time at 1:30. A short trip through The
New Forest to the Vitality Dean Court Subbuteo Tiny Shit Small Ground which
holds 11,000 people. Slightly surprisingly in this age of Financial Fair play
that they can afford £20 million for defender and £20 million a week for
Jermain Defoe’s pension fund. The good news for Jermain is that Bournemouth is
full of old people and the funny smell around the town is the unmistakable musk
of piss and Werther‘s Original‘s.
Regardless of the huge amounts of money that they’ve spunked
up the wall, Eddie Howe has to be praised for the job that he’s done in keeping
them up for two seasons and to be fair, it would be a shock if they didn’t stay
up the season as well. I don’t see them progressing much from last season
despite the investments they’ve made but they have too much to struggle near
the bottom with the real shite of the division.
The FA did eventually decided that Pep Guardiola should
probably be sectioned, or at least that he had a case to answer for the Nathan
Redmond thing and so the FA charged him, probably because representatives from
Manchester United on the FA Committee kicked up a stink about the fact that
Mourinho only has the fart out of place and he gets charged and a touchline
ban. I haven’t seen the outcome of any enquiry into Guardiola and his behaviour,
but I would be willing to bet my house on the fact that fuck all will happen.
The guy clearly thinks he’s a legend and the FA will clearly agree with that
and as he hasn’t done anything to seriously piss them off in the past, he will
get away with it, sure as Lukaku can volley Brighton player twice and not get
banned.
Away from domestic football, we had the draw for the 2018
World Cup in Russia with England getting about as good a draw as they could
possibly have got, being in a group with Belgium, Tunisia and Panama. It will
be interesting to see how we can fuck that one up. I haven’t even looked at who
we are likely to play in the next round if we finished second in that group
because as you know with England, it never pays to think too far ahead.
So having had a good performance against Everton and having
changed half the team and had a good performance against Manchester City, what
would Pellegrino do today Well, I could kind of understand it but I wasn’t
particularly impressed with the line-up. First of all, Charlie Austin was
picked as a striker which absolutely had to happen. Behind him, Sofiane Boufal
came back in as did Dusan Tadic and JWP. Then the issue that I wasn’t too
impressed with. The two defensive midfielders were Oriol Romeu which is fair
enough and the other was Steve Davis. No, just no. With Lemina and Hojbjerg
both available, there is absolutely no way that Steve Davis should be picked in
that position. To me it has to be probably one out of Davis or Tadic else we
have not enough tacklers or not enough pace in the side. We reverted to a back
four with Jeremy Pied coming in for the injured Cedric and big Wes was preferred
to Yoshida.
start the game on the front foot and are moving the ball quickly and looking
dangerous with Boufal linking up with Bertrand and he played a great ball outside
the full back to Tadic whose pull back towards Austin was poked clear by the
lunging Ake. With Pied playing his first
game for a while it was going to be interesting to see if the delivery from the
right was any good and the first chance he got was when Virgil strode out of
defence and gave Pied loads to time and space to pick out a player but he
expertly picked out the first defender though we did at least get a corner out
of it. Seeing as it was from the right,
Tadic swung it over instead of JWP and up went Virgil with a free header and it
slid off his head and just wide. Shit –
has to hit the target there.
react to the near miss by sitting back and allowing Bournemouth to get a
foothold. I have no idea why we do this
but we do and are lucky not to go one down as a cross from the left finds Smith
on the right and his shot is deflected goalwards by Defoe and Fraser flinches
up an arm and it pings off him for a corner.
Miracle save to be honest seeing how quickly the ball was moving and how
close Defoe was. From the corner, Ake
gets in front of Pied and heads goalwards only for Fraser to parry it out and
we get it away.
the next corner Bournemouth win, it’s worked short to Smith and he runs into
the box, toes it away from Boufal’s lunge and goes over. Shit, that looks like a penalty, but the
referee Jon Moss has given it as a dive and booked him and Defoe for
arguing. I’m watching on TV and the
first replay looks like a foul but the second shows he’s on his way down before
the tackle so spot on ref.
we decide that it might be good to get the ball up their end for a bit and JWP
fires over a superb cross but Austin’s header is saved by Begovic and bounces
down to Tadic whose shot is blocked by Francis’ elbow at close range. All our players are appealing but no chance
lads. There would have been zimmer
frames all over the pitch if that had been given having not giving the Smith
one.
briefly been positive and having an attack, it’s back to defending and Hoedt
makes a mess of a header and it rolls to Daniels who absolutely creams it with
the outside of his left foot and it doesn’t miss the top corner by very much. Hoedt’s dodgy few minutes gets worse as Davis
needlessly gives him the ball when he could have gone forward but then Hoedt fucks
around trying to beat King, loses the ball and Bournemouth work it from King to
Surman to Fraser and with Pied nowhere near him, he drills it into the net. Pathetic and that’s all she wrote until half
time. It’s bloody ridiculous – we are
clearly better than them individually but we’ve allowed them to dominate the
last 20 minutes – why?
second half sees Pellegrino basically admit he got the selection wrong but it’s
not Lemina coming on but Redmond for JWP.
Maybe Guardiola’s one call for the day from the Asylum has been to
Mauricio, telling to put his man on.
Anyway, we start well with Boufal working a shooting chance on the left
and Begovic saving well low down. We
have a go at being out of the game when some shambolic defending by half our team
where no one gets a foot to the ball ends with King scuffing a shot across the
goal and Stanislas being unable to turn it in at the back stick.
a temporary foray for Bournemouth though as it’s all Saints now. A neat 1-2
between Bertrand a Boufal sees Austin get an effort on goal and saved by Begovic
and another spot of pinball, this time in their box and Tadic’ shot deflected
over the bar by Francis. The corner is
half cleared and Lewis Cook tries to run it out of defence but he’s hunted down
by Romeu who takes the ball and feeds Redmond on the right and his low cross is
expertly drilled low into the net by Austin.
His celebration of goading the Bournemouth fans to calm down was really quite
funny – it was as funny as they are pathetic so yes, very funny.
should have been able to bring the celebration out again two minutes later as Boufal
put Bertrand away and for once, there was no quality on Berty’s deliver and it
neither threatened to goal nor connected with Austin who was in space and 6
yards out.
in on for Tadic but he goes deep and Davo is pushed forward. Straight afterwards we have a scare when King
shoots and Fraser again parries out and it hits Wilson and bounces wide. Wilson has come on for Defoe who has done the
square root of fuck all. It should be
the winner…. Romeu feeds Boufal who plays a superbly weighted ball to Bertrand on
the left and he reaches it at full pelt as it reaches the goal line and the
cross is met by Austin at the near post but he thumps it just over. Fuck… needed a bit more of a deft one like
the first against Everton. Nothing much
happens in the 3 extra minutes with the only real chance coming with the last
kick as Smith’s corner is met by Ake who no one has bothered to mark but he
gets it all wrong and heads miles over.
disappointed that we didn’t win it but over the 90 minutes you have to say it
was probably a fair result. Personally, I really don’t think Bournemouth are
very good and if we played the whole game on the front foot like we played the
second half then this game was there for the taking. To me, though they had a
few chances, Bournemouth didn’t ever look likely to score unless we fucking
handed it to them and sure as shit, that’s what we did with Wesley Hoedt paying
the price for overconfidence. Having said that, Fraser Forster produced one of
his worldy saves to keep out Defoe’s close range effort when he deflected a
shot with his zimmer frame. The ridiculousness of Bournemouth giving a three or
four year contract to an ageing Jermaine Defoe looks ridiculous at the moment.
He was very very average today before he got substituted.
got everybody talking and mostly talking bollocks. I’m sorry, whatever you pundits say, that was
a big horrible fucking dive and he totally deserve to get booked. What the fuck
the referee’s doing allegedly apologising to him afterwards is beyond me. He
was on his way down well before Boufal got there and though it was a stupid
tackle to be going for, the fact is that the rat faced little twat was on his
way down before any contact happened. How anyone can watch the slow motion
replay and think he didn’t dive is completely fucking beyond me. Forget all
that shit about him having a right to go down. Fuck off. If he gets put down
then it’s a foul if he doesn’t get put down and he manufactures it himself then
it’s not a foul. It really isn’t that hard to understand that. He didn’t get put on the deck by Boufal, he
got there completely on his own and he’s a fucking cheat.
relegation for pundits in the media. Phil Neville has proved to be a complete
fuckwit so he is now relegated from MOTD2 to MOTD3 on the red button. If he
proves to be a fuckwit on that as well then he gets relegated to Radio talkSHITE
alongside such twats as Robbie Savage and Joey Barton and the non-footballers
who think they know what they’re talking about like Mike Parry and Adrian
Durham.
So, back to why we didn’t win. I thought the team selection
was very suspect today. Leaving out a fully fit Mario Lemina is questionable at
best and leaving out Pierre Hojbjerg after the couple of games he has had is a
bit strange also. As said at the start, I
feel that only one of Steve Davis and Dusan Tadic should be playing. I
understand that the decision to play JWP after the Everton game, but he was
fucking dreadful today and was deservedly substituted. Pellegrino got that one
right though because Nathan Redmond had a good 45 minutes, with him setting up
the goal for Charlie Austin.
Right footed Redmond on the right perhaps. Mad ‘out there’ idea I know.
I’m changing my mind about Charlie Austin. He still looks
cumbersome and he still looks like he’s drunk 10 pints before he plays but he’s
given our team a focal point and we now look more like a team when we’re attacking,
rather than like a collection of individuals not playing together and all being
frightened to go anywhere near the penalty area. For someone who can’t run, he
has a brilliant habit of finding himself space in the penalty area and he will
know that he should’ve scored the winner from the Bertrand cross to the near
post. Anyway Bournemouth fans, I thought we were your new super rivals But it
seems that you can’t let go of your non-league mentality and have to reserve
extra vitriol for the player who used to play for Poole Town. I guess we can’t be too disappointed with
four points from the last three games but it really should have been six. Six would have been good, four is average.
Next up we have Arsenal at home and this Arsenal side is
really no different to any other Arsenal side of the last 10 years. They can
destroy you on their day but you know if you get about them, then they are
flaky and it is an opportunity to get a result against one of the big clubs.
It’s an opportunity that we need to take next week and if the manager gets the
midfield selection and the mindset right, I see no reason why we can’t add a
further three points to the total.
League 1 Minus 10 
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