Saints Reveal the Formation Dancing Celebration from Tenerife

Fulham at home and I don’t care what anyone says. We have to
win this game. The reason we have to win this game is because we have lost to
them once already and they are shit. It was of course the Wesley Hoedt
game at Craven Cottage where he tried to show everyone what a hero he was by
shielding the ball in his own corner.  He
hasn’t played for Saints since and it got Mark Hughes sacked as well.

If ever there was a blueprint for how not to survive your first season after
promotion then Fulham are showing you how it’s done. Spend a fortune on a load
of attacking midfielders and strikers and somehow end up with a defence which
is worse than what they had in the Championship.  They did sign Alfie Mawson who is currently not playing and also, once promising defender, Calum Thingy who was at Southampton for
12 years before fucking off as soon as he could when he was just about to maybe
pay some of the investment in him back. 

So, if you have a shite defence and a decent attack, what
happens is that you win the odd game but most the time, you will get completely
battered. The manager they got promoted with, Jokanivic, lasted until the first
losing streak and then got sacked because the defence was shite. He was
replaced with Premier League winner Claudio Ranieri who has somehow stopped
them from scoring without making the defence any better. The chances are that
if they lose tonight, Ranieri will be on his way again and Fulham will be
relegated, seeing as there is already an eight point gap between them and the
team currently in fourth bottom, which in case you had forgotten, is one place
above us. The team in fourth bottom is Cardiff who played yesterday and got
stuffed 3-0 at home by Everton so with that and last weeks 5-1 home defeat by
Watford, they seem to having a little bit of an implosion which we need to take
advantage of today.

Most of the talk around the team has been about the inevitability of Maya
Yoshida coming back into the side in place of Jack Stephens and whether
McCarthy would displace Gunn. In the event there are three changes from the
Arsenal game with the defensive no-brainer being one, Bertrand for Targett
being number 2 the third being Austin being given a start with Armstrong dropping
to the bench. On paper it looks like a better side. Fulham have Mitrović
upfront who I wanted us to sign in the summer but some of their big-name
players like Seri, Mawson, Sessegnon etc are not in the starting 11. Who the
fuck is Bryan? Who the fuck is Ream? Who the fuck is Chambers? Oh yeah, that’s
Callum Chambers, wanker.

There aren’t many Fulham fans here considering it’s only just up the M3 and a
vitally important game to them. Are they always this badly supported down here
or have I had such a shit season that vast majority have given up?

The game starts and in truth, we don’t look that good. We look wary and let
Fulham have the ball around the halfway line and as predicted, with Austin
playing, we are not really pressing them. It’s all a bit pedestrian. Fulham
don’t look very good at all as you would expect but we are not asking enough
questions.

The first chance comes on 15 minutes when Valery tries to feed the ball and low
into the box and it gets cleared straight up in the air and comes down on top
of the goalkeeper Austin stands his ground and the keeper, Rico kind of falls
over him and the ball gets nodded into the net by Saints beer and kebab
talisman. It’s always going to get given as a foul and after a momentary moment
of excitement when it looks like van Gerwen with the whistle has given the goal,
it’s a free-kick to Fulham.

Something weird is happening down on left hand side where Bertrand has half of
the pitch to himself. He sends over dangerous cross which is just missed by
three onrushing Saints players and flicked out for a corner. Bertrand himself takes
the corner and the keeper flaps it out to the edge of the box where Romeu meets
on the volley. It’s not the cleanest strike but it goes through a crowd of
players and ends up in the net so who fucking cares. 1-0, Come on!!

One of the main beneficiaries of Ralph being in charge has been JWP who is
doing all the things that he used to do but he is now not a complete liability
when we haven’t got the ball. Fulham try bringing the ball out down the left
hand side and JWP absolutely smashes into a 50-50 and comes out with the ball.
On it goes to Austin and Redmond, then back to Hojbjerg and he drives it just
wide with a keeper doing an impression of a statue.

There is a minor scare as Fulham actually get some possession which ends with
Mitrović getting in behind Bednarek and smashing the ball over the bar from a
narrow angle.  Straight after that
though, Fulham give us another goal which all starts with a shit clearance from
Rico that doesn’t reach the halfway line. We win a couple of headers in
midfield and it eventually breaks for Austin to tee-up Redmond and his shot is
pushed out by the keeper but JWP is on hand to knock the rebound into the net
from about 10 yards. Christ they’re shit but who cares. We are 2-0 up, we
haven’t even played very well and we haven’t had to.

Second half and we need another goal.  The
chances of Fulham scoring two are remote but we know how this works – they get
one and then we shite our collective pants. 
We need a third to close it out but no, instead the ball bounces in the
box and Babel, resplendent with his red wig, has a shot deflects off Bednarek
and hits the bar.

Fulham throw on a couple of subs including Sessegnon and look a little bit dangerous
for a brief spell but we look calm in defence with Yoshida in particular
leading the way.  Austin has reached the
stage where he has to be subbed or he’s going the throw up and I hear myself
uttering words I never thought I’d say – “this could suit Long today”.

As it panned out, the boy Shane put in a decent shift but
the game panned out without any more goalmouth action and to be honest, that
was exactly what we wanted.  No fuss, no
alarms, 2-0 win and thanks very much.  I
noticed that there were many more times when we cleared the ball properly with
a proper foot through it, seventy yards, fucking have it.  Yan Valery nearly killed someone in the crowd
with one such clearance but they can’t score if it’s 70 yards from our goal so
that’ll do.  Gmae management I think they
call it, or common sense.

Up the fucking Saints. A comfortable win which is nice.  It could, with more ambition in the second
half have been a more emphatic win but the bottom line is, until we can find a
striker who can score 15 goals a season in this league, we are always going to
struggle to even put away the worst of opponents and Fulham were quite possibly
the worst of opponents. They certainly had the worst defence. A relatively
competent attacking display today and we would’ve scored six. As it is we will
certainly take the 2-0 win and be delighted with it. Three points on the board and
I know that Ralph will impress on the players that we are going to have to
improve to beat virtually anybody else.

It was the day that really illustrate to me that no matter how good your
manager is, it is totally down to the players that he has at his disposal.
Ralph, as we all know, wants to play a game where we press from the front but
that is impossible to do when you have Charlie Austin upfront so you have to
find other ways to win the game. In the first half in particular we allowed for
them to have the ball on the halfway line and it was painful watching Austin
jog across the pitch getting nowhere near. When the ball aws worked out the
full-backs then either Redmond or JWP closed down. I think this is part of the
reason why Redmond played wider instead of primarily at the middle where he has
been since Ralph arrived.

Talking of wide areas, I have never seen a game where a team
give a player of the calibre of Ryan Bertrand half the pitch to himself. Fulham
didn’t seem to have anyone at right back or anyone on the right hand side of
midfield. The player furthest to the right was the fucking goalkeeper,
especially in the first half. It’s just a shame that Ryan isn’t fully fit yet
because if he was he would’ve had an absolute field day. The midfield three
today were all excellent with two of them getting the goals and the skipper
driving everybody on for 93 minutes. There is some serious potential in that
midfield three in an attacking sense as well if we can find a better solution
upfront.  JWP continued his resurgence
under Ralph and whisper it quietly… there’s an England game soon.

Defensively, there was the odd wobble but in the main, the
return of Maya Yoshida added that element of calm that has been missing. All
three of the central defenders had excellent games to reduce Fulham to just the
one chance. Angus Gunn didn’t really have anything to do and I’m still
struggling to understand Ralph’s preference for him over McCarthy but I guess
this is a situation that’s not going to really resolve itself until the start
of next season.

As for Fulham. Fucking hell. They know that they are getting relegated. The
fans, the players and the manager all know that they are getting relegated.
Hardly any fans turned up which for a vital game just down the M3 is poor and
the players were just hilarious. I was watching Tim Ream in the second half and
I’ve never seen anything like it. He just ambled about, looking for another one
of his defenders to take responsibility and do his job for him. They were
garbage. I’ve already touched on the Tinkerman’s tactics and how the fuck can
you leave Sessegnon out? What was particularly telling was that when they lost
the ball they had Mitrović, Cairney and Babel not even trying to get back. Back
to the Championship you go and we have to make sure that we do not join them.

With the van Dijk chatter from last week it was interesting to see another one
of our ex-players, Calum Chambers playing for Fulham today. Since he left us five
seasons ago he has had three seasons not playing much for Arsenal, a season
getting relegated with Middlesbrough and now, a season getting relegated with
Fulham. In addition to that he has no settled position. He was a right back
with us but wanted to be a centre back so he played there a few times are
Arsenal and now it’s midfield because he is not big enough to play at centre
back and he also is not good enough on the ball to play in midfield. He is
basically Jack Stephens and like Jack, he should have stuck with being a right
back. If he had stayed at Saints for a few years then I’m sure that’s where he
would’ve ended up and he would be a lot better player now than he is but he chose
to be the richest player he could be instead of potentially the best player he
could be. I have no sympathy at all, in case you haven’t worked it out.  Relatively speaking, we are pretty weak at
the moment and he wouldn’t get in our side at all.  He was an England captain at under age level
and came through at the same time as JWP. Which one of those two is a decent
premier League player now and which one isn’t?

Our next game is Manchester United away so we could well find ourselves back in
the bottom three after that one but we have to go there with the ambition of
doing a lot better than we did away at Arsenal. Still being in the game after
20 minutes would be a good start. They are decent of course but they have a lot
of injuries so we have a chance. For now though, let’s just enjoy winning this
game and being above the line rather than below it.