League 1 Match 24 - Southampton 0 Notts County 0

Tactics Board - Notts County

Notts County at home in a meeting of the two in-form sides in the League. It should be a good game and I’m trying to get away from the assumption that Notts County will attempt to kick us off the park as they are managed by Paul Ince who did that as a player, before posturing in Macho Bollocks Guv’nor pose. I think I used that line in the away blog on Notts County. They also have Lee Hughes playing up front who is a decent player – just don’t let him drive.

Despite our excellent 6-0 away win in the week, the vast majority of Saints news this week has centred on the transfer of Alex Chamberlain, which all the media is desperate to happen. As I said last week, I don’t think we should even listen unless someone offers £20m as we are now in the financial position to not accept the first offer from one of the big clubs. Occasionally I check on NewsNow to see if there are any breaking Saints stories on the web. I am now officially going to stop doing that as it makes my blood boil.

Yesterday, Nigel Adkins gave an interview saying that we’d had no offers and no one has mentioned a fee at all. Today it’s 10 million, 12 million, 5 million up front, bids by the weekend, wants to go to Chelsea who will loan back for the rest of the season, Man Utd win the race, Arsenal agree a fee, Liverpool prepare £12m bid, Stoke will sign him cos his dad played for them 30 years ago – he also played for Pompey so I expect they’ll come up with £10m to buy him. All complete and utter rubbish and guess work, reported as if it’s fact. Here’s some facts – these are some of the websites that print this shite - Caught Offside, Sporting Preview, A Different League, Tribal Football, Give Me Football, Clubcall, Goal.com. My my, aren’t there a lot of them all desperately trying to establish their niche in an already saturated market by inventing stories that have to be more sensational than anyone elses. Hope they die soon.

Tribal Football is the worst of the lot by a mile. Today (Friday) they ran a story titled, “Arsenal agree Oxlade-Chamberlain terms with Ipswich”. I know that Don Nicola can be seen as a little different, a little controversial perhaps but I’d still be very surprised if he’s letting a different club negotiate who we sell our player to. Perhaps Saints are playing Arsenal in the second leg of the League Cup Semi Final in a week or so. Perhaps the scribe of this masterpiece was watching the Brisbane floods on TV, which centre on Ipswich and he wasn’t concentrating. It took two hours for them to replace Ipswich with Southampton in that World Exclusive which gives you some idea of the quality control that goes on at Tribal Football. I would personally love to see a bomb up the arse of all these websites. There is the ‘freedom of the press’ argument but I don’t think that covers the making up of complete lies and bollocks, based on nothing whatsoever.

Rant over, for now. By the time I finish this, Alex will probably be on his way. He’s in the team today though which shows just the one change from Oldham and it’s a significant one with Lallana being injured and replaced with Puncheon. Deano is still not fit, even for the bench and nor is Connolly who was being rested after 3 games sitting on his ass in a week. Lee Barnard was on the bench having this week been charged with ABH in the now infamous, White House ‘did you spill my pint?’ incident. On the subject of the law of the land, Notts County didn’t have Lee Hughes after all as he was injured.

Away we go and soon it was time for a glorious chance as a Dickson through ball put Guly away on the left. As he bore down on goal he was faced with a choice of trying to score a Hollywood goal from a tight angle with his wrong foot or sliding it across for Chamberlain to tap into an empty net. I reckon that if he hadn’t scored so many goals recently, he’d have passed it but he lashed it wide of the far post and the chance was gone.

Schneiderlin tried his luck next as the keeper duffed a clearance and Morgan returned it first time from 45 yards but it sailed into the Chapel and we created another chance on 20 minutes as Schneiderlin put Sir Rickie away down the right. His low cross beat everyone and went to Puncheon and everyone hoped he would display his Millwall form and smash it in the net but he displayed his finest SFC form, had a bad first touch and shinned it over the bar.

The referee was having a bit of a mare and he allowed Harley to escape with just a lecture for scything through Chamberlain from behind. The SMS faithful were having a bit of a grumble and then, thirty seconds later, Richardson trashed through the back of Judge and the yellow card came out. So inconsistent that it was comical. A minute later again and Chaplow went up for a header on the edge of our own box and was clearly thumped in the back in mid air which caused him to collapse on the ground. Play on. Chappers carried on after that but was clearly struggling.

Another chance came and went as a Punch corner was met by an unmarked Jaidi who spared us all his over-excited goal celebration by heading it over the bar. Approaching half time and Chamberlain was again looking our most dangerous player and he flew down the right wing again and cut in. He then attempted the same sand-wedge chip shot to the back post that came off against Dagenham and Redbridge but unfortunately, this time it dropped inches wide as we all went oooooh and the watching scouts all started playing with themselves in excitement and all the website wrote more shit world exclusives.

Chaplow unsurprisingly didn’t emerge for the second half and was replaced with Gobern to make a none-to-intimidating central midfield partnership with Schneiderlin. Saints started the second half well and came close when Puncheon’s corner was met by a combination of Fonte and Jaidi and we had one of those ‘has it crossed the line?’ moments. Didn’t look like it from where I was and so it was proved. It was Fonte again a few minutes later as he picked up a clearance about thirty yards out before advancing a few yards and hammering a 25 yarder just wide with the keeper nowhere. He’s some player that boy.

I have nothing to say about the middle period of the second half as nothing happened. I think I may have fallen asleep and lost time somewhere as it was suddenly 10 minutes to go and the senses had well and truly been dulled.

Twenty minutes later than we should have done, we made a change with Barnard replacing Puncheon to little effect. I thought Punch was a bit unlucky to be taken off as he was far from the worst performer out there. Actually, he wasn’t far from Sir Rickie at all, about ten yards. Far from us now having attacking impetus, Notts nearly completely took the piss and won it when a free kick was floated in which Davis misjudged (thinking it was a cross) before back-peddling and shoving it over the bar. The resulting corner was headed goalwards and off the line by Dickson and so the ultimate smash and grab was averted and it ended 0-0.

It was one of those games that will not live long in the memory. Notts County came for a point and got it, end of story really. If they more than one player in our half at once, it was a bit of a rarity. We had the chance to take the lead on 12 minutes which would have made a massive difference but the Gulyman butchered it and following that, our attempts to find a way past the massed ranks of defenders, were in the main clueless and we didn’t force their keeper into a save over the entire 90 minutes. Tiredness was a factor for us but short of bringing in Barnard from the start, squad rotation wouldn’t have changed things much going forward. Losing Chaplow was a big blow and I believe there were better options on the bench than bringing on Gobern who was a weak link. Personally, I would have dropped Guly into midfield and brought Barney on up top. Gobern may make it as an effective player in the future but he isn’t at the moment as he’s too timid and seems to fall over constantly.

At risk of sounding like Andy Townshend in his tactics truck, when faced with a massed defence that you can’t play through, you either have to go over it or round it. The aerial route was rubbish as Sir Rickie was getting battered by their defenders and the referee wasn’t giving him anything other than quizzical looks and we didn’t try getting down the wings – in fact we made it worse by swapping Chambo and Punch so they were on the ‘wrong’ wings so play funnelled even more down the middle. I thought Nigel banged on about making the pitch big when we have the ball.

You can’t win them all and this is a frustrating result but not a disastrous one even though we’ve dropped a position with Huddersfield winning. It’s been a bizarre week for the Moaning Dorset Bastards with Eddie Howe turning down Palace and Charlton, saying he was staying and how much he loved the club blah blah blah, before leaving two days later and joining Burnley – staying long enough to preside over a 2-1 defeat at Colchester. I think he’ll regret this move.

Saints now embark on 3 away games in a row, from which we really need to get 7 points from. First up is Tranmere, followed by Exeter and then Peterbrough. In the middle of that lot, we have the Northern Monkeys in the Cup so we get to play Taggart Snr and Taggart Jnr (now manager of Peterbrough again) in the next few matches. I want them both to be miserable....

League 1 Match 14 - Notts County 1 Southampton 3

Never mind Incey

In the build-up to the Notts County game, there was the development that you never like to see – the opposition manager getting sacked. It invariably leads to an improved performance and SFC being on the wrong end of a beating. Of course, whenever we change manager (frequently), all we get out of it is usually a narrower defeat than last time out. The news that Craig Short had been sacked was of course, tempered by the news that Paul Ince was taking over. Incey (as his one friend calls him) had a 100% record against Saints last season – played 4, won 0, drawn 0… guess the rest. He’s got a touchline ban though, hanging over from his Fake Dons days so no one has to put up with watching his gurning, hard man, macho posturing, Guv’nor bollocks on the sidelines.

This week at SFC has again seen no arrests but it has seen a childish argument with Shrewsbury Town. In a nutshell, we drew them at home in the FA Cup and wanted to set ticket prices at £15 and they wanted them to be £25. When the FA sided with us, we released a statement, which if I’d written it, would have contained the phrases ‘taking the piss’, ‘greedy bastards’ and ‘team no one wants to watch’. As it was, the sarcastic SFC statement annoyed them enough for Shrewsbury to hit back, saying we were up ourselves as we are only 15 places above them in the League – interestingly though, they didn’t try and deny that they wanted to charge everyone £25. I’m with Don Cortese on this one as no fucker would pay £25 to watch Shrewsbury. Yeah, we didn’t need the belittling statement but it was quite funny. Don’t fuck with the Don. Surely the rule that states that both sets of supporters should be charged the same is wrong - much better to let each team charge what they like for their allocation so Shrewsbury can in future, rip off their own fans as much as they like.

Back to today and Nige had selection issues with Deano available again so one of Morgan or Chappers had to go and Chappers it was. With Chappers on the bench, sadly there was no room for the Genius of Wotton so if we needed someone taking out with a shockingly late tackle, someone else was going to have to do it. Unsurprisingly, the Gulyman was left out with Lee Barnard recalled and Punch managed to keep England U18 call up, Alex Chamberlain, on the bench. The biggest news was that Frazer Richardson was to make his first start at right back as Butters had a knock. Frazer’s wages for the past 4 months had gone on repairing his dislocated shoulder and getting him fit again in our Under 21 team, which has an average age of about 28.

Saints were brilliant for the first 30 seconds as Barnard lashed a shot over the bar and then it went downhill as County, clearly fired up for their new manager, played with a lot more urgency than we were able to muster ourselves. We let in a goal on 8 minutes which was ridiculous for a couple of reasons. One – we let Edwards have a free header in the box from a corner and two, the referee didn’t spot that a County player was holding onto Superkelv’s arm, preventing him from trying to save the header. League 1 refs are shite – we all know that so I’d like to dwell on the fact that the free header was the problem – don’t allow that and the foul on the keeper is irrelevant.

County had started to kick us off the park and the referee was consistently doing nothing about it. He then decided that it was time to take action because of the persistent fouling and booked Sir Rickie for complaining about it. Saints had the odd break into the County half and from one of these, won a free kick. From fully 30 yards, Sir Rickie hit a good one which Burch, the County keeper tipped onto the post and away. I predict that next week he will actually score from a free kick…. It’s getting closer.

From the half hour onwards, Saints were creating chances and on another day (with another ref), Hammond’s blast onto a defenders arm would have earned a penalty. A good ball from Harding to Lallana enabled Adam to cut in and curl wide of the far post when he really should have done better. Radio Merrington said it was ‘class’ which is something I have to take issue with. Something that is class, by definition, ends up in the fucking net and not slamming into the advertising boards behind the goal.

Half time and though we’d got better, I wasn’t too hopeful of turning this around. The silver lining was that County had played well with Incey in the stand and I was sure that his half time presence would mean that they were worse in the 2nd half which started with ten minutes of nothing before a break down the right and Lallana firing in a cross to Hammond who seemed to misjudge it and completely missed it. Radio Merrington described this as an appalling miss so I’ll have to take his word for it as I haven’t seen it yet. He had been wrong before though…

Following the miss, we could easily have been 2-0 down but Superkelv came to our rescue twice. It is remarkable how much easier goalkeeping is when you don’t have one of the opposition holding down your arms. More bitching about the validity of their goal (which I said I wouldn’t do) aside, we had reached, THE TURNING POINT.

Lallana slipped a nice pass through to Barnard who was taken out by County skipper Thompson… penalty. Last man and off you go – go sit with Incey in the stand. A County player thinks it’s worthwhile to try and put Sir Rickie off while he’s waiting for the ref to blow but it really isn’t… bang, 1-1. The substitutions that had been ready to be made before we got the penalty are made with Chappers and Chamberlain coming on for the ineffective Schneiderlin and Puncheon. From the kick off, the ball breaks to Lee Barnard who, judging by the booing coming out of the radio, is as popular as a cage fighter at a nightclub. I guess they think he dived which he very very clearly, did not.

Much though Barnard was hated by the County fans at this point, his popularity plumbed new depths three minutes later when instead of lashing at the goal, Sir Rickie surprised everyone by laying it across the goal for Barnard to score. 1-0 and you fucked it up. It’s not long before Barney is subbed to allow him to take a standing ovation from the County fans and on comes Bignall who is the subject of the next bit of Radio Gold when the ball is played to him and the commentator says ‘great control by Bignall, throw in to Notts County’. To my mind, any piece of control which results in a throw in to the opposition is not great.

County never really look like scoring for the remaining 15 minutes and Saints see it out quite comfortably and even have time to put the icing on the top of this particular away day cake as Adam Lallana curls one in for 3-1, following a spell of keep ball and ole, ole ole. A very nice ending to a day that started so badly. 3-1 probably flattered us a bit and I'm sure that the Notts County fans will be bitching about the turning point of the game but I have more than a sneaking suspicion that the TV replays will show, that the Notts goal shouldn't have stood and it was a penalty for the foul on Barnard and that their guy had to be sent off. Evidence of both incidents can be found here.....http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/Gallery/0,,10280~2202478,00.html

Bring on the Daggers on Tuesday night. Nige said he wanted two wins and we’ve done the more difficult one of the two. Now is not the time to repeat the win against Sheff Weds followed by crap draw against Yeovil. A quick peek at the League 1 table sees us now just two points off of Huddersfield in 2nd place and a quick peek in Nigel Adkins book of managerial buzzwords revels that ‘Momentum’ is the word of the moment.