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 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.