Europa League Match 6 - Southampton 1 Hapoel Be'er Sheva 1

Claude Spots a Player making a Forward Run and Gets Angry

A season defining game against a team who none of us had ever heard of until this season.  Hapoel Be’er Sheva are in town the play the 6^th and final group game in the Europa League.  The permutations are simple – the winners go through and if it’s a draw, goalless is good for us and any score draw puts them through.

As with any midweek game, we’re all wondering what line-up Claude is going to pull out of the hat and the rumours and denials regarding José Fonte have made this more of an issue than it should have been.  It’s time to stop fucking around and play our best team and in the main, Claude does this aside from two glaring omissions.  One is our very own Captain, Leader, Legend who is on the bench instead of Yoshida for the 6^th Europa League match in a row and the other is that there is no Sofiane Boufal, with his place going to Josh Sims.  Ok, Sims has been great so far but this is somewhat important. 

There is a decent contingent of Hapoel Be’er Sheva fans in the corner at St Mary’s and it’s a perfect night for football.  There is a nagging doubt in my mind about how we are going to play it.  We should go all out for the win but with 0-0 being a ‘win’ tonight… well I wonder.  Should be no bother though – they are very average and we’ve been very good at home in the Europa League so far.

Early signs are encouraging as we win a corner on the left and despite Redmond putting over a really loopy corner, Austin climbs well to win it at the back post and heads it straight to the keeper.  Over the next 20 miutes or so, the optimism wanes as we basically sit off when they have the ball and go into sideways and backwards mode when we have the ball.  All our forwards are really good at maintaining possession and knocking it back to a player behind them.  Part of the reason for that is that there is no one breaking forward to try and find with a forwards pass.

Hapoel haven’t come to lie down and a cross from the left evades everyone and finds Buzaglo on the right and he takes a touch before lashing over the bar.  A bit of a warning there.  We meanwhile are doing the Israeli’s defending for them by running into a defender or giving the ball away.  Redmond has a glorious chance to play a ball through a 15 yard gap to put Sims away but he passes it straight to a defender.  Really, really shit!

There’s some minor excitement on 35 as first, Big Ogu kncoks Romeu over and gets yellow carded and then Sims wins the ball and plays it to Redmond but his curling right footed effort is too close to the keeper who just parries it away.  A coupld of minutes later and we have a corner which Redmond loops over and Austin climbs again and heads wide this time but as he lands there’s something wrong and after a delay, he has to go off with a physio holding his arm to his side and out at 90 degrees to his body.  I’m no expert but that’s not good and he’s replaced with Shane Long.

Long is running about as you’d expect and Hapoel panic a bit and he gets carted over about 35 yards out.  We are in the 46^th minute so someone has to hit it and with neither Tadic or JWP on, surely it should be Virgil but no, Redmond tries a Ronaldo knuckleball free kick and it’s wank – one bounce and the keeper picks it up.

Half time and not much optimism that we’re going to be two goals in front going into the last 10 minutes.  Whatever the score is, you just know we’re going to arrive at the last ten minutes with Hapoel just needing one goal to knock us out.

The second half starts with a good block from Yoshida which he had to make after a shite Romeu pass had put us in the shit.  We win a corner after a dangerous low cross from Bertrand is well defended as Long closed in.  the corner flicks off a defender and finds long at the back post.  He has to shoot instantly first time but instead of that, it bobbles off both his shins and he loses it.

The first sub sees Tadic on for Sims with the debut of Dusan’s mask which looks really big and uncomfortable.  I can’t imagine he’ll be competing for many headers but he almost has an impact straight away as Romeu drives intot he box and his shot deflects to Maskman and his curler is away from the keeper but headed away comfortably enough.

The Hapoel right back has been booked and Redmond uses this to attack him and he goes past him at will before expertly picking out another Hapoel player.  Bloody hell.  70 minutes gone and we’re all so fucking half-arsed.  Davis and Hojbjerg have not pushed forward all game and they certainly aren’t going to start now as ‘0-0 win’ looms large on the horizon.  Another corner in from Bertrand on the right and Virgil is up and he beats the keeper to it but it’s just too high and he can only flick it wide.

The what do you fucking know?  Hapoel have a bit of possession around half way and we have all 11 behind the ball.  They work it up the left and the ball infield is poor and Romeu intercepts and tries to find Hojbjerg with a first time pass which doesn’t reach and Hojbjerg doesn’t react.  One pass right and it’s not a particularly good pass but Buzaglo runs away from the goal towards the corner flag and wraps his right foot around it, driving it past Fraser’s right hand in right into the bottom corner.  Well what a surprise.  One shot, one goal.

JWP is on for Hojbjerg but for the next 10 minutes we do nothing.  There’s no moore urgency, no more craft, no more intent.  The centre backs are taking turns to get into the boxand on 90 minutes we have an effort as Tadic gets over a cross from the left and Yoshida meets it and heads it down but straight at the keeper.  Three minutes extra to go.

Another minute ticks by with Hapeol winning a throw in and wasting time.  Finally, we build up the left, Tadic cross and it lands at the feet of Virgil and he calmly passes it into the net via a deflection to make it 1-1.  He’s our best defender, best midfielder and now he’s our best striker. It was notable that when the cross came in, we had 4 players in the box instead of the usual one.  Bodies in the box = goals.  Who’d have fucking thought it. There are approximately 90 seconds left.  Time for one last chance.

It comes as Cedric builds down the right, finds JWP infield and his cross is perfect.  In comes Maya Yoshida, beats the defencer, meets it well, heads it down and six inches wide.  So near to a totally undeserved place in the last 32 of the Europa League.

And so another Southampton FC shit European campaign comes to an end. An absolutely disgraceful performance. Playing for a 0-0 draw at home - just fuck off! That one is down to you Claude. We only played with any attacking intensity for the last 3 fucking minutes.  So much for our fucking European football expert of a manager. We should have been blowing this lot away from the start. A home game in front of a full house and we play like that. Fuck off.  In many ways it’s even worse than the Midtjylland exit last year.  That was the single worst performance ever but this year we’ve managed to be shit enough over 6 matches to not qualify from a really easy group.

We play a formation where we have four defenders three midfielders and three attackers only it's not three attackers it's one attacker with two wingers who play really really wide and on the wrong side as we have left footed players on the right and right footed players on the left etc. What invariably happens is that we end up with the full back and the winger tarting around with the ball in the corner before one of them slings a cross aimed vaguely at the one guy in the middle who is marked by two players. The other variation in our attacking play is the quick break which by the time the winger on the wrong side checks back onto his good foot is not a quick break any more.

It's easy to criticise the likes of Nathan Redmond and I was spewing with him during the game but when you think about it, after he's beaten the full-back which he did on numerous occasions, he had so few options to pass to. That doesn't excuse the fact that he never fucking found any of them are but the lack of players in the box and a lack of midfielders breaking into the box is one reason why we are not scoring any goals and haven't done in three out of the six European games. It was only Virgil’s last minute goal that stopped that being four blanks out of six. Isn't it odd that we scored last night when we started putting players in the box when we needed 2 goals with 3 minutes left?  The ball drops and we have more than one player in the box so therefore, a better chance of scoring.  It’s not bastard rocket science is it?

So, there is a lack of intent in our forward play and now it's absolutely apparent that our strikers just aren't good enough. You have to laugh or else you'd cry at the fact that with 10 minutes to go and needing two goals, we have Shane Long as our one striker who is anywhere near the goal and he hasn't scored for nine months. Charlie Austin now being injured and likely to be out in a while it does make you fearful for how the fuck are we going to score any goals in the next few games with either Shane or Rusty Rodriguez up front.

When Claude started and we played the diamond formation and the forwards had to be more flexible than before, I could see why we wouldn't need a striker like Graziano Pelle any more. Now that the formation has been modified and we're basically playing with one central striker, he is exactly the sort of player that we need to hold the ball up and maybe allow some of the midfield players to break in the box. He was also pretty good at getting on the end of crosses like the one’s we’re continually punting into the box.  I remember Ruud Gullit pointing out on Match of the Day that when teams sit deep you need a big man is to chuck the ball into occasionally and it's one option that we just do not have now. Our attacking play is so limited and so easy to defend against.

As for individual players tonight – Virgil, Maya, Cedric, Davo and Oriol (shit pass aside) were decent, Fraser had nothing to do except shank a couple of kicks and everyone else was pretty shite.  Josh Sims found it hard against a very deep defence and just kept running into players but you can’t blame him as he’s just a kid.  That one’s down to the manager who also decided to have a player with a broken face on the bench ahead of our record signing who is exactly the kind of player you need against a massed defence.  I hear that Sofiane had a small injury.  I bet he’s back on Sunday and he’ll probably be in the training photos on Friday.

The European campaign as a whole has been fucking dreadful.  Drawn in a group against three bang average sides, we’ve managed not to qualify and we haven’t even really gone for it.  We were ok in the two games against Inter.  Won at home and played well away aside from missing a shedload of chances.  Hapoel home and away were shithouse performances like we were fucking scared of them.  Nothing at all going forward in either game as we sat deep and passed it about.  Sparta at home was easy after we’d been awarded a very dodgy penalty and then in Prague we let in an early-ish goal and didn’t really show any attacking urgency to try to get it back.  Against sides that attack us we’re passable but against teams who defend deep we haven’t got a clue.  We haven’t got the players with the guile to open them up and we haven’t got the players to go direct but Claude persists with sideways and fucking backwards and no runners into the box.  Team selections have been questionable to say the least, especially Sparta away – some players are interchangeable and some are definitely not.  Playing Martina when Cedric was fit, playing J-Rod when Austin was fit, not playing Romeu and where the fuck was our £16 million signing tonight - probably being saved for Middlesbrough.   Here’s a thought – why not qualify and then rest players when the job is done!

I have to say that Maya has in the main played well but he’s no José Fonte as a player or as a leader.  Still at least José will I assume be available for Mourinho to pick in the next round as he didn’t play a minute for us.  38 games as captain last season and he didn’t play a minute in the European competition we qualified for as a reward.  Something is fucked there.  Over 38 games last season we did brilliantly to finish 6^th and qualify for the group stages and this year we don’t even really go for it. Why did we bother?  Why did we celebrate when we qualified? Still, #WeMarchOn and #WeFuckOff.  Is that the high turnover of players and manager?  All the new players will have no idea about how much it meant to everyone to qualify through the league last season.  Then there’s the fans – those that spent fortunes travelling to the three away games to see us score no goals and play absolutely appallingly in two of the games, those who wedged out for the three game package for the home games, those who got up to watch all the game in the middle of the night in some far flung place in the world.  I tell my 12 year old boy that he’s been fortunate to see Saints when they’re on the up – it’s all he’s known but the crushing disappointment was written all over his face.  The walk back across the Itchen Bridge was like a counselling session – “Mané would have made a difference… Pellé would have made a difference… why wasn’t Fonte playing… where was Boufal?”  It’s hard telling your kid that Saints nearly always find a way to let you down.

There’s the manner of defeat as well.  If we’d gone for it tonight and in the other games, played our best sides at all times and over the 6 games and ended up getting knocked out by teams who were better than us then that would be acceptable.  This is not – three goals in the last five matches against very average opponents, two from Virgil and one from an own goal.  Fucking rubbish.

I try in the main to be balanced when I’m writing these blogs and I’m conscious that all my opinions from the time they are written may well be completely contradicted by what I write in anger after a shit performance.  I also hate saying ‘I told you so’ but I said after the Sparta abortion that if we failed to qualify then it would be a turning point for Claude and it undoubtedly will be.  The League Cup win against Arsenal reserves had bought him a bit of time but any feel good factor from that, flew out of the window after this shit.  He could have got away with failing to win at home to Middlesbrough on Sunday has we won tonight but not any more.  I have to admit that I was in full Poortvliet mode for his post match interview because I just couldn’t be arsed to listen to it.  Same old shit – ‘it zis a good opponent’.  No it fucking wasn’t.  They were shit (so were Sparta, so were Inter) and we played like we were scared of them.  Because there was an option to go through with a 0-0 draw, Claude froze and took that option.  It’s a dangerous game and it bit us in the arse big time.  Turn off the radio.

 That's the Shoulder That's Been Carrying our Whole Goalscoring Threat All Season.

Europa League Match 5 - Sparta Prague 1 Southampton 0

Sideways, Backwards, Sideways, Backwards

A trip to Prague to play Sparta who evidently are much improved from when we played them the first time round when they were pretty dreadful. It looks like they've appointed the youth team coach as manager and he's had a positive effect. Since they played us, they've won every game in the group which includes both of their home games so far. There is some stat that says Sparta haven't beaten an English club since 1982. Here we go then.

I strongly suspect that this game would be taken lightly by the management and that we were not going to put our best team out because even if we lose tonight, we have another chance in the final home game and so it proved with Cedric and Bertrand making way for Martina and McQueen, Maya instead of Jose in defence and even Romeu was rested with Hojbjerg playing defensive midfield. The weakest of our wide midfielders in JWP and Clasie were in the starting line up and the forwards looked full of running but not much else with Long, J-Rod and Redmond picked. I kind of understand the weakened side but at the same time I kind of don't.  I would say the better policy is to get it done tonight and rest players for the home game against Be’er Sheva.

Off the pitch since the Liverpool game, fans have had to deal with at the Alex Crook bullshit machine saying that Liverpool are going to sign both Virgil and Sam McQueen from us with Daniel Sturridge coming in the other direction. Hold it right there for fuck's sake. Now, even though I spent the whole of the last blog slagging off Daniel Sturridge, He would be an absolutely dream signing for Saints which is exactly why it will not happen because he's probably on at least twice as much as our highest paid player. Virgil to Liverpool in January really isn't happening either and any time there's a swap deal mentioned, it never happens.   If you forget money for a second, maybe it’s possible that Sturridge wouldn't say no to a move down here if he looked at how our other big club rejects like Bertrand, Romeu and Hojbjerg have improved in the time down here. I do however strongly suspect though that he is Billy Big Bollocks so wouldn't even contemplate moving to a team that's not a big club.

Anyway, regarding the outgoing rumours, if only in the club could block Alex Crook from writing about them in the same way that he blocks most of us from following him on Twitter.  It’s not just what he writes but it’s the fact that he writes it and a million fan pages and Twitter accounts flood the market with it.

Away we go and almost immediately, McQueen threads a ball down the line to Long who bundles past the full back and squares it to Clasie who could shoot but presents an easy chance to J-Rod who takes the shittiest of shithouse first touches and instead of tapping in, tries to dribble round a defender and loses it.  JUST FUCKING HIT IT MAN FOR FUCKS’

SAKE!!!

Sparta’s first attack ends with Virgil waving a lazy leg at it and whacking it straight up in the air.  Down it comes, hed tennis carnage and then Pierre tries to sort it out by heading it back to Fraser and it just gets there as Lafata swings a boot at it.  Virgil has another dodgy moment a few minutes later when he doesn’t seem to be concentrating and takes out Julis in the air to give Sparta a free kick about 30 yards out.  Dockal chips it in and Costa has ambled into the box with the freedom of fucking Prague and volleys it past Fraser at the near post.  Martina and Clasie have just watched him go.  Oh fucking terrific.

Straight away we respond with a great ball from Redmond which puts McQueen in and he hits it first time but straight at the keeper who blocks well.  We create a coupld of chances as the half goes on but nothing much.  Long gets his head on a JWP frr kick and the keeper easily pushes it wide and then Redmond puts McQueen away again and he squares for J-Rod whose shot is blocked before rebounding to McQueen’s right foot and he shanks it wide with the swinger.  Half time and it’s already shaping up to be one of those games.  Basically, we are not going to score all the time Austin is not on the pitch so we may as well hook J-Rod and get him on now but no, we start the second half with the same side, playing the same sideways and backwards way.  Claude appears to have told them to shoot more and so Maya does, from 45 yards and what a surprise, it was shit.

Hojbjerg goes down with what looks like a dead leg and on comes Romeu in his place, with Boufal coming on to put Rusty Rodriguez out of his misery.  It makes no difference though and Sparta enjoy a bit of possession and work a neat 1-2 on our left and the shot is straight at Fraser but he decides to palm it straight back out into the middle to make sure that the defenders are on their toes.  They win a free kcik when Costa gets challenged by Boufal and just stands still and then does a forward roll and rolls around until the ref gives a free kick.  It’s bizarre and so is our defending as it’s chappied in, no one goes with Lafata and he just misses it… oh hang on it’s going in but Fraser sticks out a hand to paw it away.  More pressure and this time Clasie gives it away and Dockal gets in alow shot which Fraser does well to get down to.

Sparts have had their ten minutes so now it’s business as usual, sideways and backwards, sideways and backwards, 11 behind the ball, no forward runs.  Garbage.  I gave up 10 minutes ago on us scoring and every opportunity that we fuck up is just a shrug of the shoulders from me.  Boufal chips in a good ball to JWP who has made a decent run but he misses the ball.  Shrug!

Austin is on for Clasie but we are shit with overhit passes from Redmond and diabolical crossing from Martina.  Straight to the keeper, straight behind the goal, wank.  Long comes short and picks up a ball, turns in midfield and runs with purpose to the edge of the box and wildly slashes miles wide. Shrug!  Long again as JWP put him in on the right, crosses instead of shooting and cleared for a corner.  Shrug!  Corner comes over and Virgil smacks a free header over from 6 yards.  Shrug! Shrug! Fucking Shrug!

The final ten minutes which should be like the bastard Alamo is ten minutes of nothing.  We do nothing except sideways and backwards.  It’s fucking painful.  The last chance isn’t really a chance because Maya is offside as JWP’s free kick comes in but it hits his face and bounces down to the keeper anyway.  Shrug!, Bollocks! Shit!

Well that was fucking dreadful from the moment that J-Rod decided to fuck about in the first few minutes until the end of the 94th minute. We were absolutely fucking shit – nat as bad as Midtjylland but not far off. I've completely given up on the fanciful idea of scoring or even working the goalkeeper from about 55 minutes onwards. We were so clueless in the way we were playing and so many individual players were having shocking games. Like I said at the start I understand Claude picking a weaker side for this game and in his defence, that side should have been strong enough to beat this Sparta side who let's face it, are pretty fucking average at best. He chose a side of that he thought would do the job and they completely and utterly didn't. 

Where do you fucking start with individual players. I know, I'll start with the worst of the lot, Cuco Martina. We would have been better off taking him off when we had already used all three subs and played with 10. If he wasn't on the pitch then we wouldn't have been giving him the ball and expecting him to do what a full back is supposed to do and actually cross the fucking ball into an area somewhere near our strikers in the middle. If we do substitute him without putting anybody on we possibly would have been given an extra 30 seconds of extra time at the end to try and get a goal.  As we all know though, that would've been just another 30 seconds of complete fucking shit. Martina was the worst closely followed by J-Rod. Rusty Rodriguez as he's known now was absolutely diabolical again like he has been in every single game he's played this season. There comes a point when the excuse of being rusty just doesn't cut it anymore. This is top level sport and you can't carry people.  We need him to contribute as he is one of the main strikers in the squad and at the moment he just isn't contributing at all. That miss or rather, that lack of shot in the first couple of minutes is as bad as it gets. He shoots he scores we are 1-0 up. Instead, five minutes later we are 1-0 down. Game changer.

Then we have Shane Long who at the moment is just running about. All season he's just run about with absolutely no quality in his play whatsoever. I understand that he had a bit of a go at some fans who are booing at the end of the game. That's really fucking dodgy ground to be on when you are a striker who hasn't scored for 8 months including all of this fucking season and it's nearly December.  Redmond...? Stationed wide left and pretty average though did link up with McQueen quite well. He's never a goal scorer though. Never.

Apparently we are going to start seeing the best of Boufal according to Claude. Well we fucking didn't see it tonight as he barely touched the ball when he came on and added absolutely no spark to a team that was completely and actually flat anyway.  Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on him as trying to put life into that performance was like trying to jump start a car with no fucking engine or battery in it.  Dusan Tadic is becoming a better and better player with each game he misses. 

Now the midfield and JWP had a completely anonymous game contributing the square root of fuck all. Another game where he had the chance to step up and completely failed to do so. Clasie was okay for the first 30 minutes and then he did what he always does and fade completely out of the game before we have to take him off.  Maya was a fucking nightmare waiting to happen at the back and his shot from 45 yards was awesome and Virgil had quite possibly the worst game I've ever seen him have the Saints shirt. He really looked like he didn't want to be out there and played in a really half arsed lethargic way.

The players that leaves who had relatively decent performances (and a couple of these are 'at a stretch') are Hojbjerg, Romeu (who was sorely missed from the start), Forster who was looking unconvincing but at least made a couple of saves and Sam McQueen who was easily our man of the match.

With Hapoel beating Inter 3-2, we are now dead level with the Israeli's going into the last game against them at St Mary's. This game is the most important game that Claude will have as Saints manager. If we fail to get out of this group then the crowd will turn. Some are turning already but in my opinion if we fail to get out of what is a really easy group with Inter being crap, then people will have the right to ask serious questions of the manager.  Part of the reason he was brought in was because of his experience of European competition. Three away trips and no fucking goals?  Sideways and bastard backwards and no forward runs from midfielders and strikers playing miles apart.  Tactically – something is severely wrong at the moment.

So, I get that we have to rotate players and the weaker players only seem to play in the European games and the League Cup games. When do performances become so bad that players get left out of the rotation? I would personally rather see Harrison Reed playing ahead of Jordy Clasie. I would also prefer to see Sam Gallagher playing ahead of J-Rod and to be honest I think I'd even rather see the incredibly raw Olomola. There has got to be an alternative to playing Martina at right back. Why not play Yoshida there and play Jack Stephens alongside Virgil?  Promote the England U21 player instead of playing the journeyman donkey.  It was kind of okay when Martina was a novelty player who played occasionally but this season he is playing far too much and he just isn't good enough to string three decent games together. At the moment is not good enough to string 10 minutes together.  If the fullbacks don't deliver any quality from the wings then we severely struggle.  Claude knows this as it’s his system so why is he picking a player who just isn’t capable of playing this way.

Lots of interviews afterwards with the manager and players saying I'm ever so sorry, we let the fans down. Yes you fucking did. It's not just tonight though, we have let a painfully average team win the group so even if we managed to scrape our arses through in a couple of weeks, we are heading for a last 32 tie against a team who has dropped out of the Champions League and the way we are playing at the moment, that will definitely be the end of that.

Next up and back to the league and we have the visit of the Lying Dutchman and his Everton side. They have Stekelenburg in goal and we all know he has a weakness with shots at the goal. Right now I'm wondering if we will actually fucking have any.

Europa League Match 4 - Southampton 2 Inter Milan 1

The Two Main Men

If my time as a Saints fan is anything to go by, there won't be many Saints supporters who get to see a competitive home game against one of Europe's superpower clubs. Inter Milan have earned the right to be mentioned up there with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and the other Italian giants Juventus and AC Milan. That is a fair reflection of their pedigree and tonight they are playing at St Mary's. 40 years ago, as a seven-year-old I saw us play Anderlecht who at the time we are one of the biggest clubs in Europe. I obviously can't remember too much about that game but I remember that the atmosphere was electric and the chocolate boxes behind the Milton Road and at the Dell were ridiculously packed.

In the context of Europa League Group K, we cannot afford to lose this game. A defeat would put us right in the shit regarding qualifying for the knockout stages. If we could have hit a barn door at the San Siro a few weeks ago, we would have a little bit of leeway here.

Inter have by their standards been having a shocking time of it this year. Three points in three games in the Europa league pales into insignificance compared to them being 9th in Serie A. Frank De Boer paid the price for this and was sacked a couple of days ago so they have the youth team manager in charge tonight. Hopefully, he is a lot like Steve Wigley.

It's an interesting night for Claude with his team selection. We have this game and we have the less than glamorous trip to Hull City on Sunday. I do not see that game being more difficult than this one and so to me, we should be putting out of the stronger side tonight. I am therefore not terribly impressed when I see that your Yoshida is playing ahead of Fonte and that J Rod is in ahead of Austin. I'm happy with JWP and Hojbjerg being in ahead of Clasie and Davis because the latter two were pretty poor on Sunday.  In the full back positions, Sam McQueen gets the nod ahead of the recovering Bertrand and on the right is Cuco the Clown.  Personally, I would've played either your Yoshida or Steve Davis as a makeshift right back ahead of the clown Martina who was so bad in the Chelsea game that the thought of him playing again tonight makes me cringe. The selection on the bench throws up a question and it makes me wonder why we signed to Stuart Taylor? With McCarthy being injured you would expect Taylor to be on the bench as the experienced option but no, Harry Lewis is preferred and I don't know how old he is but he looks about 15..

Inter have put out what looks like a fairly solid and strong team with Handanovic in goal through to Banega and Icardi up front. No matter how badly they are doing by their own ridiculously high standards, they are not going to be easy to beat with international players from Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Italy dotted around all over the pitch.

Away we go and a decent start down the right with Tadic putting over a decent cross right onto J-Rod’s head and he climbs well but there’s a lack of conviction in the header as it goes wide.  J-Rod has another chance a few minutes later when he tries to curl one into the far top corner but it starts too central and Handanovic can watch it over the bar.  We have one more off-target effort as Redmond cuts in and shoots wide before Inter get into our half and what do you fucking know?

Perisic against Martina was always going to be a fucking nightmare and he beats him and crosses right over to the other side where Medel retrieves it, exchanges passes with Candreva and crosses from the dead ball line.  Perisic should score but his effort hits Martina and the ball somewhat fortuitously finds its way back to Icardi who slams it first time intot he bottom corner before Fraser can move.  Fuck!!!  It looked like there was a foul on Virgil by Medel out on our left but no one is interested in giving that so 1-0 down again from Inter’s first shot.  You have to say that they’re efficient.

We are all kind of stunned and frustration sets in as we slow everything down and do not look like scoring at all.  J-Rod is hanging onto the ball too long and every move seems to break down on him.  We look good in midfield with JWP and Hojbjerg making up for a somewhat wayward performance from Romeu. Aside from J-Rod, the other dead zone is on the right where Cuco has gone into full clown mode.  I love the way he goes steaming over to a situation where he has no chance of winning the ball, only to realise it, stop and then chase back as the opposition have skipped round him and away.

The world seems shit and on half time we win a corner.  Tadic takes it poorly and it gets cleared up in the air.  Rather than aimlessly head it, Hojbjerg brings it down on his chest and tries to bundle past Perisic and the ball bounces up and hits him on the elbow.  Penalty given.  Absolute bullshit decision.  There’s some sort of scuffle going on as the Italians protest and from the other end I can see McQueen take a slap in the face from someone.  The ref is looking straight at it and calls the offender (Candreva) over and bottles it with a yellow card.  A good three minutes have gone by before Tadic steps up and it’s a shite penalty at a comfortable height and just right of centre with Handanovic going the right way and saving it easily.  Fuck off… half time.

I’m of the same opinion as I was against Chelsea on Sunday.  There is no point in leaving a player on who is not going to do anything so we may as well take J-Rod off now but we don’t and it’s an unchanged team who are back on to start the second half.  We make a good positive start and Hojbjerg’s cross finds its’ way to JWP who strikes it well but Handanovic makes a strong.  A few minutes later and Virgil and J-Rod combine and JWP creams one towards the top corner but Handanovic is there again, throwing up a really stong arm to keep it out again.  It the last contribution for Jay and Austin is on and Jay appears to take out his frustration on the advertising hoarding.  Soon, there’s another great chance as Hojbjerg cust in from the right and keeprs going before chopping onto his right foot but Ranocchia makes a really good block.

Surely it’s going to come in a minute – Tadic swings over a corner and up gets Virgil to thinmp it goalwards but too central and the keeper tips is over again and then finally, as the second corner is half cleared, Romeu flicks it goalwards and it loops over the keeper and hits the bar, falling for Virgil to ram it into the net from close range.  The referee immediately looks like he’s disallowed it but it’s a goal and the big man gets a deserved first of the season.

Three minutes later and it all goes proper mental as Tadic and McQueen work an opening down the left and Tadic gets a yard and crosses low and it takes a deflection off one Milan defender and that seems to confuse Nagatomo at the back post and he stands there like a twat and it bounces off his hip and loops past Handanovic and into the net.  Cheers mate, 2-1.

Davis on for Tadic for the last 15 as Claude demonstrates his European experience and Dvo seems to calm things down and we keep possession nicely until Romeu plays a shit house of a pass across our own box and straight to Icardi who forces Fraser into a decent low save.  It feels ridiculous to say it but that incident aside, we are extremely comfortable and the only side that looks like scoring.  Redmond shoots wide after a break up the left and we play out the last knockings in the corner with Davis, McQueen and Hojbjerg not letting inter have it.  The ref has seen enough and fuck me, we’ve won.

This is a game that in a few years, when I'm an old bastard dribbling into my cornflakes, I'll be looking back and will be able to say "I was there". Southampton 2 Inter Milan 1. Just let that sink in for a little bit
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Okay. The first half was pretty dreadful from our point of view with us offering absolutely zero attacking threat and then letting in a shit goal on Inter's one visit into a half.  After the first few minutes, the atmosphere was pretty flat because the team weren't doing it on the pitch. Like in the Chelsea game, there was a lot of sideways and backwards and are losing the ball as soon as we tried to do something positive with it.  The second-half however was completely different and we tore them the new arsehole that they desperately deserved and the crowd responded superbly. I sit in the family stand so I'm used to it being fairly quiet but tonight was very different and I’m not just talking about the presence of half and half scarfers. Sure, we got a bit lucky with the winning goal but boy did we deserve it, not just for tonight but for the game in Milan as well.

There were many great performances in the second half but some players did it for the whole 90 minutes, in particular, Sam McQueen, Virgil, Maya, Pierre Hojbjerg and James Ward-Prowse. I'm writing his full name, instead of just JWP because today, he was the real deal. A superb performance in midfield from start to finish and the best game I’ve ever seen him have. If only he was a little bit more forceful when it comes to demanding the ball to take a penalty. On that note, that has got to be it for Tadic and penalties. Even the ones he scores are dribbled into the goal but I think that's two he's missed now and to be honest with our basic problem of not scoring enough goals, missing penalties is not something we can afford.

It seems churlish to talk about negatives but J-Rod really needs to be playing every single game that the under 23 side plays because he was so far off the pace, he was virtually running backwards. Also, though he improved in the second half, Cuco Martina is a fucking nightmare. Cedric or Pied or an Academy Right back or the January transfer window cannot come soon enough.  Then there’s the referee Pawel Gil – unreal decision not to send Candreva off and I know it’s a Premier League thing to penalise holding at corners etc but Ranocchia has rugby tackled Virgil on at least 3 occasions and he’s not given it.  Also, you have to say, the decision we got given for the penalty was scandalous.

Inter Milan got what they deserved. There is a lot that I like about Italian football, particularly the way their sides usually defend.  I'm not talking about the niggly, time wasting, diving method of defending but the actual technical defending that Italian sides do so well. There are times when it oversteps the mark though and it just becomes blatant thuggery. Though it was up the other end of the pitch to where I was and I didn't see it at the time, the actions of Candreva around the penalty with scuffing the penalty spot and then elbowing McQueen in the face were absolutely fucking scandalous. You would think he may get some sort of retrospective ban for that but who does that benefit? Not us.  We could probably do with him playing against Sparta Prague and he is one of their better players even though he's obviously a horrible little fuck. I was amazed at how little Inter did, Not just tonight but in the first game as well. I guess that's why they've had nine managers in six years.

The coverage we got in the media was predictable in the extreme. Even though it was one of the biggest wins in the clubs history, Manchester Red Cunts losing on the same night was of course a bigger story.  On the highlights that I watched when I got in they spent 10 minutes discussing how the Red Cunts should build their team around Carlton Pogba, who got injured in the first half of the game today and therefore didn't contribute anything to the game they were showing the highlights of.  When they did get around to showing our game, or when anyone talks about it on the radio or anything like that it's always in the context of the players that we lose every summer and the manager fucking off and that gets a bit tiresome as well as you know that all they really want to do is talk up Virgil moving to a huge club at some point.

Fuck ‘em all, we don't need to be top of the bill to have a fantastic night. I don't give a flying fuck if Inter aren't what they were a few years ago.  They are still a massive European name and with the possible exception of Manchester Red Cunts, the biggest side in the competition and we beat them quite convincingly.  With Sparta beating Be'er Sheva we are now in the position of needing to win one of our last two games to be certain of qualifying for the knockout rounds. It would be nice to do that in the next game which is away in Prague as that would leave us top of the group going in to the last round of matches. Sparta were distinctly average at St Mary's when we won 3-0 so let's go out to improve our pretty dismal European away record.

Tonight, we played Inter Milan at home and we won.  Mental.

Europa League Match 3 - Inter Milan 1 Southampton 0

The Moment We Realised It Wasn't Happening

It’s just another game tonight at the San Siro against Inter Milan. It’s just a run of the mill Thursday night at one of the most iconic stadiums in world football against one of the super powers of European football. No biggie. They were winning the Champions League with Jose Mourinho in charge and we were... well, shite and two divisions below our local rivals. Today would be a good day to remember who our local rivals are but for the life of me I can't.

Inter as we know have to leave a few players out of their Europa League squad due to financial fair play reasons and have been having a crap time of it lately. They sacked Roberto Mancini as the season started and got Frank de Boer in, have started the league season badly and lost the opening two Europa League games. This in my mind makes them more dangerous tonight. In addition to all this, their captain Mauro Icardi decided to write an autobiography saying that he could have all Inter's hardcore Ultras killed by Argentinian gangsters if he clicked his fingers. Not the brightest thing anyone's ever committed to paper and he's about as popular with the Inter faithful as Harry Redknapp is with his wife right now. Get well soon Mrs Redknapp by the way.

There had been more debate than usual about rotation and which was the priority game, this one or Man City away at the weekend. If it was down to me then it would be this one all day but it is not down to me. Seeing as he's our only striker who can hit the net, if Austin was 100% fit then he'd have started but no, J-Rod is up top. Elsewhere, Steve Davis is out, JWP is in, Redmond has a niggle, Shane is in and I can't be the only one who thinks Jose Fonte should be starting tonight. A defence with Cuco, Maya and Sam McQ in it certainly looks less than watertight on paper.

We look very lively at the start but the first chance is for Inter as Martina plays a shockingly shite back pass straight to Icardi who has stopped threatening to have people killed long enough to try to backheel it towards the danger area but Fraser blocks it away for a corner.

After this scare the game settles down and Saints are bossing possession.  To be honest, Inter don’t look that interested in closing down or chasing back especially on the wings.  Virgil pings a ball out from the back and it’s over Miranda who has just kind of left in and J-Rod is away.  He cuts in from the left once he’s retrieved the ball and there’s a moment when he could have have hit it but he tries to cust back inside a retreating defender and loses it.  Let’s put that down to two years of hardly playing.

J-Rod does better work as we approach the half hour, picking up a clearance just over half way and poking the ball out to McQueen on the left.  He puts over a great cross behind the defence and J-Rod goes in with keeper Handanovic who gets there first and it rebounds off the Saints man and rolls towards the goal.  There’s an Inter defender there and you hope he does a Bridcutt (see Sunderland 8-0 game) and somehow fucks it up but he clears it easily enough.  Back we come again and Martina pulls a god ball back across the top of the penalty area and JWP arrives like he did against Leicester, leans back like he did against Leicester and shats it over the bar like he did against Leicester.  Fucking hell.

It’s amazing how much possession we’re having and how dominant we are.  Literally all over them but the score is still 0-0 and it still is as Martina delivers a good left footed cross, up goes Long with a defender and it flicks on to the back post and J-Rod is inches away from it.  Another head in hands moment.

Before half time there’s a quick reminder of the dangers at the other end as Maya delivers his ‘one a game’ shite piece of play and heads a long ball down to Eder who takes and fires wide of the post that Fraser had covered anyway.  Half time and a superb performance everywhere bar the final third.  Though Inter have a much stronger line up than they had in the previous two Europa League games, we are still bossing it.  In the San Siro and we’re bossing it… everywhere except on the scoreline.

The second half starts in similar vein with Saints having all the control and creating the chances.  Hojbjerg slides in J-Rod who is well tackled by Miranda.  Corner and over it comes from JWP and the whistle blows well before it reached J-Rod at the back past who gets above the defender and heads in.  I cannot for the life of me see why the whistle went but there’s no spewing frustration as the whistle had clearly gone before Jay headed it.

More decent play and Long is in a footrace with a defender on the left and for no reason at all a foul is given against him but that’s the least of Shane’s problems as his hamstring has pinged and he has to go off and Austin is on.  Within 5 minutes he’s combined superbly with J-Rod and has an opening on the edge of the box but he drags his shot wide.  Should have done better.

The referee covers himself in whatever the opposite of glory is on the hour mark when Austin lays the ball off and Brozovic arrives a minute or so later and trashes him.  Advantage played as Tadic shoots straight and Handanovic.  Surely we get the free kick on the edge of the box now?  Nope, play on, wanker.  He does eventually remember how to referee a game and books Brozovic.

So, all the play and all the chances missed and then guess what.  Inter play it across to Santon on the left wing who evades the non-existent Martina and crosses low.  Candreva isn’t seen by shows JWP how to finish this sort of chance and lashes it first time left footed into the top corner before Fraser can move.  Fuck off!  One shot on target, one goal, have that.  Inter are looking decent now and Icardi produces a ridiculous turn in the box to leave Virgil standing but gets greedy and Maya slides in to knock it off for a corner.

Time for another debut and on comes Sofiane Boufal for Tadic who has tired in the last few minutes.  He takes up a position on the left wing with J-Rod switching to the right.  Having got themselves in front and starting to play better with the confidence provided by the goal, Brozovic decided to undo it all and produces a ridiculous sliding tackle through the heels of Hojbjerg and the ref has no option whatsoever but to give him a second booking.  I have a feeling this is going to make things more difficult as the time wasting has already started and this is going to make it even worse.

From the free kick, Inter have set up with such a high line that JWP has a huge area to curl the ball into and he does this and Virgil is totally free, meets it with a left foot volley and straight at Handanovic who saves easily.  Resignation has taken hold by now and we aren’t ever going to score are we?  We’re going to keep trying though with Davis on for J-Rod and Virgil playing up front.  Romeu has a potshot blocked and another corner.  In it comes from JWP and Virgil meets it, beats Handanovic and off the line for another corner. In it comes again and this time the ball drops above six yards out and Austin gets there and hits it, Handanovic blocks again.  Great save but Charlie had to lift it into the roof of the net.

There’s one last chance for JWP that you know we’re not going to score from in the 95^th minute as Boufal feeds it in and via Virgil it sits up for JWP on the volley which he puts a couple of feet wide.  Fucking hell….Gutted

I can write the post-match bit in one of two ways. Either from the point of view of 'we won the JPT when they won the Champions League' or from the point of view of purely the 90 minutes I've just seen. Big Picture vs Small Picture.  I will try and do both (and probably fail).

Small Picture first... No doubt everyone to do with the club and in the media will be saying well how did Saints lose that? It's perfectly simple - if you are complete dog shit in the final third for 90 minutes then you will not win many matches.  It got to the stage at the end when even when we were smashing the ball at the goalkeeper from 5 yards, I fucking knew it wasn't going to go in so there seemed hardly any point in even getting excited. It was similar to all those years ago when Bradley Wright-Phillips used to get clean through against the goalkeeper, you just knew it wasn't going to end up in the net so you may as well sit down and wait for the opposition to get away with it again. It wasn't just players like J-Rod, Austin, Virgil and JWP missing chances, it was also pathetic attempts at a final ball by Tadic and Martina amongst others. Inter had one decent chance, bang, win the game 1-0.  Efficiency in the final third-it's what it's all about chaps. You can be as good as you like on the rest of the pitch but if you're going to smash the final shot at the goalkeeper, some bloke in Row Z or at the fucking moon then you may as well not bother.  No debate though, we were very good in the other areas of the pitch.

If you look at the players individually, none of them played particularly badly but when it comes down to it though Long and J-Rod were never ever going to threaten the opposition goal and Martina was infuriating.  In the second half he wouldn't have put a decent cross in if he played all night and replaced the Inter players with training cones.  If we'd had a final third tonight we'd be sitting here today top of the group, having won about 3-0 and Frank de Boer would be down the Job Centre this morning.  If we’d scored first there was no way Inter would have come back given the fragile morale in that team.  It was always going to be the case that Inter were better against us than against the other two sides in the group.  Having lost the first two they’d have been virtually out if they’d lost tonight and de Boer would have been out of a job so they picked a stronger team.

We are short up front and I think we all kind of knew that.  Charlie Austin is doing it most of the time but Shane Long appears to be proving that last season was the exception rather than the rule.  He looks tired to me after the Euros and is picking up niggling injuries in addition to just not looking like a goal threat.  J-Rod cannot be expected to be firing on all cylinders but I find it worrying that he appears to have lost the speed which made him such a handful.  You could always rely on his willingness to pull the trigger as well but even that went missing at the crucial time tonight. 

At the other end of the pitch, it’s interesting that suddenly Virgil is getting a load of attention as the media wake up to how good he is.  Maybe one positive from tonight will be that he lost Candreva for the goal so maybe the boys with the big chequebooks will be put off. I may be clutching at straws here.  I was very impressed with Sam McQueen particularly in the first half and Maya had a decent game.  Cuco?  Yeah, let’s leave that one for now.

Unbelievably, Sparta Prague, having just won in Israel, sit top of the group and they were quite comfortably the worst team we have played.  We should still qualify of course as we should beat this Internazionale team and Be'er Sheva at home.

This fixture has meant a lot of reflection on where we come from in the past seven years. All that leaves me with a nice feeling about the club but it doesn't take away from the fact that we had a glorious chance tonight to put qualification from this group to bed and we fucked it up. Of course, we rested a few as well so now the pressure is on to get a result at the weekend, away at Manchester City who are coming into that game off the back of getting smashed 4-0 by Barcelona.  After you Claude...

Big Picture.... 7000 fans in the San Siro, some of whom would have been at Hartlepool and other godforsaken places a few years back. I salute everyone who made the trip. It is barely believable that we have gone from League One Minus 10 to being disappointed and frustrated with a 1-0 defeat to Inter Milan in 7 and a bit seasons.  We've got them at home in a couple of weeks and in many ways that'll be even better as it'll be sold out and we'll be looking to put tonight's result right.  One of the European heavyweights will be coming to our ground and it won't be for a pre-season friendly.  Can't wait.  Tonight isn’t terminal to our chances of going through so we have to learn from it and move on like we always do.  Inter Milan at the San Siro and we should have won – we really should have won.

Europa League Match 2 - Hapoel Be'er Sheva 0 Southampton 0

Eric Black Meets Undercover Reporter

SPOILER ALERT: The game was complete boring shite. This blog is mainly about other stuff.

Away from the mighty Southampton FC… Fat Sam has been sacked as England manager, just 67 days after getting the job.  Great effort all round that.  He’s undoubtedly an idiot for falling for a newspaper sting operation and for being a greedy arrogant bastard.  The FA have mutually consented him, thus taking the moral high ground which is a bit rich because of the past and also because, they knew he wasn’t a whiter than white character when they appointed him and guess what, he proved it.  Then there’s the press and their role in it.  Making and shaping the news instead of just reporting it – like they do when they leave bottles of whiskey outside Gazza’s house in the hope that he gives them a photo opportunity of him looking hung over.  They set him up Fat Sam and he walked right into it.  Don’t get me wrong, he had to go and the FA had no choice but I’m uncomfortable with the methods used to get rid of him.

The Telegraph will claim they’re on some moral crusade the clean up the game and it will have an effect I guess because it’s brought down the England manager but is that their job and do they really care?  They want to sell more papers generate more web traffic and this is a marvellous way to do that.  Apparently there are 8 more names in the frame for being ‘outed’ for taking bungs which of course, the Telegraph are going to drip feed over the next week or so to maximise sales / traffic.  If you’re on a moral crusade just get it all out there and be done with it.  If the press are the moral guardians of the game then we’re all screwed.

There’s no news like bad news is there?  If they’d set up this meeting to frame Fat Sam and he’d turned it down and not turned up, or even if he’d turned up and said “f**k off I’m not having anything to do with that”… would they have reported it?  Would The Telegragh have published a front page boasting that they’d tried to stitch up the England manager but he didn’t fall for it?  I think we all know the answer to that one as they’d probably be on very thin ice with the law.  The only reason they’re not being completely slaughtered is because at the end of the day they’ve got a result and so the end justifies the means somehow.  I can’t imagine that these ‘stings’ have a 100% success rate and I don’t recall ever seeing an article which read “… (insert manager name) is a good egg cos we tried to bribe him and he didn’t take the bait”.

Once Fat Sam became England manager then he as fair game as far as the press were concerned and he fell for it like an idiot and for what?  He believed it was all real and he stood to gain £400k for amongst other things, providing information on how to flout his employers’ rules on 3^rd Party Ownership.   Not smart.  I guess the £3 million a year he earned for his dream job that he’s coveted for 30 years wasn’t enough.  Idiot.  I’m disappointed because from a football point of view, I actually felt that we had a chance of doing well with him in charge but there you go – it’ll be back to the Southgate’s of this world now and that’s what’s happening in the meantime whilst the FA wait for Wenger to finish his Arsenal contract in the summer, before he undoubtedly turns England down and stays with The Gunners.

The England National Team – The Gift that Keeps on Giving.

Meanwhile, the Saints European adventure begins with a trip to Israel to play Hapoel Be'er Sheva. On the one hand they lost 5-2 to Celtic but on the other they beat them 2-0 at home and then most notably, won away at Inter.  They are supposed to be the weakest team in the group but I can't see them being worse than Sparta Prague were.

Claude's team selection is obviously made with Leicester on Sunday in mind. The early announcement that Jose, Davo, Ryan Bertrand and Goal Machine Austin had been left at home got under the skin of a few but what's he supposed the do? He's left behind our two oldest players and the two who've had relatively recent fitness issues. Also, Leicester played their Champions League match on Tuesday and it was at home. We're playing two days later and 2000 miles away. I guess that TV schedules are more important than having a level playing field.  

The starting XI picked itself.  Oh, hang on, Dusan on the bench and Jake Hesketh is starting... Didn't see that one coming.  Hapoel have apparently never lost at the Turner Stadium which is something to aim for. Their manager is resplendent in a suit and T-shirt and looks like a right Cockney wide boy.  They have a bloke in midfield called Ogu who looks like he should be a Bond villain. He's fucking huge. If Big Vic was still with us they could just have an arm wrestle for supremacy.  Anyway, game started and we win a free kick as Bond Villain treads on Long about 40 yards out. Up steps JWP and curls it perfectly over the defence and away from the keeper and right onto Captain Virgil's head. GOAAAAAAAFUCKKKK! How's he done that??? 50p head moment from the big man. All he has to do is get his forehead on it but it's hit the corner of his head and made a beeline for the corner flag.  I watch the replay still expecting the net to bulge and prove I was in some sort of false reality the first time round but no...50p head, corner flag.

The game settles into a pattern and its Hapoel passing it about and us sitting off and letting them get to 40 yards out before we get in their faces. On the one hand it's inviting pressure but they've not got the quality up front to do anything.  They have a couple of shots but nothgin to worry about as they bobble through to Fraser.

Despite having some joy down there when they created a chance that Virgil had to clear up, I'm glad that Hapoel haven't got the foresight to attack down our right where Cuco is having a mare, not being helped by Clasie in front of him who may as well not be there. We are getting nothing going up front where Long can't make any ball stick, Redmond is trying but ineffective and Hesketh is dieing on his arse and not touching the ball.

Claude's had enough after half an hour and it's time for a change with Tadic coming on for Hesketh. Though there's the expected blather on the TV about it being harsh, I like the fact that Claude has made the call.  Tadic stations himself on the right wing and we instantly look better.

Christ this is shite.  Cuco is doing my fucking head in. How can you be offside twice when you can see right across the pitch you twat? It's like watching an Under 13 player who's never played in a game with the offside rule before. 

It gets a bit fiery just before half time. Targett goes down and Hapoel have the ball. They make no attempt to kick the ball out and Ogu dawdles on it and gets it taken off him and Redmond shoots wide and it all kicks off. At least it's something to wake everyone up.  Half time, rubbish.

The second half starts in a bit more of a positive vein for Saints with JWP combining well with Targett before slipping a challenge and bringing a good save out of the keeper with a low shot.  Be’er Sheva go close when Redmond gives the ball away and then Romeu misses a header, allowing a break.  Luckily they overhit the pass to the free man and a shot was drilled across the goal and just wide of the far post and we were dead lucky that the bloke on the back post missed it.

They’ve brought on a guy with a stupid haircut called Buzaglo and he’s a diving fucker.  Howver, he puts in a decent cross which Maya decides to backheel straight to a striker who shoots wide.  It’s Maya’s “what the fuck” moment for the game and the reason he will never be a Premier League regular.

There are no more incidents at either end aside from Fraser pulling off a ‘one for the cameras’ save.  All there is, is shite from us up front with Shane Long continuing his current form and basically falling over the ball and doing everything aside from holding the ball up and passing it to a black shirt.  There are only 2 minutes of injury time as the ref can’t be arsed and the whistle goes after Shane tries to take on two men and treads on the ball again.

What a complete chore of a game that was and thank Christ it's over. We settled for a draw with about 15 minutes to go and they were never good enough to score against us. I just feel that with even a little bit more intent we could have one tonight quite comfortably. Whenever we did actually press the ball, their players just gave it away but we set off for such a long periods that it gave the impression that Hapoel were actually quite decent, which they weren't. We kept a clean sheet for the fifth match in a row but on the flip side of that, that's a minimum requirement against teams like this who were never going to score.

Lack of intensity aside, we weren't help by Virgil's 50p head effort in the first minute, nor by Martina getting caught offside about four times when he could see right across the whole fucking pitch. We were also not helped by a performance from Shane Long that can only be described as abysmal.  I can understand a striker having a bit of a confidence crisis in front of goal but he was repeatedly failing to control the simplest of passes.

The more positive performance has came from Romeu in the midfield and for once I actually thought Clasie had a fairly decent second half though he was piss poor in the first. Martina meanwhile was voted in UEFA's Team of the Night.  Well Corruption is all the rage these days.

Jake Hesketh was a little bit unlucky to be taken off but he was looking completely out of his depth and I back Claude 100% on this call though many will dig him out for it.  Claude was happy with a point and so he should be.  We’ll dick these at home and the Inter games are going to shape how well we do in the group.  They lost again tonight at Sparta by 3-1.  Apparently they have a load of Financial Fair Play implications if they play their full squad so all their big money players are not in the Europa league squad and they obviously can’t afford to not give a shit and pay the fine like Manchester City do.  Our next game is of course in the San Siro so we have to go there looking for a win to keep ourselves at the top of the group.  I imagine that the players are as keen to play in the San Siro as the fans are to watch the game so I expect us to play a stronger side there than we did tonight.

When I said at the start of this that all the news, the Daily Telegraph and all the corruption was about England and is nothing to do with Saints, I didn't know that Claude’s assistant, Eric Black was going to become the next person to be implicated. Southampton FC have asked for a full article from the Telegraph but of course they haven't given it to us because otherwise they wouldn't sell as many papers. It sounds as though that he has been filmed advising fictitious businessman on how best to bribe lower league footballers. Hopefully this is nothing but on first reading, it does sound like he is completely fucked as far as keeping his job is concerned so Claude is going to have to find another French speaking Brit.

Apparently the team is not leaving Israel until Friday morning which is going to make for a very entertaining Thursday night for Eric Black. Imagine being the poor bastard who has to share a room with him or sit next to him on a coach or on a plane.  Morning Eric, how are you? Sleep well? The Friday morning training session they have planned could be interesting. I wonder if anyone will try and bribe him to put the cones out in a certain way or whatever.

Anyway, in the current climate I couldn't see him being around for the Leicester game on Sunday though as I write, Saints have once again asked the Telegraph for unedited video and a full transcript which they are refusing to give.  Now it appears that the agent at the centre of it all who has spoken of 8 managers being on the take, has made it all up.  Stranger and stranger.

Back to the footy and Leicester.  Well, we know four of the starting 11 for that game and I expect the other 7 will mean that the team is unchanged from the West Ham game. Another clean sheet on Sunday against Vardy and Mahrez and Slimani and we'll be laughing all the way into the international break.

Europa League Match 1 - Southampton 3 Sparta Prague 0

Two 8-Year Olds Have to be Separated by Their Dad

It’s time for the rewards for last seasons efforts to be delivered and here we are, Europa League Night 1 – it’s been a journey from the Liebherr takeover in 2009 to now.  The Europa League branding around the ground looks good and there is an undoubtedly different feel about his as opposed to a normal League game.  Sparta Prague were pretty well known in European Football terms when Czechoslovakia was still a country and in the early 90s when the Czech Republic was formed, they were the dominant side domestically but they’ve not been as great recently, hence their appearance in the Europa League whereas teams such as Slovan Liberec are in the big competition.

Not that this is a small competition (well maybe it is for Mourinho and those patronising Man United bastards) and certainly not for Saints and Claude.  We need a win and we need some positive signs that the way we are playing is going to work.  However, I was expecting a different style of game tonight, one that would suit us more.  We’re seen as the 2^nd seeds in this group, behind Inter and ahead of Sparta and Hapoel so in the context of the group, it’s important to get a result against the team who on paper at least, should be challenging us for a qualifying place.

The team selected by Claude is kind of strange but not strange.  Three changes in the back four is a bit of a change with Cuco, Maya and Matty Targett in and only Virgil retained from the Arsenal game.  Elsewhere there are 4 other changes but nothing that you’d deem earth-shattering with Austin, Long, Hojbjerg and JWP coming in for J-Rod, Redmond, Davis and Clasie.

Oh look we’ve got one of those behind the goal officials that does nothing, right in front of us.  The first action of the game is after 5 minutes when Austin gets down the right and tries to cross only for it to be blocked by the sliding Costa at left back for a corner.  The ref gives a corner and everyone seems happy and then out of nowhere he points to the spot and it’s a penalty.  What the fuck is that for says I, with not the same venom as I said it at The Emirates a few days ago... and how did he arrive at that decision as he didn’t consult the traditionally placed linesman who didn’t have a flag across his chest.  It must have been a word in the radio earpiece from the official behind the goal.  Later replays proved this to be harsh beyond belief.

Before the penalty is taken we have a scene as Austin has the ball and is clearly wanting to take it and he and Tadic are having a bit of a row like a couple of 8 year olds.  It takes the head boy Virgil to go up and pull Tadic away and he’s still not having it but eventually he walks away.  Fucking embarrassing.  Anyway, after the comedy award and the comedy double act, up steps Charlie and drills it into the corner to give us a great start and hopefully give him some confidence.

We’re all over them now and Cuco is getting involved down the right, putting over a good cross which Charlie meets and nods into the net but as is often the case with Charlie, he’s offside.  We then settle into a rhythm of playing possession football but it’s all a bit slow paced for me as we work it up to the half way line and then knock it back again. 

It takes until the 20 minute mark for us to create another chance and it’s that man Cuco Martina again.  Thirty seconds after me moaning at him because he was so slow at getting out that he allowed his winger all the time in the world to get a cross in, he gets down the wing and has a great position to cross it in but he scuffs it into the defender and it bounces back to him and out of nowhere, he pulls out this wonderful cross with the outside of his right boot, right onto Charlie’s head, back across the keeper and 2-0 as easy as you like.

Back to the holding pattern for the rest of the first half, not really giving them a sniff and then Maya (as usual) has a go at ruining an exceptional first half for him by blindly knocking a shite short back pass to Fraser who has to dribble past a forward before clearing.

My prediction at half time was that it would be a dull second half and we’d just try and play it out and as we restarted, this looked like coming true.  We got a free kick for a foul on JWP on the half way line and we took it, passed it about a bit on halfway and then worked it back to Fraser.  Fraser then wellied it back to half way, where JWP lost a header and Sparta had the ball.  My question is this – what was the point of that?  Far from advocating ‘putting it in the mixer’ a-la Allardyce, there has to be more value in passing it forwards. Why not stick Charlie Austin on the penalty spot and toss it in there?  What’s the worst that can happen?  We lose the ball in their penalty area.  We are at times too patient and need to commit to a few more forward passes slightly earlier than what we are doing.

Anyway, nothing much is happening and it’s time to bring on some subs and Redmond is up first, coming on for Tadic.  Dusan has again looked superb in places but went out of the game when a Sparta player whacked him in the back in the first half.  After being bollocks and static against Arsenal, Redmond was a revelation here and was exactly what the game needed with his willingness to run at people and inject a bit of pace into the play.  Charlie Austin was beginning to look knackered as he was doing lots of tracking back on the left wing and so he came off without a hat-trick and was replaced with J-Rod.

The game was won to be honest and this was illustrated when Hojbjerg played a superb ball inside the full back for Cuco to run onto and whilst he looked up for someone to knock it back to for a tap-in, there was absolutely no one busting a gut to get into the box so he dithered and got tackled.  Not Cuco’s fault and I bet he wished he’d just smashed it at the goal.

Oriel Romeu had been having a mixed match to say the least but the tackle he put in to get booked was so late that the ball was in another post code.  Hilarious but Claude thought better of leaving him on for entertainment value and on came Davo for the last 10 minutes.

Whilst Austin had rebuilt his confidence with his goals and a decent performance, Shane Long had not and was having what is usually described as a ‘mare’.  He’d been so bad that it was somewhat surprising a) that he was still on the pitch and b) that when he got put into space on the left that he didn’t fuck it up and he got his head up and fed the onrushing J-Rod who sorted his feet out well and passed it across the keeper and into the corner for 3-0 and make the final score more representative of the match.

There had been a bit of a niggly undercurrent in the game and Sparta had clearly had enough as JWP copped a bad one on half way which made him kick off and as the final whistle blew, the left back decided to take a chunk out of Redmond and they had to be kept apart at the final whistle. 3-0, a decent if not perfect performance and happy days.

On the one hand, it’s great to get a win and it’s great to make a good start in the Europa League group.  It’s a welcome boost for Claude and there were a lot of positives with the biggest potentially, being the goals for Charlie Austin and the confidence it will bring him.  Christ knows we need a goal scorer.  Elsewhere, Virgil just strolled through the game looking like a Rolls Royce in a garage full of Trabants and Maya had a very good game aside from the one massive balls up.  Romeu was hilarious in midfield, going through a cycle of win ball, give ball away, win ball, give ball away, break someone.  He is part Schneiderlin, part Wanyama, part Wotton.  I was impressed by JWP for the whole game and by Hojbjerg for most of it.  Pierre seems to have ten minutes off here and there but when’s he’s switched on he’s a great player.  JWP is obviously working hard to adapt his game to what’s required in this system and is notably being more aggressive and passing the ball quicker.  He should really now be getting as much game time as Davo and Clasie. 

And then there was Cuco, swinging from bloody crap to bloody brilliant within seconds.  Miles away from the man he’s supposed to be marking one minute and then putting over a superb cross the next.  He’s totally unpredictable, which is not necessarily what you want in a defender.  Nothing sums him up more than the goal he set up for Charlie – a horrible shanked cross which hit the first defender and bounced back to him, followed by a perfect cross with the outside of his foot to give the striker a goal on a plate.

Elsewhere, Man United lost to Feyenoord which is funny but they don;t give a shit so we shouldn't be surprised.  They too chose a few squad players like Depay (£30m), Schneiderlin (£25m), Herrera (£28m) and other big money players like Rojo and Martial.  Pogba was shit again and Zlatan came on as a sub so it was hardly a team of untried kids.  Tossers.  More importantly, there was a shock in our group as Inter lost at home 2-0 to Hapoel Be'er Sheva which I guess is not a good result for us.  I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks when we travel to Israel.

Bigger picture… Are we getting there?  I don’t know really.  The wide areas of the pitch still concern me.  I have a feeling that against teams that play with real width we’ll really struggle.  Our strikers chase back into the traditional right and left midfield positions and then aren’t up front if we break.  To me it looks like they don’t really get back far enough to be part of the defensive effort but they’re back far enough to not get involved up front too much.  J-Rod’s performance was interesting in that he had 15 minutes on the pitch and in that time he only managed to get forward once, when he scored.  The rest of the time he was playing just in front of Targett.

Sparta – they were pretty shite to be honest.  Some tidy stuff in midfield but nothing up front and some strange players at the back and in goal.  However, the penalty that we were given was complete bollocks which put them up against it right from the start.  Would it have been given at The Emirates?

Next up we have Swansea in the League and another ‘must win’.  Claude has a few decisions to make regarding the 11 that start but I would imagine the defence will be re-installed with Cuco being the most likely to be given a chance out of today’s line-up.  In midfield I think Romeu is set in stone and I thought Tadic was until today but Redmond coming on and playing in the hole behind the strikers really made a difference so maybe Redmond there and Tadic on the left, up front with Austin.  Personally I’d persevere with Hojbjerg and JWP in midfield but I think that Davis will come back into the side, probably at JWP’s expense.

Anyhow, that’s for another day.  For now, let’s just bask in that winning feeling again.  It seems like it’s been a while.