Don’t Mess With The Hoedt

Here we go again and another must win game. The challenge
for Mauricio Pellegrino is to show that finally, after all these learning
experiences that he goes on about the end of every match, he has learned how to
pick a team to actually go out and win the game against very poor opposition at
home.

Stoke must be piss poor because they are below us in the league table. Unlike
us, they pulled the trigger on the shockingly underperforming manager and got
rid of Mark Hughes but the man they appointed to replace him was on the face of
it a shocking appointment. Paul Lambert was an abysmal manager at Aston Villa
and was just as bad at Wolves. I have no idea how he managed to get himself
another job in the Premier League – it must’ve been a case of hanging round the
club car park at the right time. He won the first game after his appointment
and ever since then it’s been much like ourselves with mainly draws and very
little inspiration. There are not many people who would say that their squad is
better than ours and unlike nearly every team we play against, I can’t think of
many of their players but I would like to see at St Mary‘s. The player I’m most
worried about on their side is Peter Crouch which kind of says it all.

It will be interesting to see what Pellegrino had actually learned from the
Burnley game last week. It should be that we cannot start the game incredibly
slowly and that you have to have some thrust in attacking positions. After his
goal last week I half expected to see Gabbiadini picked with Redmond being
sacrificed so golden boy Tadic could move over to the left hand side.

There was some doubt as to whether this game would go ahead because of the
mythical Beast from the East, or as it usually known outside of the tabloids,
winter. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and with the pitch looking better
than it did before the snow and all the surrounding areas and the roads being
absolutely fine come Saturday, the game went ahead as planned.

I managed to leave my phone at home so I had no idea what the team was until I
saw it announced in the ground. I was absolutely staggered to see Josh Sims
starting and equally perplexed to see that JWP had been dropped. Needless to
say, Gabbiadini was on the bench again so it was the usual one upfront,
Carrillo, who has not even look like scoring yet, supported mainly by Tadic
from the 10 position, I assume when he is not going sideways or backwards, or
fucking about out on the wing. Don’t get me wrong, Sims is a plus but today of
all days, only playing one upfront is not. On the bench we have JWP, our best
set piece taker, Gabbiadini, our best fit goal scorer and a Boufal, our most
skilful player. On top of that, Hojbjerg it’s also on the bench and he was our
best midfield player until he got dropped.

With Shane Long back on the bench it means you have to watch
the warm up or else you have a decent chance of getting a ball in the face
during the shooting drill.  He’s fucking
dreadful against no defenders and Stuart Taylor – I counted four in a row off
target and two straight at the keeper. 
It’s all very well laughing and pissing about Shane but maybe if you
took practice seriously you might actually improve.

Once more, only one sentence is probably needed to sum up
the first half of this must win game from a Southampton point of view – it was
shit.  We simply didn’t do anything.  Once more we had no intent and were happy to
just play it cagily which of course suited Stoke down to the ground as they are
crap.  They had a shot when Cedric
decided the best way to deal with a slightly underhit pass to him was to smash
it aimlessly and of course it went straight to Stoke and N’Diaye skimmed in a
shot from 25 yards with McCarthy saved comfortably.

There was an interesting moment when the referee had to calm
down Hoedt and Diouf when judging by Hoedt’s reaction, Diouf had stamped on
him.  I didn’t think any more of this
until about 10 minutes later when there was a header to be won in midfield and
Hoedt won it easily and made sure that he left a bit on Diouf who crumpled like
he’d been hit by a train.  Off he went,
taking the longest time to walk off the pitch with what looked like a
dislocated shoulder.  One simply does not
stamp on Wesley Hoedt’s foot.

Sims was looking like the only spark for Saints and he took
down a long ball superbly and knocked it past Zouma with his first touch and
was away but lacked conviction at the end and allowed Zouma to get back and
block the shot.  The resulting corner
missed everyone and the only other action of the half was a superbly flighted
ball from Shaqiri who must wonder every day how the fuck he ended up playing
for Paul Lambert and Stoke, which was well met by N’Diaye and McCarthy got down
to pull off a superb save and push it wide. 
There were 5 minutes added onto the first half for the time taken to
pick up bits of Mame Biram Diouf off of the pitch after he’d been Wesleyed but
it was a shit half of nothing.  Half time
and I had some soup which was the highlight so far.

Peter Crouch, that lovable lanky streak of piss was on for
the second half and Pellegrino was obviously happy with what he saw in the
first half as he left it as it was in terms of personnel but it did look like
Sims and Tadic had swapped over with Tadic on the right where he is proven
shite and Sims up in a position that he’s never played before.  To be fair, the opening minute of the second
half was remarkable because we had two shots. 
After a hilarious Shaqiri dive, Carrillo put Sims away but his first
touch was poor and the angle was against him by the time he fired into
Butland’s legs and off for a corner. 
From the corner, the ball was half cleared to Lemina whose shot hit the
ground and flew off target.

Sims was still being the main threat and he was the man who
eventually had the shot saved by Butland after Tadic reminded us he was playing
by crossing to Carrillo who laid off to Sims who exchanged passes with Cedric
before shooting.  It was better but still
not great and Stoke looked ropey as you like at the back.

On the hour mark came the change that should have been made
during the week on the training ground with Tadic replaced by Gabbiadini.  4-4-fucking-2 – have it.  Of course, every time Pellegrino has tried
4-4-2 this season he’s done it with Steve Davis as one of the central two in
midfield so we’ve just got completely fucked over in there but with the
strength of Romeu and Lemina in the middle, Sims and Redmond on the wings and
two proper strikers – this might just work.

Redmond has come to life and is suddenly looking like the
player he should be, taking players on and going for it.  He takes a ball from Carrillo and tees up
Cedric who gets his effort on target but Butland makes an easy save look really
really flash indeed. 

Sims is scaring Pieters to death down our right so of
course, he gets taken off and replaced with Boufal which sends Redmond onto the
right wing where he’s best.  The newly
confident winger takes Pieters on with his first touch and skins him before
digging out a great cross which picks out Boufal about 6 yards out and he thumps
his header down and fucking wide.  For
fucking bollocks sake.

With one sub left – for me it should be JWP on at right back
to get some quality on for set pieces but Pellegrino brings on Shane Fucking
Long to bring his warm-up form to the party. 
Just what we need.  Off goes
Carrillo who has once again looked ok without ever looking like scoring.

Not much happens for the rest of the game but there is a bit
of a mystery as only 2 minutes are added. 
There have been 4 subs in the second half which are 30 seconds each so
we can assume that there has been not one second of time wasted.  Ok then ref – utter bullshit.  We win a free kick when N’Diaye pointlessly
trashes through Boufal and we don’t get chance to take it.  Maybe Anthony Taylor has a long trip home
battle with the Beast from the East. 
Wanker.  I don’t think he even
added the two minutes indicated which I know is only a guide but it was a bit
odd.  Not that it matters as we’d have
never scored anyway. 0-0 and yet another draw at home.

If you took this game in isolation, you could maybe write it off as unlucky. We did after all dominate the second-half and created a few chances but either contrived to miss them or to see Jack Butland pull off some really good saves. However, this performance cannot be taken in isolation as we don’t have that luxury any more because we have got ourselves in a position where the result is absolutely everything and 0-0 at home against the team that sits below us in the table at this stage is simply not good enough.

We completely wasted the first half of this game. We were negative, lacking in
any purpose and more or less exactly as we have been in just about every game
back to August. For this reason, Pellegrino’s post match talk of ‘learning’ is
the biggest pile of insulting shite that he could possibly come out with. There
is no point in learning if you do not take whatever you have learnt into the
next game and we never do. Today he said we have learned that we should be
positive from the start. No shit Sherlock.

I was absolutely staggered to see Josh Sims in the starting lineup but it was
ridiculous that it was in place of JWP.  JWP
has been decent since the turn of the year and he gets triggered after one bad
game at Burnley. So, Pellegrino has decided to leave out the guy who takes all
our set pieces and surprise surprise, we don’t have a fucking clue what to do
when we were given a corner. We started off with Sims knocking them short and
after a couple of those where we didn’t actually get the ball into the box
because we fucked up, we went back to Redmond from the left and Bertrand from
the right and whilst the deliveries weren’t dreadful but they were nowhere near
the standard that JWP brings to the table. All this against a team that has
conceded about 30 set piece goals this season. Maybe Pellegrino should’ve
learned that before the kickoff.  He says
he learns but he learns fuck all.

It’s a common theme for players who are playing well to be bombed out. Hojbjerg
worked really hard to get back in the squad and then in the team and then it
was looking like he was going to be our player of the year but now he’s been
bombed out again for no real reason at all. Boufal was playing well before he
picked up a slight injury and Pellegrino has used that injury as a reason to not
pick a player who he obviously doesn’t really like picking because he attacks,
take chances and occasionally loses the ball and all that bad stuff. He prefers
Dusan Tadic of course who does something decent about once in every 15 games.
Needless to say, today wasn’t one of those matches.  We basically played with 10.

This manager has no idea about how to send a team out to actually win a game.
We don’t go out to win games. We go out not to lose them and that is why we
have so many fucking draws – 13 of the fucking things. Five wins and eight
defeats would’ve been better but of course, Pellegrino wouldn’t see it that
way. He actually highlighted that Stoke had the best chance when we had two
strikers on the pitch. That tells you all you need to know-he sees having two
strikers on the pitch as a negative because we might concede a goal. He doesn’t
even mention that we created shit loads more chances once we had two strikers
on the pitch. Basically, he is a fucking idiot.

Once more, as with Burnley last week, Pellegrino completely fucked up the first
half and the substitutions when they came couldn’t fail to make the team
better. Having said that, taking off Sims for Boufal turned out to be a mistake
and bringing Shane Long was the complete waste of time that I knew it would be
as soon as I saw his name amongst the list of substitutes.  Another two points have been left out there,
in addition to the two points left out there last week.  With more positivity from the start we would
have won both of these games against piss poor opposition.

I repeat, probably for about the tenth time, that we should’ve sacked him
months ago and I still fail to see how it would be a negative to sack him now.
There is though, as much chance of me shagging all five of Girls Aloud then
there is of the Saints board admitting they made a colossal mistake hiring this
bumbling idiot and sacking him. He is a few of our worst managers combined. He
has the cluelessness and riddled communication of Poortvliet, the stubbornness
Branfoot , the totally out of his depth air of Steve Wigley, the risk averse
scared to death approach of Claude Puel and the bewildering team selection of
George Burley.

When we are talking about players who played well today, we have to more or
less forget all about the first half as no one did anything aside from the odd
burst from Josh Sims. In the second half, Sims played really well until was
hooked off and there was a welcome return to form from Nathan Redmond. He can
be an excellent player when the shackles are off. When he was switched to his
best side on the right, the run past Erik Pieters and the fantastic cross he
put in for Boufal to head wide was his best bit of play this season by a mile.
I also thought the central defenders handled the admittedly limited threat that
Stoke provided. Credit is due there because let’s face it, I haven’t really
handled direct teams very well in the past. 
I am a big fan of the way Wesley Hoedt sorted out Mame Diouf.  You stamp on my foot – see what happens next
time.

And so another winnable game goes by and onto the next, an away trip to
Newcastle for another six pointer. Though our players are without question,
better than theirs, Newcastle will probably have a better attitude and I’m
going to be expecting Rafa Benitez to have too much tactically for our complete
numpty. We will go there for a draw. Have no fear.