I was looking forward to Pellegrino’s selection with a
mixture of interest and dread as usual and I can’t say that I was too
impressed. Bednarek was in for his debut which was not surprising given the unavailability
of Pied and Hoedt.  It wasn’t too long
ago that a £5 million signing making his debut would’ve brought great excitement
but not this time.

As the game started it became apparent that instead of
playing Stephens at right back where he has actually played before, as recently
as two weeks ago, Bednarek was shoved out there where I don’t think he’s ever
played, certainly not for Saints or for the Under 23s.  Yes, Pellegrino had decided to stick Bednarek
at right back, playing against Ryan Sessegnon who is Fulham’s best player. This
can only end well. Again, it seems a very fucking strange decision, in fact almost
like he hasn’t thought about it at all.

The start of the game was predictably cagey with no one
having any efforts on goal until the ball found its way to Steven Davies and he
cleverly back-heeled through the defence to Shane Long who actually looked like
a striker for a second that he lashed the ball into the net. Trouble was, he
was offside as usual but you can’t be too harsh because it was fucking tight
but it was the correct decision.

We weren’t taking the game to Fulham but waiting for their
attacks to break down and then hitting them with quick counter-attacks. At
least this looks like some sort of plan and from one of these, Boufal broke
down the right hand side and fed JWP who fired wide from the edge of the box.

So half an hour gone and and we haven’t had a  fucking shot on target and then Yoshida play
the ball over the top to meet a good run from Davis. He found Boufal who
committed a defender.  Then we got lucky
as his pass was mis-controlled by Long but ricochets off a Fulham defender to
JWP who swept it into the net left footed to give us the lead.

If we score I the first half then you know we have about 10
minutes more of attacking before Pellegrino sounds the retreat and we switch to
9-0-1, defending our own 6 yard box. 
Boufal then tried and succeeded in pulling
off a ridiculous bit of skill in the left-hand corner to skin the full back
along the line and with absolutely no fucker trying to get into the box, he was
forced to try shot from a narrow angle which the Fulham keeper deflected wide
without knowing too much about it.

Into the second half and we nearly scored again after driving
run by Hojbjerg, a pass to Long, a decent ball back in but Hojbjerg was by this
time too close to the keeper  keeper who
managed to smother his shot wide for corner. It’s amazing the Pierre wasn’t in
the side for the first 15 games of the season as he is easily one of our better
players now.  He’ll probably get
dropped next week.

From JWP’s corner, Shane Long flicked it on and Jack Stephens
had a free header into an open goal from 4 yards and displayed the marvellous
heading technique that we usually see at the other end of the field and headed
it against the bar. It’s a quite shocking miss.

You knew that despite being pretty awful that Fulham wouldn’t
have a chance at some point, probably from a set piece and so it proved as
Norwood slung in a cross from the left wing and McCarthy bucked the trend of
usual Saints goalkeepers by actually came out for the cross.  The trouble is that the defenders are not
used to this kind of goalkeeper behaviour that they don’t know what to do and Hojbjerg
got in McCarthy’s way and the ball ended up at the feet of a Fulham centre back
who luckily, showed why he is a centre back and lashed it over the bar.

First the good news, we won again and in truth we won it
quite comfortably even though it was only 1-0 in the end and any win is a good
win, especially in our situation. 
This has to be put in context though.

After several attempts, it appears the Pellegrino finally got
what he wanted which was to score a goal in the first half and then defend and
keep a clean sheet in the second half. It’s a shame we had to play against the
Championship side in order to do it. All the decent chances in the game are
created by us with Fulham only really looking like scoring from the old set piece,
especially the one when McCarthy came flying out and crashed into Hojbjerg.  Defensively we were solid enough and Bednarek
was ok in that regard but it really would have done no harm at all to play a
proper right back from the academy who may at least have added something going
forward.  Failing that, play JWP at right
back and Sims on the wing.

The negative from this game for me is that we decided to sit
back again after an hour and spent the last half an hour just containing a very
limited Fulham side and quite often, banging the ball forward to nobody. It’s
this lack of learning from our past mistakes which drives me nuts. The win is a
bit of a papering over the cracks situation but as said earlier, in the
situation we are in then any win and against any opposition is welcome.

It’s been the case recently that the team have been fucking
dreadful and letting down the fans. Today, the fans showed up in numbers which
was impressive but quite of few of them let the team down. I’ve said it before
and I’ll keep on saying it that booing a player on your own team and singling
out an individual on your own team for sarcastic applause or booing whenever he
comes onto the pitch or touches the ball, is a cunt’s game. That’s what you are
and that’s what you deserve to be called. No one would miss you if you weren’t
there so just fuck off.