salubrious surroundings of Fratton Park as you could possibly get. From the
ground that hasn’t had a lick at paint since Henry the eighth was on the throne
to one that was built for an eye watering amount of money and only opened about
six months ago.
Tottenham have had a dodgy old start of the season as they seem to be suffering
from the Champions League hangoverBut regardless of that, they are obviously
still a very good side and one which we will do well to get anything out of
today. I’m expecting us to put up a decent show on the back of the Pompey
thrashing which really did point to better times ahead regarding players
playing in a formation that suits them and playing in positions that suit them.
Hold my beer.
The starting 11 on paper looks decent with three changes from the record win
against Pompey (I wonder how many times I can use that.) Redmond is back ahead
of Obafemi and Boufal comes in for Che Adams. Angus Gunn returns to reclaim the
goalkeeper spot from Alex McCarthy which is a bit of a shame in my book.
However, a quick look down the subs and McCarthy and Adams are not on the bench
which kind of suggests a small injury or two. Significantly, Danny Ings starts
after his two goals on Tuesday and Yoshida is in for Vestergaard who is dropped
for the first time this season after struggling recently.
Then, a few minutes before kick-off it emerges that Cedric has injured himself
in the warmup and Vestergaard will come into the team, the initial thought
being that Yoshida would move to right back which is a bit fucking weird
because Yan Valery is on the bench.
It’s a fairly even start of the game and don’t look at overawed at all. You can
tell Spurs are not as confident as they normally are and you feel straight away
that there is a bit of an opportunity for us today.
Saints create the first decent chance as Vestergaard passes it into midfield
and Boufal pulls out a brilliant first time back heel to send Hojbjerg away.
The ball goes on to Redmond who delays just long enough to pick out Hojbjerg’s continued
run, a decent hit and Lloris plunges to his right to push it away.
Our first real alarm comes as Tottenham go down our right hand side for the
first time. Ndombele feeds Son who makes JWP look a complete mug as he flies
past him before returning the ball from whence it came but luckily, Ndombele
leans back and creams it over the bar.
After our initial decent start it’s suddenly got ugly and it looks like it’s
only a matter of time before Tottenham score as we begin to look very ragged
and strung out in defence. Eriksen crosses from our left and Kane flicks it on
towards the other wing. Son retrieves it, pretty much unhindered by any of our
defenders and eventually lays it back to Ndombele who doesn’t hit it clearly
but it takes the slightest of deflections off Bednarek and goes over Gunn who
has decided to make himself as small as possible. McCarthy would have saved
that and so would Forster.
Boufal was looking like our best bet further forward and he gets the ball on
the left hand side before being victim of a ridiculous scissor tackle by
Aurier. It is one of the more stupid and “only going to end one way“ tackles
that you’ll see. No chance of getting the ball and through the back of a player
and deservedly booked by Graham Scott.
Not content with that bit of stupidity, five minutes later, Hojbjerg plays
Bertrand in behind Aurier and he grabs Bertrand and drags him to the ground.
Guess what is going to happen now you fucking idiot. Off you go. Aurier
complains, Kane complains, Spurs prawn sandwich brigade complain… why? He’s a
fucking idiot and the ref has no choice.
The resulting free kick comes in from JWP and Lloris knocks out as far as Hojbjerg
who drills it narrowly over the bar. We now have a man advantage and there is
an hour to go. Surely it’s ours to lose….
When you’ve got 10 men and you’re 1-0 up, I guess the game plan is to keep it
tight and not do anything remotely stupid to give away a soft goal. Hugo, World
Cup winning goalkeeper, gets a pass from Toby Alderweireld and stands there in
front of his goal. He still standing there as Danny Ings jogs towards him and
still standing there as Ings speeds up and by the time Ings is going full pelt
towards him, Lloris decides that what he needs to do of course, is a Cruyff
turn. There are many reasons why goalkeepers are goalkeepers and not creative
midfield players and one of the reasons is that they are not very good at Cruyff
turns. Goal. Fucking hilarious.
Having been gifted a route back into the game, we really should have just kept
it tight until half-time but of course we don’t. We decide that Tottenham have
been far too nice and giving us that goal so we are going to give them a
helping hand as well. It starts with a long
ball up to Kane who easily beats Vestergaard in the air and knocks it to Son
who makes his way down the right hand side past the oil tanker that is
Vestergaard and he finds Kane in the middle who controls and smashes it into
the bottom corner before Gunn can move. Vestergaard showed all his weaknesses
in one move there. Firstly, getting beaten in the air by a much smaller man
because he’s too big to jump and then not being quick enough to cover the space
once we lost the ball. If he is not going to win the header then he has to
clear Kane out. End of story.
Half-time and I’m still quite optimistic that we can win this game given the
numerical advantage. We start the second-half on the front foot with Boufal
being trashed by Son about 35 yards out. In frustration, Kane kicks the ball
away but because he is Harry Kane he doesn’t get booked for it. Spurs clueless prawn-sandwich fan base is
still booing Graham Scott about their idiot getting sent off and are therefore mildly
perturbed that we’ve been given a free kick for a clear foul.. It looks outside of JWP’s normal range but he
hits a fantastic dipping effort and Lloris partly makes up for his shit
Riverdance impression in the first half and gets across to spectacularly tip it
over the bar.
It’s all us with Spurs basically sitting in a 4-4-1 formation and challenging
us to break us them down. As usual with Saints, the passing is a little bit
slow and a little bit too deliberate and it’s only when we get wide that we
look like creating anything, usually through Bertrand. The left back wins a
corner which comes in from JWP and is cleared for another. From the second
corner Yoshida does what he does best and gets free in the box and meets it
with a firm header from 6 yards but the other thing Yoshida is very very good
at is not scoring with these free headers from 6 yards and he puts it close
enough Lloris for him to get airborne and push it away again.
As the half wears on it becomes apparent that Graham Scott is not going to give
us anything and he is going to let Harry Kane referee the game. One particular
pull-back on Yoshida when he had got in front of him was particularly
ridiculous and he somehow managed to give Spurs a fucking corner.
Unperturbed we are still trying at the other end with Boufal putting in a
superb cross from the right wing which is missed by Alderweireld and also
sadly, by the outstretched foot of Danny Ings.
10 minutes ago and we still have three centre backs on the pitch and Romeu and
Spurs are as comfortable as you like and not looking remotely like conceding a goal.
We may as well stick Vestergaard up front than having him playing in defence
for all the attacking the Spurs are doing but we take him off and bring on
Armstrong. The next few minutes bring absolutely nothing in an attacking sense
apart from Armstrong trying a ridiculously optimistic shot all the way along
the ground from 30 yards which Lloris just picked up.
There’s about five minutes to go when Obafemi comes on for Ings and about three
minutes to go when Long comes on for Boufal. Two like for like swaps which have
left the team looking worse. Ralph’s had
a bad one.
There’s time for one final bit of shite refereeing from Graham Scott as Obafemi
is clearly trashed right on the edge of the box, dead central but he is so
concerned about Harry Winks who is lying down pretending to be injured that he
doesn’t give the free-kick but stops the game and give Spurs a drop ball. Fucks
sake. The End.
Only one place to start today And that is with the injury to Cedric in the warm
up. Since the Bournemouth game we will have been working on the 4-3-3
formation. Training would’ve happened along those lines, the Pompey game was a
success and we were clearly going to play that way today. Someone needs to
explain to me why with Cedric’s injury in the warm up, we didn’t just slot
Valery into the team at right back and not waste all the work that we have done
this last week. It just seems fucking ridiculous.
I was delighted when I saw the original team without Vestergaard in it because
he has been struggling recently. Imagine what this has done to Valery’s
confidence? He was the poster boy of last season, the shining example of Ralph
bringing a young player into the team and him proving his worth. Again, we’ve
had another example of a player being thrown under the bus by a weird decision
on a player position with JWP being expected to play against Son Heung Min who
is one of the best wide attacking players in the Premier League. Needless to
say, Son went in dry against JWP… not his fault.
The only justification for it I can possibly think of is that having seen the
Spurs team, Ralph wanted to try something different. Eric Lamela has been in
the starting line-up all season and he was replaced today by Christian Eriksen
who tends to play a little bit more centrally so maybe, just maybe, that’s why
Ralph went with the extra centre back. One
of Ralph’s saying is is that you win or you learn. Hopefully he’ll have learnt
again today that we struggle when players are played out of position,
especially against good sides away from home and also hopefully he’s learnt
that if you throw formation change our players just before the kick-off, it
doesn’t work.
The substitutions today were also absolutely gash. We played for half an hour
against a team with 10 men who weren’t really interested in attacking us but we
had three central defenders and Romeu. So that was four players who weren’t
going to do anything at the attacking end of the pitch. Armstrong came on for
Vestergaard and we at least had a little bit more attacking intent (even though
Armstrong was crap) but the last two substitutes were like for like swaps, Ings
and Boufal off for Long and Obafemi and that just made us weaker and even less
likely to score a goal. Ralph has basically dug out the three players who came
on and so they didn’t add anything to the team and it’s hard to argue with that
but at the end of the day, he put them on and he put them on late. I don’t
think Obafemi actually touched the ball and Shane Long’s first touch was one of
those hilarious ones where it bounces off his knee and goes 30 yards straight
out of play.
The Spurs fans inside the ground were shitting on about Graham Scott’s
refereeing and basically because Aurier is a fucking idiot who deservedly got
himself sent off. I doubt they had many complaints in the second half when
Scott basically allowed Harry Kane to referee the game and gave us absolutely
nothing. Kane was allowed to foul at will without giving away a free kick
including one where he basically threw Yoshida on the ground. The Obafemi/Winks
free-kick incident was a joke also.
Overall, considering we played against 10 men for an hour it was a really poor
result and we should’ve got at least a draw out of the game. Despite having a
ridiculous amount of possession in the second half, the only two real chances
as we created with both from set pieces with JWP’s free kick and Yoshida
continuing his run of hitting the goalkeeper with free headers from six yards.
The point is though that we didn’t create a fucking thing from open play and we
seem to have a problem with attacking play unless we steal the ball high up the
pitch. We don’t seem to have a plan for how to play through teams who are back
in their shape.
This is so frustrating because I think we all thought after the Pompey win that
will be the end of the crazy experimentations and people out of position. The
starting line-up today was what I think a majority of people would’ve chosen
but given the opportunity to do something slightly odd, Ralph took it with both
hands. It seems like he just promoted the player who he thought most deserved
to play rather than who is best for that actual position.
We have to laugh about our goal because it was hysterical. What the fuck Lloris
was doing is totally beyond me. A Cruyff turn on the goal line with an
on-rushing forward. Really? It really isn’t a coincidence with Danny Ings
though is it as both his league goals this season have been as a result of
closing down the goalkeeper.
This was a chance today to get a result against one of the big clubs away from
home and we felt to take it. It’s not catastrophic but it is very annoying
especially when you bear in mind that they were on the face of it, some pretty
nonsensical decisions going on that on the face of it, certainly didn’t help.
There weren’t many who had particularly good games today. Though the first goal
took a slight deflection, there is a question mark over Angus Gunn as he seem
to just fall backwards into the goal as the ball flew over him halfway up the
goal. Vestergaard is okay when the team stays compact but as soon as it becomes
spread out then he is an absolute liability. The best teams with the best
players will always exploit him. Up front,
Redmond and Boufal were both guilty of trying to do it all themselves and just
holding onto the ball for too long which of course meant it was a frustrating
afternoon for Danny Ings apart from his goal which will never not be funny.
The games don’t get any easier with Chelsea up next week at St Mary‘s. After a wobbly
start to the season, Chelsea seem to be getting it together now. It’s a game, where if we get it right, we
certainly have a chance of getting something, mainly because they don’t have Eden
Hazard to kill us and Giroud appears to be banished to the bench.
Round pegs in round holes please.
League 1 Minus 10 
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