All our players came back from international week with no injuries. Alex
McCarthy had to sit and watch two piss poor England performances from the
bench, the second of which was whilst a goalkeeper who is not playing very well
in the Championship, played 90 minutes. 
Still, Gareth Southgate has promised to only pick in-form Premier League
players from now on so that’s good isn’t it.

Today, we have exactly the same starting line-up as we had against Crystal
Palace before the international break which means that Shane Long starts
upfront alongside Danny Ings. The bench is slightly odd with no Oriol Romeu,
Stuart Armstrong or Sam Gallagher with Steve Davis being the surprise
inclusion.

The game is of course a Monday night game because it is live on Sky and whether
it was Sky or whether it was the club or a combination of both that was
responsible, three minutes before kick-off will stay with me till I’m in my
grave. Flashing strobe lights on the roof of the stands, loud nightclub music,
pyrotechnics. What the fuck is this? When I filled out that fucking
questionnaire at the end of the season, I don’t recall there being a section
about turning St.Mary’s into a fucking nightclub before the game starts. To be
fair, it was very well done and looking around me, including looking at to my
own kids, they enjoyed it (aside from my son being momentarily worried that my
photo-sensitve epilepsy might make an unwelcome return.   Though the kids enjoyed it, I am however, a
49-year- old man who remembers life before the Premier League and the
Americanisation of football which is now gathering pace and it’s fucking
dreadful. The 39th game and four quarters are just around the corner folks.
Loads of empty seats up in the top corners but never mind Ralph.  My plastic clacker has been launched five rows
down and with that particular ritual out the way, the game can begin.

A decent start… by Brighton as we wsettle for being
passive and letting them have the ball. 
They don’t really have much at all despite playing out and out wingers
in Knockaert and March.  Propper is
supposed to be supporting Murray but he isn’t really and any ball up to Murray
is dealt with comfortably by Hoedt.  Its
notable that Murray isn’t standing near Vestergaard.

Redmond is first to show for us as he burns Montoya and
finds Ings whose shot is deflected wide. 
Over it comes and a free header for Hojbjerg who heads across and it
pings about.  Ings has a shot cleared and
the ball lashes to Hoedt to volleys it in true centre half fashion, over the bar.

Brighton’s tactics are obvious – boom it up to Murray and
when they don’t have the ball they content themselves with cynically pulling
back any player who gets away from them but they have an ally in Anthony Taylor
who wants to play on at every opportunity. 
The shit looking Bassouma breaks from midfield and Hoedt pulls out a
superb man and ball effort to stop him and gets a boot in the head for his
trouble.

Not long after that, Lemina gives the ball away before
winning it back and Eloynoussi crosses and it’s headed out to Hojbjerg who
takes a touch and smashes it. 
Remarkably, it absolutely arrows into the bottom corner with a little
bit of late swing on it.  Brilliant
strike.  On first glance I thought the
keeper maybe should have done better but on the big screen replay, he didn’t
have a prayer.

Now – we usually find a way to fuck up after a goal has gone
in but the rest of the first half is played mainly in the Brighton half as
Brighton just tot up the fouls / advantages without having anyone booked.  I don’t usually leave my seat at half time
but I suddenly had a moment of horror at the prospect of another potential nightclub
session so I went for a piss.

The second half starts and it was obvious that Brighton
wouldn’t be that bad again and they get on the front foot and look the better
side.  Suddenly, our centre backs aren’t
looking so assured and Hojbjerg and Lemina aren’t dominating as they were in
the first half.  Against the run of play,
the ball finds its way to Ings and he neatly sidesteps Dunk and drives into the
box where Gaetan Bong clumsily runs across the back of his legs and even
Anthiny Taylor can’t wave play on for that one. 
After the usual delaying shithousery, Ings pauses his run up and neatly
passes it into the net past Ryan to make it 2-0.  He’s one of our own.

From the kick off, brighton launch it and win a throw.  Once it’s back in play, Redmond closes down
Montoya who throws himself to the ground and wins a free kick.  That looked bollocks.  In it comes from Knockaert and we’re playing
Zonal Marking Statues and Shane Duffy gets his head to it and nods it in as
easily as you like.  Fucks sake.  Long is the nearest player to him and
McCarthy hasn’t covered himself in glory with a kind of forward then back
motion.  Bollocks.

Having not really touched the ball all game, Shane Long has
a five minute purple patch of involvement as he twice has a chance to run at
the last defender and both times he loses his footing.  Then he has a chance as he reached a through
ball before the keeper but he launches it into the crowd instead of near the
goal.  No one is surprised and off he
goes for Gabbiadini with Eloynoussi replaced by JWP a few minutes later.  Gabbi has a difficult chance when Ryan shanks
a clearance at him but his 40 yard plus effort sailed well wide.  Final sub, Steve ‘not on the Pace’ Davis on
for Ings.  Why take Ings off?  He can’t play next week against Liverpool.

I’m waiting for the equaliser – I’ve got my money on a
Murray far post header but as the clock hits 90 I have a slight optimism that
we’ll hang on.  Brighton hoof it forwards
and it’s flicked on and Vestergaard does well to blocked Knockaert’s shot for a
corner.  Over it comes and Murray gets  a header on goal and Macca swings an arm and
knocks it away – another corner.  Over it
comes – penalty as a Brighton player sprawls on the ground.  Fuck off! 
They don’t show it in the stadium of course but later I see that it’s
bollocks.  Slight touch by JWP on Duffy
and a huge fucking dive.  Taylor couldn’t
wait to give it.  Murray rolls it down
the middle of the goal as McCarthy dives out of the way.  Shit.

We have time for one more attack and win a free kick as
Locadia brings down Hojbjerg 30 yards out. 
It’s right of centre so Bertrand pulls rank on JWP and though it’s a decent
effort, it’s never going to beat Ryan and he makes a save comfortably
enough.  Anthony Taylor has had
enough.  Full time.

Fuck. Ing. Hell. Another two points dropped against a piss poor side at home.
How do we fucking do it every time?  Can’t really argue with the fairness of the
result but the referee was a factor over the 90 minutes and then we fucked
ourselves over by allowing Brighton to press us and not have a fucking clue
what to do when they did it. Yet again we didn’t react to game changing incidents.
We played pretty well after our first goal to be fair but once Brighton got
their first goal, we just went to shit. There are three inevitables in life –
death, taxes and Saints fucking up a game that they should have won
comfortably.  It had a complete
inevitability about it but when we got to 91 minutes I kind of thought we might
of got away with it. Enter Shane Duffy and Anthony Taylor.

Taylor’s performance will divide opinion. Neutrals will think it was great
because he let the game flow and Brighton fans will think it’s great because of
the award of the last minute soft penalty. Saints fans should think he was
fucking dreadful. It’s all very well waving ‘play on’ when someone’s got hold
of someone else’s shirt but go back and book them afterwards because at the end
of the day they have still committed the cynical foul and it is a booking
offence.  By playing advantage you’ve
basically said “I’m ignoring this foul because it benefits the team with the
ball“.  However, not going back and
booking whatever Brighton player it happened to be, allowed them to kick the
shit out of us from the first minute to the last. They didn’t get a booking
until 76 minutes when in reality I should’ve had four booked in the first half.
This is one of the things that allowed Brighton to be much better in the second
half. We can certainly have grievance with the referee and the more I see of
Duffy’s fall in the box, the worse it gets – he’s a fucking cheat basically and
Montoya’s fall for the free kick for the first goal is soft as well. Having not
given a fucking thing all game, excluding our hundred percent nailed on
penalty, Tayler decides that the slightest push by JWP on man mountain Duffy is
worthy of a penalty. Great consistency there ref, well done. Makes interesting
to the Sky audience though doesn’t it, so a round applause and a fucking Gold star
to Anthony Taylor.

Ref aside, Saints only have themselves to blame yet again for not closing out
the lead against a very average team. Yet again we proved that we can’t handle
game changing incidents. After Ings scored his penalty, All we need to do was
10 minutes of controlled football but what do we do? Leave a 6 foot 5 centre
half with a free header from 5 yards about 30 seconds after the restart.

Individually, most of the players were excellent in the first half with Hoedt,
Hojbjerg and Redmond particularly standing out. In the second half in Brighton
pressed, our midfield got over run and we didn’t deal with it. Our second goal
was against the run of play so overall you probably have to say it was a fair
result in terms of chances created and pressure applied.

I actually bore myself talking about Shane Long.  It puts me in a bad mood, as do the Shane
Long apologists.  I’m sorry but he is
crap and we are never going to move on from what we are, a lower mid-table
side, when we are picking players as limited as Shane Long. We all know what he
does, he runs around a lot and that’s it. It’s not even intelligent running
most of the time. Usually it’s chasing after an opposition player who has got
the ball. He is not making darting runs into space like Gabbiadini or Ings do.
He is a reactive forward but as I’ve said countless times before, he has no
footballing ability whatsoever and is playing with zero confidence. A couple of
times in the second-half he was in good positions and just fell over. Now
anyone can slip at any point but it’s just so entirely predictable with him.
The one chance he had anywhere near the opposition goal he flipped away from
the Brighton goalkeeper but the wrong way and straight out of play for a goal
kick.  It was like watching that “have
it” advert with Peter Kay and it just isn’t funny anymore and I’m fed up with
arguing with people he just see his running around at some sort of asset. As an
absolute last resort and only if it’s a choice between him and Austin, would I
start Long in an away game. He should never ever start at home. People have
been crying out for two strikers and we finally do it and one of them is him. 1
goal in 50 games or whatever it is.

One thing that is for certain is that we have to learn to manage games. In five
games now we have chronically underachieved in two of them in that we should’ve
got a point at home to Leicester and we should’ve won against Brighton. It is a
trend that has been going on for a long time and it will take time for Hughes
to sort out. There is no quick fix. It’s easy to say that we shouldn’t have
taken the strikers off but we were struggling to get any sort of grip in
midfield even before we scored our second goal. In my opinion we need to close
ranks in this kind of situation, get the four midfielders narrow and ensure
there is some sort of protection the central defenders as in the second half
they completely went missing. Worrying thing is the Brighton didn’t actually
have to do that much, just up the effort and work hard. There was nothing
scientific about what I did because they’re not a good enough team to do
anything particularly scientific but fair play to them, they kept going and we
didn’t deal with it. We are getting better. It is not as if we have been
dreadful for the entire 90 minutes as we were frequently under Pellegrino. As
we all know though, the game lasts for longer than 70 minutes which seems to be
about our limit right now.

It will come. Maybe not next week… as we have Liverpool away and Danny Ings
can’t play.

Hopefully it’s a one off but this will be known as the nightclub match. I never
used to be big on going to nightclubs but when I did go it was loads of
flashing lights and loud thumping music and the evening always promised much
and it looked like I was gonna win for most of it and it usually ended with
crushing disappointment. It was nice to be reminded of all that.