Friday night, Sky o’clock kick-off for the visit of Brendan
Rodgers and his very impressive Leicester City side. It has been said since the
start of the season that they would be a very good bet to break the top six
this season and nothing that has happened since the start of the season has
changed that point of view. If anything, they should now be looking at the top
four given the relative poor looking efforts from Tottenham, Arsenal and
Manchester United.
Brendan Rodgers has recovered from being somewhat of a figure of ridicule at
Liverpool where Gerrard’s infamous slip cost them the title. As time has gone
by, more of that indifference towards Rogers has proved to be coloured by
peoples indifference towards Liverpool and finding every near miss very, very
funny. Brendan did catch that Liverpool disease though of saying the most
irritating thing at the most irritating time but a spell in Scotland winning
every game with Celtic has revitalise the man and now, I think of him as being
a decent manager first and a bit of a dick second. I wouldn’t have thought this
was possible.
The team he has built since replacing the somewhat useless Claude Puel is
impressive. They have replaced Harry Maguire, who some thought was irreplaceable,
with a young player with a daft haircut who they already have on their books, Caglar
Soyuncu. Jonny Evans has always been an excellent central defender and how
Manchester United to do with him now. Too exciting full backs in Parreira and
Chilwell complete the defence. The midfield three is as good as anyone else in
the Premier League with Wilfred Ndidi, James Maddison and Youri Tielemans.
Unlike the club playing in red and white stripes who will be opposing them
today, Leicester signed their number one target and paid decent money to get
him. 40 million sounds a lot and it is
but if I sell him next summer he will go to double that. That’s how you invest
in a football club. Up front they have
Jamie Vardy who will always be a handful and it’s a terrifying prospect
thinking of him running at a defence containing a 6 foot 6 totem pole that
can’t run or jump.
There has been a sense of relief around the Southampton camp since we stop the rot
with the point last weekend and I’m really not expecting any changes in
personnel or tactical tweaks for this game.
Walking across the Itchen Bridge is a load of fun in the pissing rain and the
wind. The three of us walk across like the front row of a rugby scrum with my
son at tighthead, my dad at a loose head and me providing the ballast from the hooker
position to stop the other two getting blown over. Upon arrival at the ground,
of course it’s Sky and it’s under the lights so we have all the usual bollocks
with flashing floodlights for the epileptics amongst us and though I cringed
when it started, the performance by the two young rappers, despite not being my
genre of music, was decent.
Away we go and it begins to look slightly worrying after a couple of minutes.
Leicester have the ball and look incredibly threatening straightaway. If Saints
do win the ball then we don’t get any further than the midfield before we lose
it again. Occasionally we get a ball up to Redmond or Ings but the midfield are
concentrating on defending and not getting forward to support at all so we
immediately lose the ball again and here come Leicester.
It starts on our left with Bertrand hacking Pérez over but the ball bounces to Ndidi
who feeds Chilwell on the left. He tried some sort of shit shot which is a
mis-hit but it find Barnes who hits it, Gunn pushes it out back into play, straight
to Chilwell who side foots it into the net as simply as you like. 10 minutes
gone and that goal has been coming, for 10 minutes. Whilst the celebration is
going on, it flashes up on the screen that a V AR check is going on for a
potential red card. Fucks sake… And it’s a red card for Ryan Bertrand. They do
actually show the tackle for about half a second on the big screen and it looks
like he’s taken him out just below the knee so you can see why he has had to
walk. It’s a bit strange that no one from Leicester appealed for the free-kick
and the referee and linesman didn’t see it despite being right next to it but
there you go. So, 1-0 down and 80 minutes left with 10 men when we were already
getting battered with 11. Fucking awesome.
Ralph’s response to the red card is to take JWP out of midfield and stick him
at left-wing back. What the fuck? Now we are surrendering the midfield even
more and now we have three centre backs marking Jamie Vardy. I don’t understand
this at all and nor did the players as Barnes pisses past Valery and Romeu on
our right and tries to knock it inside but it’s not going anywhere until Valery
tries to intercept it and succeeds only in passing it to Tielemans who shoots
on the edge of the box and sscores virtually in the middle of the goal past the
presumably unsighted Gunn.
A few minutes later and Pérez, who hasn’t scored all season of until tonight,
bundles through our kind of non-existent left hand side, totally unimpeded by
JWP or Vestergaard or any other players should be over there and shoots
straight through a gap between Gunn and the near post. This is 10-year-olds
defending and goalkeeping. Absolutely fucking useless and we might as well all
fucking go home. On that note, some people decide that evening will be better
off spent at home or in the pub and start to leave and I can’t blame them. The
boos ring out.
18 minutes gone and this is fucking ridiculous. Another formation change and I
don’t really know what’s going on and it’s clear the players don’t really know
either but it appears that Valery has now gone to left back And possibly
Bednarek to right back or maybe there is absolutely no one at right back. JWP
is kind of over there but he seems to have reverted to his normal position on
the right of the midfield three. Ings is playing on the left wing and Redmond
has the fun job of running around upfront on his own with no one within 40
yards of him.
Even with two and a half central defenders, we are not marking any of the
players and when the next cross comes over from Chilwell, it floats over the
embarrassing arseholes at the back and Valery has not tracked Perez who meets
it on the volley and buries it for 4-0.
My mood is now leaving the realm of anger and entering the realm of finding it
amusing. I’m sure it will switch back and forth a few more times as the game
goes on. Still we’ve nearly reach half-time only 4-0 down and oh fuck me,
another goal as Chilwell tries a sort of cushion volley cross which isn’t
really going anywhere until JWP flicks it over Vestergaard who was stood there
going “I am Groot“ and it falls to Vardy who holds off Yoshida as you would a
three-year-old child who was trying to hit you and smashes it into the empty
net. I think Gunn may have actually been in the goal but he might as well not have
been.
Half time. 0-5. Believe. When the saints go marching in. The Southampton Way…
We March On etc. Fuck off. Useless cunts.
Highlight of the game.
Leicester are out on the pitch for a good three minutes waiting for our
shambles to emerge. Could it be that no one wants to actually play the second
half and we are going to concede and fuck off home? Oh shit, here we come, well
eight of us anyway and there are two subs on the line waiting to come on. Jack
Stephens, just the player you want when you are looking to shore things up, is
coming on and so is Kevin Danso who Ralph clearly doesn’t rate. The lucky two
are Danny Ings and Vestergaard who have been taken off for different reasons I
assume. For Ings it will be because he is our best player and there is
absolutely no point in flogging him today running around chasing lost causes. For
Vestergaard it will be because he is fucking embarrassing and maybe because
there is a light bulb that needs changing in one of the high ceilings in one of
the changing rooms and they couldn’t find a fucking ladder. From the positions the players stand in before
kick-off, it becomes apparent that the two central defenders who have come on are
our new full backs with Stephens on the right and Danso on the left. Hojbjerg
is on the left of midfield with Valery on the right and Redmond is given the
thankless task of running round in the middle of a Rondo training drill for the
next 45 minutes. There were some other changes at half-time in that about
10,000 fans went for a piss at half-time and kept on walking.
For about 15 minutes we are relatively solid but then Leicester decide that
there may be some records to be made so they start attacking again. Barnes
chips one in from the Leicester left and I have no idea where Bednarek is but Yoshida
has two men and he picks up neither of them. Danso does absolutely nothing and
Pérez runs off the back of Yoshida, takes the ball down, changes his boots, changes
his shirt, put it on inside out by accident and still has time to put it on the
right way and smash the ball past Gunn for number six.
Super Jack Stephens is now right back and of course, Ben Chilwell is absolutely
taking the piss. Stop the cross stop the cross, okay, don’t even fucking bother
to try and over comes a cross from Chilwell, Yoshida completely misses it and
Jamie Vardy is all alone in front of goal about 6 yards out. He doesn’t miss
many of those and he doesn’t miss this one. Seven fucking nil.
I think that it’s at this point that Stuart Armstrong gets told to warm up and
come on to replace Valery. As a substitute, in the pissing rain, I would not
have been terribly happy about being asked to come home at 7-0 down. On comes Armstrong
and dribbles past a player, therefore instantly having done more than JWP has
done.
We do manage to equal the record as Leicester win a free-kick on the edge of
the box and James Maddison flips it over an absolute shambles of a defensive
wall which Gunn is standing behind and into the net for number eight. I believe
we lost 8-0 to Everton in the early 70s So I feel somewhat privileged to be in
attendance for history being equalled.
Can we beat it though as we reach the 90th minute… of course we
fucking can. There’s still time for more as yet another ball dissects the
defence and Vardy is through and Bednarek makes an attempt to win the ball that
he has absolutely no chance of pulling off and trashes Vardy. It’s a clear and
obvious yellow card but Andre Marriner can’t be arsed to book Bednarek and so
all the little kids in the family stand get to watch Jamie Vardy smashing the 9th
goal to complete his hat-trick and then give it the big one to supporters.
Can’t really blame him. I was pleased he scored because I’ve got him in my
fantasy team. That’s how bad it was today, I found myself thinking about my
fantasy football team by way of consolation and my desperate search for a
positive.
Nine fucking nil at home. Nine fucking nil.
So, how am I feeling right now? Well from about 4-0 onwards I was just finding
it funny. It’s not funny of course bearing in mind all the money that people shell
out to come and watch but it was funny in that it was so abysmally shit. I will
be laughing my head off it was anyone else but it was us. We were shit. We went
to shit, we were gutless, hopeless, rudderless.
We were an embarrassment, we were a disgrace. Those players were a disgrace to the fans,
the club, the city and to themselves.
Useless fucking wankers.
The spotlight will ultimately fall on Ralph as the manager and he should cop
some heat, obviously – but solely blaming him is ridiculous. In my opinion, we
are lucky to have him. He’s managed a far higher level than we will ever get to
and sure, he has made some strange decisions, including today but I’m not
remotely surprised given the absolute shower of shit he has to work with. These
are basically the same set of players that the last four managers have had and
no one has been able to get a tune out of them for anything like a sustained
period of time. Basically, the vast majority of them are third rate and are
simply not good enough.
A manager can be tactically perfect and can get his team selection spot on in
the eyes of a vast majority of people and the players can be as well prepared physically
and as well-prepared about the opposition as they can possibly be. Once you
step over that white line, it comes down
to what’s in your heart and if you haven’t got it in you to run for 90 minutes to
support your team mates and play for the badge and the supporters then there
really is absolutely no hope and there is nothing any manager can do.
Today, Ralph’s major fuck up was in the aftermath of the first goal and the red
card. At that point you have to go 4-4-1 and just try and keep it tight until
half-time so what we should’ve done was moved Yoshida to left back and tried to
get to half-time without too much damage and stayed in the game. In the event,
within five minutes we were 3-0 down and completely fucked because he tried to
keep five at the back for some reason and we had JWP slotting in at left back which
basically meant we surrendered midfield and even though they only one striker
to mark, our three central defenders just didn’t defend. After that we
basically gave up for the rest of the first half.
we looked relatively solid when the 6th goal went in we gave up
again. Utterly fucking gutless. What summed it up for me on tap for me was the
8th goal which was Maddison’s free-kick from the edge of the box. Free kicks
from right on the edge of the box actually quite difficult to score but the way
we lined up the wall and the way Gunn stood behind it made it an absolute formality
that Maddison was going to score. Our wall looked like it couldn’t be less
interested and despite the fact there were about five players in it, it looked
really really small. Weird.
The way a manager should be judged is if he gets the most out of the resources
at his disposal. This is where, in my opinion, Ralph has to wake up and smell
the coffee about a few of these players. Angus Gunn is shot to shit and he
should have come out of the team weeks ago. I am tired of saying that McCarthy
is our best goalkeeper and it gets proven with virtually every passing game.
Vestergaard is shit. I’m beginning to think he is actually worse than Wesley
Hoedt. This is not much of an achievement but at least Wesley would smash into
a tackle occasionally and remind strikers that he was about. Strikers only
notice Vestergaard if they accidentally run into the big bollocks. Yoshida will
have one good game in five and if he is starting regularly then you have
absolutely no chance. He is supposed to
be the calm head and the organiser back there. Fucks sake. The only two centre backs we have who haven’t
proved themselves to be not good enough yet are Bednarek and Danso but Bednarek
is getting worse and Ralph clearly doesn’t rate Danso.
The three players in midfield are so similar in terms of pace and passing
ability that all three of them in there is never going to work. None out of
Hojbjerg, Romeu and JWP are bad players but all three of them on the pitch at
the same time just doesn’t work. This area really needs to be freshened up with
either giving Stuart Armstrong are run in the team so we at least have a
midfielder who might get forward and support the attack or bringing Callum
Slattery into the first team squad. Neither of those could make the situation
worse but I’m not for one second suggesting that bringing either of those two
in will be significantly better.
As I said though, the bottom line is I don’t think it matters who the manager
is as the squad is shit. We still have Shane Long on the bench and today we got
treated to Jack Stephens coming on to try and shore things up. Fucking hell. We
have one left back because someone at board level throught we’d be better off
with some money, rather than having a reserve left back and the first choice is
suspended for the next three games now.
I’m not gonna waste any more time talking about those gutless sacks of shit but
I did spend a bit of time during the game looking round the Family Stand at the
next generation of Southampton supporters. I saw one small kid crying as the
second-half went on and his dad decided it about 6-0 that he would spare him
any more. There was one woman I could see with two kids sat either side of her
and his two kids were just throwing sweets at each other having completely lost
interest in the shambles in front of them. The bloke and his wife who sit
directly in front of me who usually stay right to the very end, decided that
they had had enough on about the hour mark and got up and left. He almost
apologised as he went saying “there’s only so much I can take”.
On the other side of the coin, there was more vocal support in St Mary’s than
there has been for some time. Why do we need adversity to bring out the best in
people at times? The noise around the ground and the black humour was great
because it showed the gutless sacks of shit on the pitch that we still fucking
care. You’ve humiliated us and we’ve had to resort to taking the piss out of
ourselves but we still fucking care. The fans that stayed to the end but the
players could barely look them in the eye at the final whistle showed the
players that we still fucking care and in some way, everyone that fucked off
show that we still fucking care as well. For the second home game in a row, I
can’t get angry about people who left early.
I love it that those useless cunts saw a half empty stadium and those
that we left were taking the piss out of them.
If that doesn’t hit home I don’t know what will.
It was tough but we stayed to the end to the end. We stayed to the end to beat
the traffic and then I walked home across the Itchen Bridge and got fucking
soaked a second time. My dad once again repeated that this is probably going to
be his last season as a season ticket holder. This time I genuinely believe
him.
I’m looking forward to an email from the Saints marketing team asking me if I
enjoyed my match day experience. Now would not be a good time to receive an
email about artisan burgers and/or corporate fine dining.
League 1 Minus 10 
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