I guarantee that they’ll will be one of the first to moan about fixture congestion as the season goes on.

In addition to last week’s Premier League games being called off, there are also problems this week because there are not enough police resources in modern day Britain to police the Queen‘s funeral on Monday and some Premier League games over the weekend but luckily in the Midlands, there are enough coppers to make sure that tonight’s game can go ahead.

In her 70 years on the throne, the most important event the Queen oversaw was of course the 1976 FA Cup final and once she had presented the trophy to Peter Rodrigues, she decided that she had completed life regarding the FA Cup and never went back afterwards. Rest in peace.

Elsewhere in the world of football, new Chelsea owner Todd Boehly has been causing a bit of a stir by recommending that we need to take “lessons“ from American sports and have, amongst other things, a north versus south All-Star game. Todd… Shut the fuck up.

Tell you what, we will learn lessons from American sports if you implement the following changes in American football. One point for a touchdown to keep the score to a manageable level and the point after only counts in the event of a draw, 45 minutes each way to stop the game being so long and fucking tedious and no specialised attack or defence teams. Just one set of players. How would you react to that proposal from a Brit who doesn’t know very much about American football? Yes, you would think I was a twat and rightly so, for trying to change something I know very little about. It annoys the fuck out of me that this has generated any discussion whatsoever on social media as to who would be in the North team and he would be in the South team. Can you imagine Jürgen Klopp allowing van Dijk and Alisson to play in this?

Moving on, significant international squads have been announced with this being the last international break before the World Cup squads are announced. JWP has made a 28-man England squad and there was brilliant news elsewhere with Armel Bella-Kotchap making the full German squad for the first time. I know it’s only been a few games but I’m not surprised that Hansi Flick has been paying attention to how well our new centre back has been playing. It’s not even worth speculating about what this does to our long-term prospects of keeping hold of the player but I can’t help but be pleased when Southampton players have success as a result of moving to Southampton.

Moussa Djenepo got rewarded for his decent start of the season and been given a new three-year contract which has been pretty universally greeted as a good thing. Personally, I’m really not sure and I would’ve waited until he has proved to be more effective in a more advanced position than the left back slot that he has currently been occupying. If you look at it logically, he is at best our fourth choice left back behind Perraud, Larios and KWP and it’s probably our fourth choice right back behind KWP, Maitland-Niles and the injured Tino Livramento. He of course could well get in the team and contribute on the wing but we haven’t seen it yet and then his previous three years at Saints, has not really looked the part in that position, so I just hope this isn’t another one that we are regretting in a couple of years time because he has hardly played a game.

Once Upon a Time, Many Years Ago

Nathan Redmond left and went to Besiktas in Turkey. Whether or not Besiktas was the right destination for him remains to be seen but he certainly needed a change to give his career a shot in the arm. When you look at the highlights video of Nathan Redmond, there are undoubtedly some great moments and some really good goals but then you remember that that compilation has been made over a six-year period and you realise that there really should have been a lot more given the amount of games that he has played.  Undoubtedly a very talented player and a very frustrating one.  I always questioned his bravery and willingness to go into physical challenges or at times to even go near them as there were so many times when faced one-on-one with the defender, which should be a pacy wingers’ dream scenario, he just turned round and played safe. He did always look very good against substandard opposition though so maybe playing for one of the better sides in the Turkish league will suit him. Good luck to the guy but ultimately, you’d be hard pressed to say that he improved at all from the day we signed him to 6 years later when he left. He was signed as a promising under 21 international, probably with hopes that he’d improve massively and then be sold on for big money, in the same way that his predecessor, Sadio Mane was. Never quite happened. As I say though, nothing against the guy who seems like a really decent bloke and his farewell message was very classy.

This brings us neatly onto today’s opponents Aston Villa, who in their ranks contain Jan Bednarek, Danny Ings and Calum Chambers who all couldn’t wait to get out of Southampton and were all varying degrees of twats in the way they left. Ings has shone in fits and starts at Villa, Bednarek has not played a game yet and a course he can’t play tonight, but I’m sure he’ll be sat in the stands in his Villa tracksuit, giving it the big one if they score. Calum Chambers, like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain before him, has been a professional substitute everywhere he has been, ever since leaving Southampton.

Villa are managed a course by Steven Gerrard who is going to be under pressure pretty soon if results don’t improve. With the amount of money they’ve spent, I don’t expect the owners were expecting to be floundering around the bottom third of the league. There also appears to have been cracks in the manager-player relationship with a public falling out with Tyrone Mings, which was of course denied despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary, stripping him of the captaincy and all that. Philippe Coutinho absolutely buried us last year so let’s hope that he continues his early season malaise tonight. I bet he doesn’t.

The team news and it’s slightly odd.  Diallo is preferred to AMN in central midfield and the new man isn’t even on the bench so I guess that’s an injury.  The three behind Che is a massive cause for concern.  On paper, Adam Armstrong, Elyounoussi and Djenepo looks shit and totally lacking in creativity – meanwhile, the much more creative Stuart Armstong, Aribo and Edozie warm the bench.  It's a shame that Edozie isn't starting because him versus Ashley Young would be very interesting.

The minutes silence at the start of the game was pretty atmospheric to be fair with the lights dimmed and silence for the duration. Now for the game – Unsurprisingly, Philippe Coutinho was the first one to show up in the game, spinning away from JWP in the left-hand channel before attempting to break the net from the edge of the box like he has done many times against us in the past but this time it flies over the bar.  Coutinho also has the first ever on target as Ashley Young hangs up a ball from the right hand side which everyone misses and Coutinho meets the header on the bounce at the back post but Bazunu shovels it wide easily enough.

The first half is absolutely shit, with neither team being able to string three passes together but there’s always a sense that Villa have more quality on the pitch and so it proves as Coutinho puts over a good cross following a short corner Watkins heads goalwards, Bazunu makes what are first looks like a decent reaction save but the ball bounces down off the crossbar and Jacob Ramsey reacts first to turn it into the net.

For some reason that I can’t fathom, we are off to VAR at Stockley Park-

“Hi Rob - Is it offside?”
“Of course it fucking isn’t Tony”
“You sure? – Ramsey was in an offside position on the original cross”
“Is the year 1983 for fucks sake?”
“No”
“Then it isn’t offside”
“OK…. Game’s shit isn’t it?”
“Wank”
“Goal might liven it up though”
“Have you seen the Dead Parrot Sketch?”

Will This Game Get Any Better?

That there has been nothing happening in the game and we are just a few minutes from half-time, we have a go at conceding second as Leon Bailey cuts in from the right hand side and hits a shot that flicks off Perraud and goes wide.  Villa have something to hang onto now and you can tell that they are going to go all out to stop Saints building any momentum whatsoever. First of all Bailey stamps down on Perraud‘s foot, which should have bought a review from VAR but no one is interested this season and then Jacob Ramsey completely ignores the ball to hack down Djenepo. I hate this kind of challenge. It’s one thing pulling someone back as a tactical foul but when you absolutely wipe someone out deliberately then it should be a red card in my book. Half-time, dog shit.

With Perraud having struggled for the last five minutes with his foot after the stamp tackle which wasn’t deemed worthy of looking at by the referee, Juan Larios is on at half-time and so is Joe Aribo who replaces Diallo, I assume in the centre of midfield.

Nothing happens in the actual game in the opening 25 minutes of the half, apart from us actually having a shot (I use the term loosely) from Che Adams but an out and out highlight occurs in the 70th minute when there is a round of applause for the Queen. Both teams sense the occasion and go a whole minute without giving the ball away, mainly down to the fact that KWP has it in his hands waiting to take a throw-in.

Ralph and the Brains Trust use the minutes applause to make two more substitutions with Armstrong off and Armstrong on and there’s a straight swap in the sacrificial lamb position up front with Adams coming off to be replaced by Sekou Mara.  Four substitutes made and we still have Djenepo and Elyounoussi on the pitch. What a time to be alive.

Despite some very small flashes being shown by the likes of Aribo and Stuart Armstrong, another 10 minutes crawls buy with nothing in terms of efforts on goal from us, so Sam Edozie is our last substitute replacing Elyounoussi, who I have absolutely nothing to say about.  It’s Snake Time on 84 minutes has Danny Ings comes on. I guess he has six minutes plus injury time to cement the England World Cup place he was going to cement when he moved to Villa.

The first time Edozie gets the ball, he spins past Ashley Young who absolutely trashes him and takes a yellow card for the team. Oh, how predictable. In comes the free kick from JWP, ABK heads it down and Salisu can’t quite get a touch and we win a corner. As we are in the 90th minute, big Baz comes up from the back but the corner is headed clear and the snake has a chance on his left foot from the halfway line to welly it towards an open goal but all he manages is a pretty good clearance to near the left corner flag.

There is one final opportunity as Stuart Armstrong wins a free kick off of McGinn’s 35th foul of the game. JWP’s cross picks out Stuart Armstrong in the box but his glancing header drops wide.  The End.

There are some games where you sit down and try and analyse the performance of your own team and you just can’t be bothered because you don’t know where to start and you know that once you start, it’s going to be very difficult to stop.

To put what is about to be said in the correct context, Villa were fucking awful and I cannot imagine that they would’ve won a game against anybody else in the Premier League with the performance that they put in today. It was enough to beat us however.

They beat us because what has to be put down as a goalkeeping mistake with Bazunu not getting the original header up and over the bar which led to a spot of pinball before Jacob Ramsey scored. Once that ball and hit the net the referee may as well have stopped the game. It is unforgivable to be 1-0 down for the best part of an hour without creating a single chance and yet it was also predictable from the moment the team sheet landed.

I can’t work out from the game, exactly what the formation was supposed to be but let’s call it 4-2-3-1. The back four was what is now our first choice back four and they performed pretty well, as they did in the last game against Wolves, restricting the opposition to very few chances.

The midfield two of JWP and Diallo has been proven not to work as a combination on many occasions. It detracts from JWP’s game because he seems to have to keep an eye on Diallo as if he doesn’t trust him and Diallo is just not good enough, end of story.

We are playing a formation with one player upfront and so you have to have ball progression and you have to have runners joining the one player upfront, or else you are not going to create anything from open play, leaving you with set-pieces. Our three players charged with that creative role were Elyounoussi, the newly contracted Djenepo and Adam Armstrong. It looked fucking horrendous on paper at the start of the game and it was fucking horrendous on the pitch as well. All of those three were complete shit, offering absolutely nothing in terms of attacking impetus, nothing in terms of support for Adams and nothing in terms of forward runs so players further back could find them in an attempt to build through the thirds. What happened was is that the centre backs had no one to pass to so ended up booming the ball long. Che Adams in truth did not have a great time upfront but what the fuck can you do when everything is throat height, with 6 foot 5 Tyrone Mings up your arse. It is absurd to expect him to do any better with a diet of complete shit.  This has nothing to do with not signing a striker in the summer.  We could have signed Haaland or Lewandowski and it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference.  No attacking plan at all aside from free-kicks, corners and embarrassing throw-ins straight off for goal kicks.

The first half was so bad that we had to sacrifice Joe Aribo as a potential attacking option and bring him on in midfield to replace the hapless and hopeless Diallo. Maitland-Niles wasn’t even on the bench, whereas I expected him to start the game.  Ralph’s reasoning was that AMN is not up to speed with how a central midfielder has to play for us. What the fuck? Does this mean Diallo does know how to play it?  Surely AMN can’t be any worse than Diallo, who simply is an absolute nothing player, repeatedly. Is AMN going to be that much of a liability you can’t afford to even have him on the bench just in case the unthinkable happens and Diallo is shit?  I'd seriously rather we played Lyanco in midfield rather than Diallo.  AT least he'll defend and allow Prowsey to try and link the play.

Stuart Armstrong and Sam Edozie did more in their cameo appearances than the three twats who started and this was entirely predictable as well. Remember all that bravery bollocks we were fed at the start of the season. Well maybe Ralph could pick a team with at least a modicum of flair in it instead of leaving them all on the bench, then maybe we might take the initiative at the start of games instead of just hoping to get back into it in the last 20 minutes.  Perhaps we could also play with a bit of bravery and go through the lines, rather than booming it long all the time.  That’s not bravery – it’s risk-averse shit.

So, the team selection was shit and the substitutions were shit. It was certainly a day to make three, possibly four substitutions at half-time because it was the most predictable thing ever that the game petered out to 1-0 Villa win

With positives being in short supply I have to say that I was impressed with Juan Larios, who battled well at left back and showed a bit of quality running forwards. Sam Edozie manage to get on the ball once and ripped Ashley Young a new one, forcing the veteran to cart him over and take a yellow card. If Edozie had been on since the start then Young would probably have got sent off but Ralph wasn’t brave enough.

It also has to be said at the back four is shaping up pretty well with all of them putting in a pretty solid performance until Perraud was forced off.

The Threads May Be Brave but the Model Isn't

Ralph looked like damaged goods in this game. It looks like he has been damaged by the heavy defeats we have suffered in the past and his overcompensating with an over defensive set up. One of the more significant defeats was the one at Villa Park last season. As a result, it’s all gone a bit Gareth Southgate. Okay, he has ditched the back five but we are still over defensive. He needs to trust his back four and his midfield two, to do the majority of the defending and the four players at the top end of the pitch have to be picked for what they can offer at the top end of the pitch with the ball. Today, 10 out of the 11 players were picked because of what they can do defensively. Again, look at the number 10s. Djenepo has been playing fullback all season and that has got him a new contract, let alone a place in last night‘s team on the basis of his defensive discipline. Adam Armstrong has been selected, not because he is a goal threat or creative, but because he covers the left-hand side and will run all day and Elyounoussi has now played seven games in a row without offering a single thing going forward but he has covered the space well defensively.

Bearing in mind that we fucking lost and we were pathetic and didn’t have a shot on target or game, would it really have been worse to have Edozie, Stuart Armstrong and Aribo starting instead of Djenepo, Elyounoussi and Adam Armstrong?  Of course it fucking wouldn’t and we might have put Villa on the back foot and we might have got their fans on their back have we managed to score early. Ralph’s conservatism (the opposite of bravery) allowed Villa to grow into the game, lose their nervousness, realise that there was nothing to be scared of from this Saints line-up and scrape their way to a 1-0 win.

The manager needs to have a long hard look at himself after this defeat.  I thought there was an element of misfortune about the Wolves defeat but this was self-inflicted and piss poor from Ralph and the Brains Trust.  Two games running against poor team low on confidence and we've allowed them to play themselves into the game instead of going for it.  Just not good enough and a change of mind set is needed.