“We should yav won that roight“….

Similar to last week, we have a team to play who
are over performing so far this season, with a visit to Villa Park to take on
Aston Villa who won the first four games but came back down to earth with a bit
of a bump last week, getting slapped 3-0 at home by Leeds. Villa’s first two
wins were against teams who weren’t particularly good in Sheffield United and
Fulham but the third win made a few headlines as it was a 7-2 annihilation of
Liverpool, where Villa had one of those games where in 90 minutes, they used up
every single bit of good luck they could possibly have over season with four of
the goals being a big deflections.  On
the day they were absolutely brilliant but the overriding feeling about that game
was that it was very, very funny. Following the Lord Mayor’s show, they then
won at Leicester which is never easy at the best of times.

Whilst not being world beaters, they are decent
side this season with Dean Smith having done well in the transfer market
recruiting players in positions they actually needed. It is very hard to see
them struggling at all to stay up this season. 
I would say that the defence is still ropey though.

Eyebrows raised when they paid over £30 million for
Ollie Watkins but he has started well and of course scored a hat-trick in that
Liverpool game. He will be key to their season and if he can get 15 goals then
Villa are going to have a decent year. They still have Jack Grealish of course
because the market wasn’t ready for him to move for £80 million quid this
summer. Grealish of course divides opinion and some of his diving about is
completely pathetic but I think he’s a marvellous footballer but as far as
England are concerned, he seems to be going down the Matt Le Tissier route of
never being completely trusted and almost having to rely on there being
absolutely no choice before he is grudgingly given a chance by the risk averse
management of Gareth Southgate.

Villa have added added a similar kind of threat
with Ross Barkley on loan for the season. Barkley is one of those players who
for a few games every season, will look like the best player on the planet but
for the vast majority, he won’t actually do very much, which is why he has
fallen out of the reckoning for England and Chelsea were keen to move him on.

Villa’s most pressing need was at the back. They’ve
signed Matty Cash at right back who was highly rated but at the end of the day
he was a defender from the Championship so he’s not gonna make that much of a
difference but the best signing was probably Emiliano Martinez as he finally
gave up on ever getting a fair shake Arsenal and is now the undisputed number
one goalkeeper with Villa having spent last year pissing around with Pepe
Reina, Tom Heaton and an average Scandinavian, Nyland.

Once again it has been a quiet week down South with
not much news coming out of Staplewood. It appears that Moussa Djenepo is nearing
fitness of sorts and last weeks squad will be boosted with a return of Theo
Walcott, which presents Ralph with a nice problem of having to decide which two
out of Redmond, Armstrong and Walcott start  the game.

In the event, the team news had a bit of a surprise
in it because Walcott started on the left ahead of Redmond.  For me, this is exactly the right selection
but it’s still quite surprising that Redmond was left out.  Just perhaps Ralph watches the games a bit
more closely than Alan Smith.  Djenepo
did make it back as far as the bench and there was a place once more for Dan N’Lundulu.

Away we go and Saints make
a positive start with Walcott and Bertrand combining to put Ings away on the
left and Mings blocks his attempt to cross and we win a corner. In it comes
from JWP, flicked on by Ings and the ball hits a Villa defender and Adams and bobbles
apologetically over the line and into the net and bloody hell, 1-0 up with our
first attack. Hang on, it’s been checked by VAR and you can see that there’s
going to be a microscopic onside or offside decision against Adams. The ball
Has actually hit Konsa’s foot and then his hand and then it’s flicked off Adams
and gone in the net. How can Adams be offside if he hadn’t touched the ball and
Konsa has handled it? It should surely be a penalty or a goal. Fucking joke if
this is disallowed but sure enough, it is. The expression on Che’s face clearly
shows that he thinks it’s absolute bullshit as well.  They’ve basically applied every
interpretation possible to disallow the goal – decided Adams was active from
the moment Ings flicked it on, decided Konsa’s touch with his foot wasn’t
deliberate and decided that the handball doesn’t matter.

Never mind and we immediately attacked on the right
hand side through Armstrong a via nice flick by JWP, Ings finds Walcott on the
left and he takes it on first time and side foots it over the goalkeeper and pings
off the bar and goes over.  Not to worry
as on 18 minutes, Armstrong works a crossing position for KWP and as he overhits
the cross, Targett crashes through him and so we get a free kick to the side of
the penalty area. JWP takes it and there is Vestergaard to absolutely bullet a header
back across and into the side netting on the far side. Get the fuck in.
Brilliant header and laughable that he was being marked by John McGinn who is
about 5 foot 3.

Villa are struggling to pick up our two wingers who
are coming in off the wings and they don’t close down Vestergaard either and he
manages to slide a ball through the Villa midfield to meet the run of Walcott
who gets trashed by Douglas Luiz on the edge of the ‘D’. It’s the absolute
perfect position for JWP and it just feels like one of those days where you
know he’s going to score. We all know where it’s going, the guys in the wall
know where it’s going and Martinez in goal knows where it’s going. Over the
wall and ripping into the top left corner as we look at it. Brilliant freekick.
Get in.

The expected Villa fightback doesn’t really materialise
and we win a free-kick as Grealish fouls KWP. We take it quickly and work it
down the right hand side with Adams slinging over the cross. The Villa
defenders are all in horrible positions, none more so than Matt Cash who has Walcott
behind him so he sticks his hand up and pushes it away. He is last man and he
surely has to go off but the referee, Darren England gives us a free kick and
books him and totally bottles it. What a fucking shambles. This freekick is a
bit closer and right on the edge of the box and it will be nice to score just
exact some measure of justice for the cheating fucker and crap referee.  It looks like Vestergaard it’s just going to belt
the shit out of it but no, it’s JWP once more and he whips it over a very half
arsed wall and into the far corner in exactly the same way as the last one. The
best view in the house was had by Emiliano Martinez, who stood still and
watched it rip into the far corner.  He
may as well have had his phone out and filmed it. Three fucking nil.

Half-time and Saints have to make a change.
Bednarek came down from a great height in the first half and banged his head on
the pitch so it’s no surprise to see him replaced by Jack Stephens. Villa start
the second half well because they couldn’t be any worse and it’s all going through
Grealish as it always does and like him or loath him, he is making things
happen, often with theatrical falls to the ground. They do work a quick free-kick
to him though and he fires over across which Trezeguet meets at the back post
but McCarthy keeps it out well down low. Back it comes in from the other side
and Grealish himself wins the header after the cross has floated over Stephens head,
heads it down and McCarthy has to go to his left again to pull out a decent save.

No worries though as KWP skips out of defence and
finds Armstrong running forward and the man with a magnificent hair carries it to
about 30 yards out before finding Ings on the left hand side and everyone knows
what’s coming, except for the little shit Matty Cash, who has the best seat in
the house to watch the King of the Scummers curl a shot over Martinez and in
off the bar on the far side. It’s a quiet outstanding finish.

It’s all been absolutely marvellous so far but complacency
is key as we doze off and no one close down Grealish on the left hand side and
he gets over a decent cross with the outside of his boot and there is Mings to
flick it past McCarthy to reduce the arrears.

There is still half an hour to go and there is
still work to do here and another cross from the wing goes over everybody to Trézéguet
who brings it down and Vestergaard throws himself in the way like a big fucking
tree falling down and pulls off a superb block to bail out Bertrand who had let
the ball go over his head. Another cross from the left, another shot from
Trézéguet and once more McCarthy has to take off and tip it off the bar. We are
suddenly making very heavy weather of closing this game out and the discipline
we showed in closing out the Everton game is nowhere to be seen.

We are forced into a reshuffle straight after this
as Bertrand has pulled up and has to go off and with no other defender on the
bench, it’s Diallo who comes on in the centre midfield with JWP going to left
back. The fact that JWP is at left back is less of an issue than the fact that
JWP is no longer in midfield as Villa are now running the game. Then, we have a
fucking disaster as Danny Ings tries to run the ball out on the left wing, gets
blocked off by Douglas Luiz and falls really awkwardly with his left leg
folding underneath him and he’s not getting up…. The world stops…. Fuck!. This
is not good. He’s down for a good three minutes and there is concern from the
Villa players who know him from England like Mings and Grealish so you know
that this is potentially quite a bad one. There is one good sign as he
eventually gets up and walks off the pitch but the replays look horrible and we
fear the worst.

Shane is on to pick up his appearance bonus and the
90 minutes tick around but there are 6 to go – I’m not happy.  Ings in injured and I just want this game to
be done.  There is some defending to do
and Armstrong doesn’t do it again, allowing Grealish to walk past him and get
to the line near the 6 yard box and when the cross bounces back to him, Diallo
swings a leg at it clear it but only succeeds in booting Grealish who goes down
like he’s going to be left paralysed for the rest of his life…. Regardless of
this though, it’s a definite penalty. H Ollie Watkins, who has done precisely
fuck all all game takes it and scores easily, sending Macca the wrong way. I
can’t believe it, we were 4-0 up with half an hour to go and I’m looking at the
watch nervously.

We’re up to 95 minutes but we then manage to
fucking do it again as a big switch of play finds Grealish on the left hand
side and he makes space and drills at the near post, McCarthy is unsighted by
Stevens and it zips into the net to make it 4–3. There are seconds to go and we
kick off and still managed to boot the ball against the Villa player but
luckily, the referee decides that that’s enough and blows the final whistle. Another
three points on the road but worries about the injuries, particularly one of
them.  It’s not a mental celebration like
it would have been if we’d scored a last minute winner to win 4-3 – it’s a bit
subdued.

What a fucking team we are! For the first hour we
were absolutely brilliant and looked like we could score any number of goals that
we wanted to. For the last half an hour we were absolute dog shit. Only Saints
can be 4-0 up with half an hour ago and still have you looking at the clock
nervously at the end of the game. It’s fucking ridiculous.

So we won the game and got the three points but how
many people would swap a Villa equaliser in the 99th minute for Danny Ings not
being injured? I know I would. The result of his scan tomorrow is kind of
pivotal to determining how the rest of the season is going to go but more than
that, you don’t want to see him injured again after what he’s been though in
the past and where he has got to right now. 
I’m no medic but at least the knee wasn’t twisted in the incident and I’m
searching for positives.

So – bad news first – the last half hour
shambles.  It was no coincidence that we
started to get worse once we had to make substitutions with Jack Stephens being
a notable downgrade on Bednarek.  Jack is
nowhere near the levels of last season and will need to improve massively to
stand a chance of regaining his place, especially with Salisu nearing fitness
(maybe).  Everything was coming down that
side in the 2nd Half and KWP and Armstrong weren;t great defensively when it
got tough either.  Armstrong in
particular will certainly need to look at himself for the first two goals we
conceded.

Ryan Bertrand is one of the few players that we
don’t have a natural replacement for and moving JWP to left back wasn’t the
best, mainly because it took him out of midfield. Diallo looked slightly raw
and was trying to hard to steam into tackles when he would’ve been better
served just pressing. He was a little bit unfortunate with the penalty he gave
away because he was just trying to clear the ball and didn’t seem aware that
Grealish was there. It’s not really a dive because he did get kicked but fuck
me, did he make sure with the theatrical finish.

The god news was that we were brilliant for an hour
and that was ultimately enough.  It
should have been 1-0 but for the already explained shite VAR application and
the four goals we did get were all marvellous in their clinical nature.  Vestergaard’s header put me in mind of Sir
Rickie’s header for England v Scotland at Wembley and what can you say about
JWP’s free-kicks?  It’s a matter of time
before teams start putting a player on the line. As said earlier, Cash should’ve
been sent off for the handball and then none of the second half shambles would
have happened and we’d have won about 5-0. 
It was nice to see Cash show Danny onto his right foot for the 4^th
goal – how did that work out for you?

As predicted before the game, Villa’s defending was
their undoing. High on the checklist of things you shouldn’t do again Saints
must be leaving the 6 foot 7 guy virtually unmarked, giving free kicks away
around the edge of the box and allowing Danny Ings to cut-in from the left onto
his right foot. Dean Smith thinks they should have won though – cretin.

JWP led the way today on what was his 26th
birthday. The two free-kicks were brilliant of course but his overall play was
superb and though I don’t think it was the best move to him put him at left
back, he did a passible job when pressed into service there. His partnership
with Romeu  really gives us an amazing
platform to go out and play the way we want to play.

Theo Walcott justified his selection on the left
wing ahead of Nathan Redmond and it was a very good bit of play the lead to the
second goal, getting himself in front of Douglas Luiz and being carted up in
the air. It’s a matter of time before he scores as well and it would have been
today but for the handball.  On the other
wing, Stuart Armstrong still didn’t look entirely hundred percent and as
mentioned, his defending wasn’t great today but it struck me again what a good
player he is when he gets in the opposition half and he got the assist for the
fourth goal. Mind you, giving the ball to Danny Ings is not exactly rocket
science.

We must just hope that the King is not badly
injured as the partnership with Che Adams is getting better with every game.
Adams was very unlucky not to score today but more than that, the movement of
the front two gave the whole Villa back for absolute nightmares and when you
had Armstrong walk off into the mix as well, It was no wonder Villa felt apart.  Look at the 4^th goal – Ings is
left, Walcott and Armstrong are in the middle and Adams is right.  That’s great movement and very difficult to
mark.

The improvement any Jannik Vestergaard has been
noticed by many and this is mainly because it is such a contrast with what he
showed for the majority of last season. He has been nothing short of
magnificent this season and whilst scoring goals will get you in Garth Crooks
team of the week, it’s his defensive work and passing that is showing off the
scale improvement at the moment. The block he pulled off in the second half was
brilliant and he even managed to look relatively light on his feet. Jan
Bednarek had started the game pretty well and we missed him in the 2^nd
Half.

Alex McCarthy also had a very good game. Having had
absolutely nothing to do against Everton last week, he pulled off a string of
saves today and was heading for a real 10 out of 10 performance until Grealish
scored the third goal in the 97th minute which was a strange one and that it went
near post and he seem to be completely deceived by it and just watch it fly in.

Look at that league table. We are third.

deserve to be there as well. Over the last three
games we’ve gone away to Chelsea and got a draw, beat Champions-elect Everton
and now won at Villa who had won four out of their previous five games. It’s
not as if the fixtures have been falling particularly kindly. We are now a
bloody good team that is hard to beat and we have a cutting edge and now we
have a bit of depth as well. Hopefully, that depth won’t be too severely tested
over the next couple of games and all three of the injuries are not bad.

Next up – Newcastle at home on Friday – win that
and we will actually be top for a day.