Right Son, Let’s Get Down the Pub

One of the biggest failures of last season was failing
to beat Huddersfield at home or away. The reason it was such a massive failing
was because Huddersfield were fucking dreadful and we weren’t any better than
them. With their one good player, Aaron Mooy missing and none of the new
players having made much impression, we really should be beating them today and
with Chelsea and Manchester City coming up in our next three games, we really
need to.

David Wagner got tarred with the same brush that Ralph Hasenhüttl is being tarred
with this season, in that Wagner apparently is a good friend of Klopp’s whereas
Ralph just gets his teams to play in vaguely similar way. This meant that last
season, the media had to mention Liverpool and Klopp every time they mentioned
Wagner and Huddersfield last season which I guess was as irritating to their
fans as it is to me.  No, scrap that, our
recent history with Liverpool means it grates just that little bit more.

After winning hearts and minds last week, Ralph has been at it again this week
with visits to hospitals visits to the very young Saints Academy and another
very impressive pre-match press conference. One hour before kickoff, a time
that I had grown to dread over the last 3 years, just brought more cheer with a
totally unchanged side from the excellent performance against Arsenal. This
tells the players but if they play well, they will stay in the team and anyone
not in the 11 will have to work damn hard to get back in. The subs bench was
interesting with three strikers on it with Obafemi joining Long and Austin. The
defensive options were Jack Stephens and an Academy full-back called Kayne
Ramsey which meant no place for Wesley Hoedt who has gone from Mark Hughes’
first choice to Hasenhüttl’s fifth in a couple of weeks. Mario Lemina was fit
to return which meant no bench spot for JWP, Steve Davis or Mo Elyounoussi.

The first significant action of the game was a massive dive
in midfield by Huddersfield’s Chris Lowe. 
Since leaving the Pet Shop Boys he’s turned into a shit midfielder in
much the same way that Jon Moss has turned into a shit referee since leaving
Culture Club.  Stuart Attwell, today’s
referee has spotted it a mile off and booked him. How desperate do you have to
be to pull a horrible dive in midfield at the start of the game?

Cheats don’t prosper as Ings picks up the ball in midfield
and as is the way now, we attack.  Ings
knocks it past one and Hojbjerg picks it up. 
Redmond is already on his bike in front of him and Hojbjerg slots him in
as Kongolo comically falls on his arse trying to intercept and Redmond, without
a goal all season, smashes it past Lossl and into the top corner.  Get in. 
If ever a player deserved a goal it’s Redders.

We pretty much dominate the rest of the first half without giving
Huddersfield a sniff and another attack from midfield sees Redmond feed
Ings.  Ings tries to reurn it to him on
the edge of the box and finds Jorgenson but his first touch is fucking dreadful
and Zanka becomes a Wanka and carts Ings over for the clearest penalty ever. Only
one player is going to take it and Ings commits Lossl with a stutter step and
passes it into the corner.  If he was in
the freezer he couldn’t be any more cool and 2-0.

We make an attempt to not get to half time at 2-0, allowing
Mounie to fire over on the turn from the edge of the box but he’s crap so it’s
well over the bar and I’m really not used to this.  Two goals to the good and cruising.

Huddersfield are nothing if not spirited and put us under
pressure at the start of the second half, mainly through launching throw-ins
into our box.  From one of these, Pierre
heds it straight up in the air and then tries to make up for it but merely
compounds his error by heading across goal. 
We stand and watch as Jorgenson heads goalwards and Macca flicks out a
hand to turn it wide.  I don’t think the
replays will do justice to how good a save this is.  If de Gea or Alisson had done it then it
would be full scale frantic masturbation time.

If Macca was pleased with that one however, he won’t have
been pleased with the next effort on goal as Billing wasn;t closed down and
tried a pot shot from 30 yards which swerved past Bednarek (who turned his
back) and flew past McCarthy and into the net. 
Balls.  You know, I really don’t see
a way we’re not winning this even when McCarthy has to be alert to block
another shot after another bout of long throw induced chaos.

Ings race is run and I assume Austin is coming on by no, it’s
Michael Obafemi for his Hasenhüttl debut. 
Within minutes, Vestergaard picks it up on half way and has little mazy
past three players and slots a lovely ball past the defenders and Obafemi is
in.  He gets there before Lossl and tries
to dink it but it roll across the goal and wide. 

Lemina is on for the excellent Armstrong to give us more
muscle in midfield and Huddersfield are committing more players forward now and
they’re really not good enough to do that and we find more space on the right
as Valery puts Redmond away.  Redders
tries to take on Schindler and loses it but Schindler takes a shit touch and
Redders nicks it off him, knocks it to Obafemi who has pulled into space and
the Irishman passes it into the corner of the net for 3-1 and game over.  Get in. 
On the bench, Ralph is giving it the full Monty but not as much as Charlie
Austin who is off down the line giving it loads to the home fans.  If an opposition player did this to us then
we’d think he was a dick but that’s quality shithousing.

No one is going to score the next goal apart from us and
Obafemi is through again as Huddersfield gift us the ball on the half way
line.  He outpaces the defence but this
time he scuffs the left footed effort and Lossl makes a comfortable save.  Never mind, I’m sure he and Ralph will settle
for one.

All aboard the Ralph Express. As away wins go, this was pretty comfortable with
the result never really being in doubt once Redmond put us into the lead. The
second goal before half-time virtually killed it as a contest but Huddersfield
got their goal and there were a couple of hairy moments but in the end we
should of won much more comfortably than we did.

This whole day had ‘feelgood factor’ written all over it. The team announcement
started things off with an unchanged side from the Arsenal win and another
youngster making the bench for the first time. There was also of course the free
hats to the crowd. 2-0 up at half-time and then another academy lad coming off
the bench and scoring the crucial goal. Then you have the attitude of Charlie
Austin who was hell bent on winding up the Huddersfield fans and be completely
delighted with Obafemi scoring, even though he could justifiably be quite
annoyed that he didn’t get on as a substitute.  Then of course, you have King Ralph who again
kicked and headed every ball and was being serenaded by the crowd at the end of
the game.  Fucking brilliant. It really
didn’t take that long to get out of the rut that we have been in, more or less
since Ronald Koeman left.

Again, there were no players on the pitch you could point a finger at and say
that they underperformed. They know that they have to you now or else they are
not going to last long. There is nothing like a little bit of good pressure to
make you perform to your capabilities. You know that if your attitude is not
100% and your effort is not 100% than you will be getting it thrown off the
train and it’s going to hurt.

Alex McCarthy will be disappointed by the goal but I think it’s the first goal
he has let in since he got into the side where he will think that he maybe
could’ve done better. It’s a strange one in that I think he saw it late after
the shot had gone past the defender and then it seemed to swerve a bit and died
on him which ultimately meant that it went in. 
Basically though, getting beat on the nearside and nowhere near the post
is not a good goal for a keeper to concede. Other than that, he was his usual
excellent self.  The defence again was
very very solid with Valery and Targett again having very good games at full-backs
and the three centre backs stuck to the task against and admittedly week
Huddersfield attack. Neither Vestergaard or Bednarek were in the squad for Mark
Hughes but they’re great again today and I’ll forgive Jan for turning his back
on Billing’s shot. Vestergaard will always struggle against the very pacey
attackers but in games like this, he is absolutely ideal. I loved the sight of
the 6 foot 7 centre back tiptoeing through three players in midfield and then
passing a perfect ball into the striker.

Hojbjerg and Romeu cleaned up in midfield, so much so that Lemina wasn’t missed
but he did really well when he came on because he knows that despite playing
really well this season, he is not an automatic pick any more, having missed a game
through injury.  This is the way it
should be.  Ings, Armstrong and Redmond
in particular, scared the shit out of Huddersfield at the back and forced them
into those mistakes which lead to goals and then there was Obafemi. I was
amazed that Ralph put him on to replace Ings ahead of Austin and Long.  He immediately missed the chance when Vestergaard
put him through and I was wondering whether it was the right move.  Logically though, it is because Long would’ve
missed as well and Austin probably would’ve been in the pub still and not been
in that position.  Obafemi tucked away
his second chance and probably should’ve had another when he ran through on his
own. We have to remember that the lad is 18 and he will make mistakes, he will
miss chances but if he doesn’t play, how is he going to get any better? Now he
has got his goal, it will be really interesting to see what difference the
confidence of that will bring to him.

And so to Ralph. I was a big fan of Glenn Hoddle as a Saints manager back in
the day because he took Dave Jones’ shit squad and immediately made them better
just with tactics and organisation. The difference the Ralph has made in the
space of two weeks with a failing squad is absolutely ridiculous. I was
convinced we were going to be rock bottom of the league at Christmas at least
four points worse off than what we are already. It’s not just the results
though, it’s the performance levels and the intensity and the plan.  In the space of two games, he has got
everybody looking forward to the rest of the season where as before, most
people were just having the life drained out of them. 

The tactics were basically a 5-2-3 formation with the 5
quickly dropping into shape when we lost the ball with the two in front of them
screening and leaving the three up, meaning we were always dangerous on the
break and we had players committed forward. 
This meant we could pressurize the defence and all three Huddersfield
central defenders coughed up goals for us – Kongolo fell over for the first
goal, Jorgensen’s crap touch led to him fouling Ings for the second and
Schindler lost the ball for the third goal. 
Tactically, it worked like a dream. 
Later, when Lemina came on, we went 5-3-2 and just left two up but
because the two were Obafemi and Redmond, there was pace to burn when
Huddersfield committed bodies forward in search of an equalizer.  Long live King Ralph

In his post match interviews, Ralph spoke really well about the tactical
differences between this game and the Arsenal game in that Huddersfield would
not give us as many chances to win the ball higher up the pitch which is the
cornerstone of Ralph’s tactics. However, if you look at the goals, especially
the third one, we did manage to win the ball high up the pitch and we regularly
forced Huddersfield to defenders into mistakes. People say that Huddersfield
made shit mistakes at the back but they were pressured into that and shown up
to the players who are not good enough to play out from the back but the
problem was that the Huddersfield players thought they were good enough to play
out from the back when they should’ve just belted it into Row Z.

As for Huddersfield, I’ve just seen an interview with David
Wagner who admittedly, has a very hard job with trying to find any positives
with that. One of the positives he found was that they scored a goal at home
but he didn’t really mention that it was a bit of a fluke and nine times out of
10, the goalkeeper wouldn’t have misjudged it. Not that I really care about
Huddersfield or their manager but they are fucking dreadful and will deservedly
be relegated at the end of the season and not be missed by anyone much apart
from Saints fans who live near Huddersfield.

Happy Christmas one and all and on to West Ham – hopefully you’re next.