row, only this time without a big storm. After the horrific game against
Burnley last week, it will be nice to play against a team who I think are quite
open and it should actually be a good game despite them being one of the worst
teams away from home and us being one of the worst teams at home.
Actually, scrap that. We aren’t one of the worst team at home in the Premier
League, we are actually the worst, which is pretty appalling to be frank. We’ve
been abysmal at home ever since Ronald Koeman left. The lack of variety in our
attacking play makes us very easy to defend against for any side who fancies
camping on the edge of their own penalty area and playing on the break. Still,
that particular deficiency can’t be fixed by signing any new players any time
before the transfer window opens again so we have to make do with what we’ve
got and Ralph has got to sort it out.
What we’ve got is Shane Long who has a ridiculously good record against Aston Villa
and we have Danny Ings, the King of the Scummers who is of course going to be looking to
add to the two goals that he got at Villa Park just before Christmas. Ralph’s
press conference revealed that we will be Without KWP, Boufal and Redmond for
this game so unless Yan Valery is suddenly back from the dead, I see JWP at
right back, Romeu in the centre of midfield and Moussa Djenepo on the wing.
The Villa player who we have to watch out for is of course Jack Grealish who is
the closest to a one man team that there is in the Premier League at the
moment. A truly outstanding player in a very average team. He will be a threat
today and we have to get around him and crowd him out and take advantage of his
tendency to hold onto the ball too long. The most important player elsewhere on
the pitch is Tyrone Mings who missed the game against us at Villa Park and it
will make a huge difference to them if he is fit for today. In goal, they have
53-year-old Pepe Reina, whose loan move to Villa in January just shows the
ridiculous wages that even clubs threatened with relegation can afford to pay
in the Premier League.
Next week of course, Villa have a trip to Wembley to get stuffed by Manchester
City in the League Cup final so hopefully they will have an eye on that today.
We are not under immediate threat of falling back into the relegation zone but
another home defeat today will have us looking over our shoulders again. Oh and
of course they have Marvelous.
Because we are the worst team at home in the Premier league and because our
eight defeats at home is the worst we have ever had at the Premier League, since football began in 1992, there has been some talk about why we can’t play particularly well at St
Mary‘s. As I alluded to earlier, I think it’s totally down to the style of
football and the limited personnel that we have everybody was to seem to queue
up to try and blame the fans for it which quite frankly, is completely absurd.
Burnley didn’t win because our fans were relatively quiet last week, they won
because we conceded a shit goal in the first minute and only had two shots all
fucking game. I am firmly of the opinion that we still would’ve let in a shit
goal in the first minute, even if 25,000 people have been giving it a rousing
rendition of “Oh when the Saints go marching in” at the time.
The main talking point before the game came when the teams were announced and
Ralph had thrown another curveball with a first team debut for Will Smallbone,
starting in the centre of midfield. with Romeu on the bench. JWP was a right
back and I just hope he has room in his pocket for both Zaha and Grealish.
There is an early sign that things are going to be okay today as Villa, with
the marvellously named Marvelous Nakamba losing the ball in the centre of
midfield to Armstrong which leads to Djenepo rolling the ball sideways for
Smallbone to shoot and it deflects of a Villa player and wrong foots the
goalkeeper before hitting the outside of the post and going off for a corner.
On eight minutes is a lovely bit of interplay between Bertrand and Djenepo before
Bertrand’s pass somewhat fortuitously found its way back to the Malian winger who
keeps on in pokes across and Shane Long has got in front of the goalkeeper to bundle
into the net. The big screen replay shows that it’s scruffy as fuck and looks like it’s just hit Shane but they all count
and it’s amazingly shit defending from Hause in particular to allow Shane to appear totally
unmarked 5 yards out. There’s the
obligatory VAR check to make sure Shane’s tackle is still in good working order but happy days and 1-0 up.
Pepe Reina is trying to add some calm to the proceedings in goal, as you have
to do when you’re 59 years old and it takes his time before clipping a ball
straight to Ryan Bertrand who powers a header forward and Danny Ings is up
against his rhyming defender Tyrone Mings and he bundles past him but Reina
makes up for his shit distribution by getting out quickly and smothering the King
of the Scummers shot. The ball gets recycled through hard work of Smallbone and
Armstrong and eventually Long gets the ball across and Djenepo has to take it
quickly and swings but he smashes it miles over the bar.
Unperturbed Villa try again and piss around with the ball at the back and this
little passage of play ends with Reina chipping a dreadful ball into the centre
of midfield which Hojbjerg heads back in and this time it’s Djenepo who gets
the shot away and Reina once again makes up for his own bullshit.
The rest of the first half falls a little flat, mainly due to stoppages and the
performance of El Ghazi in particular.
He rolls off the pitch, then back on.
Mings tells him to get up, so does Grealish and eventually he’s substituted
with most likely, nothing wrong with him.
Apparently he has a reputation for it and the rolling on and off the
pitch kind of makes me think there’s fuck all wrong with him. Grealish is hitting the deck every time he
gets the ball which is becoming a bit tiresome.
I spend a bit of time watching Luiz and my mate Marvelous in midfield
and they are shite. Real nothing
players. Smallbone is having a great
game, knocking it about and comfortable on either foot – great to see. Half time and a comfortable 1-0 lead.
Djenepo has terrorised Guilbert for the whole of the first half and second-half
starts with Guilbert trying to make a mark on the winger but dumping him on his
arse. The free kick comes in from Bertrand and Stephens flicks a header just
over the bar. We have another chance soon after as a ball gets deflected
through and Armstrong reacts quicker than anybody and gets in between Mings and
Reina before running out of pitch and his shot from a narrow angle hits the side
netting.
A rare Villa foray forward finds Grealish and it’s ended when he tried to do
too much with it and Hojbjerg started an attack and sends Long away down the
right wing and he intelligently takes his time before picking up the skippers
run on the edge of the box. A first time volley from Hojbjerg which is
surprisingly on target and Reina was in the right place to push it away again.
Double substitution time and it’s both of the forwards being replaced and Obafemi and Adams
coming on for Ings and the clearly knackered Long. The new guys combined
straight away with Adams winning a flick on, Obafemi running into traffic but
the ball ran loose to Adams who smashed a shot goalwards and it hit a Villa
defender and was cleared. Might have hit his hand but as we know, absolutely no
point in appealing.
our end and there are 30 seconds left to go and Grealish has the ball on the
edge of a penalty area and his shot is deflected wide by JWP for a corner.
Over it comes and Reina is up in our box, up goes McCarthy and punches it well
clear out to the left where Che Adams picks it up and turns inside before spreading a
brilliant ball across and in front of Armstrong who has bust a gut to get there
and Armstrong rolls it into the net from 30 yards with Reina still jogging
back. What a man, what hair.
Get in. Now that the game is over, I’m sure everyone will look back on this and
see it as a very comfortable win and I’m sure when you look at the stats for
the game, it will be like that but it didn’t feel it for the last half an hour
until Stuart Armstrong rolled that ball into the net. We were undoubtedly the
better side throughout but with Saints home form being what it has been, you
are never comfortable. Let’s face it though, Villa were fucking abysmal, I mean
really bad, I mean competing with Huddersfield as the most nothing team we’ve
seen visiting St Mary‘s this season. More of them later.
Let’s start off with Will Smallbone who was absolutely excellent throughout,
particularly in the first time where he looked to the Manor born, strutting
around in midfield and being equally comfortable off of his right and left
foot. He kind of glides across the pitch and in addition to having a good range
of passing he is also a goal threat I was really unlucky with that one that hit
the post in the first 10 minutes. He faded a bit in the second half but his
physicality will no doubt improve as time goes by. There’s no way he’s getting served a celebratory drink in the pub without ID because he looks about 12.
right back. He has developed this season into someone who is just a very good
all-round footballer. It was used to be a bit of a disaster when he was asked
to play at right back but he is really showing that he can be really good in
that position and if he’s not careful, he will end up playing there for the
rest of the season.
Having been appallingly bad last week, Moussa Djenepo was absolutely brilliant
this week, completely terrorising Guilbert on the right side of the Villa
defence. Direct running at pace and being encouraged to take the man on at
every opportunity. That’s Moussa’s game and whilst it’s not going to work every
week, it makes such a difference when it does and it really gets the crowd
going because it’s exciting. Having a big bandage on your head always adds to
the spectacle as well. Stuart Armstrong was superb on the right hand side and
totally deserved his goal. He seem to get a bee in his bonnet about Grealish
going over so easily and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him work as hard
defensively as he did today. If there was a most improved player of the season
award, he would be right up for it alongside Jack Stephens.
I didn’t realise at the time because I was at the game but there was a lot of
talk the Shane Long actually scored that goal today with his cock and balls. I
really hope that’s true and it certainly looks like it. This is probably going
to throw VAR into total confusion now because If you can score a goal with that
part of your anatomy then they might have to take into account how big in the lunchbox
a player is because it might actually be the furthest point forward but you can
score a goal with.
As said before, Villa were outstandingly bad. There was a point on about 75
minutes when I was actually thinking to myself that I don’t know if Saints
could be possibly bad enough to gift Villa a goal. I never felt like they were
going to score, ever. I didn’t say this out loud of course because if you do
that, it always bites you in the arse. Grealish hardly got anywhere near our
goal which was down to the hard work of the right hand side of the team and the
fact that he was ineffective was quite serious for Villa because about 80% of
their play goes through him and you can tell that most of their players are
abdicating responsibility and just wait for Grealish to do something. I have to
admit that I like Tyrone Mings. I like the fact that he is no nonsense though
he did show a couple of Vestergaard moments when at 6 foot 5, he failed to get
off the ground and got beaten in the air by Shane Long. I’ve heard that people are saying that Reina played well which is a bit like praising an arsonist who starts a fire and then puts it out.
What the fuck was that all about with El Ghazi in the first half. Went down
injured and was off the pitch, seemingly fatally but whilst dying he managed to
roll back onto the pitch and this is the point where any sympathy with the
injured player totally went out of the window. Both Mings and Grealish went
over to him after a couple of minutes and told him to stop being a pussy and
get up and eventually the game continued after he had been rolled back over the
touchline. After all that he was eventually substituted, probably because he’s
been rolling around for so fucking long that it would’ve been too embarrassing
for him to run back onto the pitch and start playing again. I wonder if he got
substituted because he was genuinely injured or because Dean Smith just got fed
up with him being a dickhead. Maybe he didn’t wanna play any more today to save
himself for the cup final next week. If that’s true, I expect he will enjoy his
nice comfortable seat on the Wembley bench. Five minutes later, Moussa Djenepo
got the cut on the head and played the rest of the game in a turban bandage.
That kind of sums up the difference. The Saints players wanted it a lot more
than Villa’s did. I felt a bit sorry for Dean Smith afterwards and I hope he sticks to his word and doesn’t pick players for Wembley who didn’t put it in today. He seems like a decent guy and was badly let down today.
The league table makes decent reading after that win with Saints now 10 points
clear of West Ham who occupy the last relegation place. Considering where we
were a few months ago, it’s a great place to be. Talking of the relegation
places, it is absolutely staggering the Villa aren’t in one of them but there
is now a little group of five teams fighting to avoid joining Norwich in the Championship next
season with Villa, Bournemouth, Watford, Brighton and West Ham adrift by a few points.
Good luck in the final against Manchester City next week Villa. Try and keep it to
single figures because you won’t if you play like you did today.
Anyway, onwards we go to West Ham next week. West Ham are one team who I really
want to get relegated so I think we can do a lot of people a favour next week
when we go to the Taxpayer Dildo Bowl.
League 1 Minus 10 
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