You Can’t Really Be ‘On the Beach’ in Southampton

Hasn’t it been nice with the pressure off this week? Today
we are off to West Ham to play at their Virtually Free Gift by the Taxpayer and
Boris Johnson Athletics Stadium. I’m glad we don’t need anything from this game
as it is now a tough place to go. West Ham are a very good side on their day
and they certainly were when they stuffed us at St Mary‘s earlier on in the
season and more recently,  when they
became the first team to win at Tottenham‘s new ground which Tottenham have
paid for. Yes it still annoys me that such sporting advantage can be given to a
team based purely on geography.

The protests from the West Ham fans about the loss of Upton
Park don’t seem to be so loud this season. Maybe that’s because another year
has passed or maybe it’s because they are starting to see the benefits of the
move with some investment in some very good players. Felipe Anderson tore us a
new one at St Mary‘s earlier on in the season. They have good manager in Manuel
Pellegrini who is moulding the squad into one but should have a very good season
next year when you assume, they will invest more. They have some twats in their
squad like Robert Snodgrarse and Jack Wilshere and I think I still have Andy
fucking Carroll even though he is out of contract at the end of the season so don’t
be surprised next year when he turns up at another club (probably Burnley
because he’s tall enough) and scores against Southampton every time he plays
against us.

From Ralph’s press conference this week it became apparent that today we are
going to see some fringe players with Fraser Forster expected to play. I’m
expecting to see the likes of Mario Lemina and maybe even Charlie Austin will
get a game against the team whose owners once lied about him having no
ligaments in his knee is as excuse for not signing him.

The other focus this week has been on Francis Benali as he attempted a quite
frankly mind blowing seven iron man’s in seven days for Cancer Research. As I
write, he has just been pulled from the sixth day during the swimming section
and been told to stop for health reasons. Whilst this is a shame, there is
absolutely no shame from doing four ironmans in four days and I reckon he’ll do
5 in 7 by the end of the week.  Even if
he never runs another step in the name of charity, he is still done a
ridiculous amount and everybody, not just those with a Southampton affiliation,
can be proud of what he has achieved and paraphrase Bob Geldof, if you haven’t
done so already, put some money in the fucking tin on www.ironfran.co.uk

To today and team news and that deflating feeling.  Forster in goal, same back 4 as last week
which was a disaster, Elyounoussi in the team, Redmond and JWP rested.  This will be interesting.

We actually start quite well and fashion a decent opening on the break but Elyounoussi
has a go at butchering it with a pass to Ings with not enough pace on it. Ings
manages to recycle and play it out to Armstrong and Armstrong, in true ‘Southampton
Final Ball Decision Making Standard’ kind of aimlessly lashes it over the bar
instead of trying to pick someone out.

It’s all going ok and under control until Valery gets forced across the pitch
and pisses around and gives the ball away Noble.  Noble just plays it to Arnautovic who isn’t
marked and he scores really easily giving Forster no chance at all. It’s fucking
garbage of the highest order and once again our scrambled defending is
appalling with one centre back playing offside, one running like a headless
chicken and no one marking the one player they need to mark.

The rest of the first half is absolute crap with Saints basically allowing West
Ham to have the ball and not create anything. Elyounoussi does have a shot when
he chips the ball over defender and tries a speculative volley but there is no
conviction behind it and it flies wide comfortably.  Mark Noble is playing the game in a fucking
deckchair as Hojbjerg looks knackered and Lemina is nowhere.

Second-half and Redmond on for Ings and the change is instant. We start well
win a corner, Bertrand whips it in and Stephens shows that his mastery of
heading covers both ends of the pitch and completely misses the header.  However, Redmond gets a shot in which is
blocked wide for another corner. It’s as close as we’ve got. Redmond has
another shot blocked for a corner and from it, the ball is flicked on and
Redmond actually gets a shot on target which Fabianski tips over the bar.

There is a glorious chance to equalise as Long bus into the penalty area and
you’d Think that the Feckin’ Goal Machine with four goals in five would just
hit it but for some reason he takes an extra touch, Fredericks comes in and Long
attempts a pretty crappy dive to win a penalty. I’m really not sure what to
make of this. Either he played for a penalty which is fucking ridiculous
considering he had the opportunity to shoot or the old Shane has returned, the
one who has absolutely no footballing ability at all and he almost accidentally
took an extra touch and the touch was incredibly heavy.

JWP is on for Armstrong but West Ham step it up. Masuako goes down the left
wing and fizzes it across, Fraser can’t hold it and the ball bobbles up in the
air off of Arnautovic and the Austrian nods it into an empty net.  It might of hit him on the arm but he didn’t
know anything about it so fair enough.  Game
over probably.

Two minutes later and Jack Stephens is doing his impression of an Ice-skating
giraffe with his balance all in the wrong place trying to get a tackle in and
he totally fails to get a touch on the ball and Ryan Fredericks shoots past
Forster to make it 3-0. Embarrassing defending which unavoidably reminds me of
Wesley Hoedt at his worst.  Hoedt must
have been a complete dick for us get him out of the door, meaning Stephens gets
a chance of being in the first team.

We are now looking like we’re going to get dicked about 5-0 now so Ralph
decides to bring on another proper player to shore things up to make sure we
don’t get fucking battered, with Romeu replacing Lemina who I haven’t mentioned
so far and there’s a good reason for that.

Romeu immediately gets booked basically for being Romeu when he wins a tackle as
clearly as you could possibly win it but we have Stuart Atwell refereeing, last
seen given the most blatant biased one eyed performance in our game away at Old
Trafford and he decides that this perfectly hard but fair tackle warrants a
yellow card.

Arnautovic has a glorious chance for a hat-trick when he is totally unhindered
by any defenders and he curls one just one of the far post.  All over and thank God for that.

Well that was pretty shit and almost as pointless as the
Tottenham away game when Ralph had just been appointed after Hughes had been
sacked. It was always going to be a difficult day and about and you can’t
underestimate just how off the pace we were compared to what we have been
recently. Part that was down to personnel but most of it was down to mindset.
In the first half in particular, without the ball we were fucking dreadful,
allowing West Ham stick to just stroll around and pick passes where they wanted.
Mark Noble it’s getting on a bit now and he’s always been a good player but we
made him look like peak Steven Gerrard with the amount of space that we gave
him. The second half was better with the introduction of Nathan Redmond, until
we coughed up the second goal and from that moment on it was all over.

Ralph billed this as a match where if you had something to prove, you would
have an opportunity to do so and it was interesting from that point of you. I
would’ve suspected before the game that Elyounoussi and Forster will be playing
for some sort of future at Southampton, whereas Lemina will be playing in order
to get away. Oddly enough, out of the three of them, I thought Fraser probably
put up the best display. Bearing in mind that he hasn’t played for nearly a
year and a half, he didn’t look too bad and on a couple of occasions, going
well off his line to collect a high ball which was always a weakness. He did
however make a bit of a bollocks of the second goal even though it was fizzed
across, taking his eye off the low cross and pushing it out rather than holding
it. Elyouboussi just proved what I suspected already, that we have purchased a
£16 million turd. Mitigating factors are of course that he hasn’t played very
much recently but he once again showed absolutely nothing whatsoever. I’ve unearthed
a transcript of the meeting from when Les Reed went to Switzerland to buy him.

(Les enters the room)
Les: How much do you want for him?
Basel: We value the player at between six and eight million
Les: We’ll give you 16 million and not a penny more
Basel: Done. Pleasure doing business with you.
(Les leaves the room)
(Basel representatives piss themselves laughing and have a night on the town
with copious amounts of drink, drugs and prostitutes)

My money is on him ending up back at Basel next season on loan and us
continuing to pay a sizeable chunk of the ridiculous wages we are now paying
him.

Mario Lemina. What can be said that has been said already about our Rock Star
Instagram model. He did look very sharp in his suit before the game but when
the game started, so did the problems. Let’s just say that Mark Noble ran the
game and he was in direct competition with Mario. There was the odd flash of
brilliance when he got into one-on-one situation with another player and it
gave him the chance to show off his strength and close control but the overall
contribution was negligible.  For me, it
was really telling them when Ralph wanted to tighten things up and make sure
that we didn’t get absolutely battered after it had gone to 3-0, he took Leminna
off, rather than Hojbjerg who is in much more need of a rest. Because of the
fact that we were safe, it was always going to be a game where attitude was
very very important and therefore it was absolutely no surprise to me anyway so
Mario just drifted through the game, looking like it couldn’t have mattered
less if he tried. If he was as good as he thinks he is, he would have been
running that game from the centre midfield but instead, he let Mark Noble do
it.  List our players in order of ability
and Mario would be in the top 3 – list them in order of effectiveness and he’d
be near the bottom.

The back four was the calamity that it was against Bournemouth last week which was absolutely no surprise. Maybe it was the last chance saloon for
Jack Stephens and there were absolutely no surprises there either. The first
goal was a horrendous give away from Yan Valery, similar to Stuart Armstrong’s
one last week and similarities didn’t in there. As the opposition broke our
defence was shambolic with Bednarek trying to play Arnautovic offside but
Stephens steaming past him making that ploy absolutely useless and not one
marked the one player which made the goal really really easy to score. The
second goal had an element of misfortune about it but at the end of the day
Fraser should’ve held the cross and the third goal was more ridiculous marking
of space without getting close to any of the players, Stephens again being the
worst culprit.

It was a tough day for Ralph. On the one hand he has a duty to the travelling
supporters but on the other hand he has a duty to think about the long-term.
For what it’s worth, I agreed with his broad idea of playing a few of the fringe
players today but it didn’t work out. As I said at the start, partly down to
personal and partly down to the players selected. He made a point afterwards it
was a huge effort to get us safe and there was a bit of a come down from
finally being over the line. Personally, I don’t think it’s so surprising.

Next week however, we have Huddersfield at home and they are fucking shit so
there is absolutely no excuse, no matter who is picked, for us not to go out
and put on a bit of a show and send everybody off into the summer with a spring
in the step before the incomings and outgoings start.