There’s
been a bit of a strange atmosphere amongst the fan base as this game approaches
because mathematically, even with 40 points, we are not safe yet especially
with the usual thing happening of teams in the bottom three starting to win
matches. It should never have come to this. Interestingly, today we played
Brentford and they are also on 40 points so I am immediately having thoughts of
how much it would suit both teams to get a point each from the game. Like I
said, it shouldn’t have come to this.

It was awards week at Saints this week with James Ward-Prowse cleaning up,
winning Players Player of the Year, Supporters Player of the Year and also Goal
of the Season for good measure.  The
women’s team at least had the grace to share things around with Lucia Kendall,
Laura Rafferty and Kayla Rendell picking up the three awards respectively. The
fact that three of the women’s players won the prizes and only one of the men,
probably speaks volumes about the two respective teams.

Today, JWP FC are at Brentford, who had the traditional “newly promoted team
blistering start” to the season and were in the top half of the table until the
wheels came off just before Christmas and at one stage it looked like they
weren’t gonna get another point and were going to go crashing down into the
relegation places. The way they responded to this threat was by sticking with
their manager and signing a quality player in January. You could argue that
Christian Eriksen would never have been available to them in normal
circumstances but they took a chance on him and have trusted the player to
perform and have been rewarded. They are not just a one-man team though but
having that quality player in the centre of things certainly helps others and
it’s no coincidence that Ivan Toney‘s goal output has increased since Ericsson
joined.

Today is a new ground for everyone of course, seeing as it’s our first
appearance at the Brentford Community Stadium and let’s hope that the team
actually show up.  We have the usual
keeper and back 4 with Bednarek keeping his place despite being awful for
months.  Ibrahima Diallo is in for Romeu,
to for a “two No 8s” partnership in the centre of midfield, which didn’t work
too well when Romeu was injured at the end of last season.  Stuart Armstrong has got his place back but disappointingly,
he’s dropped the wrong Nathan, with Redmond keeping his place.  The choice of strikers is just weird. Fresh
from being criticised last week by Ralph after the game, Broja starts and fresh
from being snubbed for about 10 games and being behind Shane Long in the
pecking order, so does Adam Armstrong.  Fresh
from scoring a hat-trick for the Under 18s, there was a place on the bench for 16
year old Tyler Dibling.  I mean, I very
much doubt he’ll get on but fair play lad.

Saints start pretty well with Broja closing down Raya, who shanks his kick 30
yards to Redmond.  Back it goes to Broja
and his cross is fired on target by Adam Armstrong but Raya gets down well to
save…. and it was offside… but a good start anyway.  Brentford’s first attack is slightly worrying
as Raya launches it down the middle and Toney literally moves Bednarek out the way in a way a
centre back should never be moved, flicks it on to Wissa who eventually drags
his shot straight to Fraser.

Salisu wins the ball off of Toney and then gives it away and a couple of passes
later, Mbuemo is away on our left with Perraud nowhere.  His cross is knocked
behind by Bednarek.  In comes the corner
from Eriksen, Toney gets completely free of Diallo and chests down, walks
through a pathetic challenge by Diallo and hammers it across the box and Pontus
Janssen hits it high to the net from about 6 yards. Pathetic.

Virtually straight from the kick off, Brentford win the ball back and knock it
back to the right back Ajer, who launches it forward. It drops on top of Wissa who is unmarked,
so Bednarek leaves Toney to go and get to Wissa and gets nowhere.  Eriksen picks
the ball up between the lines with no one close to him and drives forward.  Salisu tries to make up for marking space by
trashing Eriksen which takes out both Eriksen and Bednarek and Wissa runs on
with the ball before KWP can get across and passes it into the corner of the
net. Absolute fucking Keystone Cops garbage.  Undone by a basic long ball that a centre back doesn’t attack. Game over in all probability – 14 minutes.

The game goes into a lull whilst we get the ball back and kick off again but 3
minutes later and it’s very nearly 3-0 as we get caught out again and Diallo
gives away a free kick in desperate fashion and gets booked for it. The cross
comes into the box and once again, we show not ability to learn on the job as Toney peels round the back and smashes the
ball back across and it’s only thanks to Stuart Armstrong‘s presence that Wissa
can’t force it into the net and balloons it.  Angry – surely someone back there is saying “don’t fucking let Toney peel off round the back because we’ve already let in one fucking goal from that”.  I’m not kidding when I say that half decent park footballers wouldn’t allow that twice.

Saints are throwing players forward like there’s only 5 minutes to go and once
again, we lose it and Ericsson picks it up and just pings a crossfield ball out
to Toney on the right hand side. Toney shrugs past an embarrassing challenged
by Perraud before hammering in a shot, which Forster blocks.  It’s incredibly amateurish from us and the
reaction to losing the ball and the over-commitment to attack is ridiculous.

Finally Saints produce of decent incisive bit of play when Diallo slips a good
ball through to Broja who takes it onto his left foot and hits it but well
saved by Raya. It seems to boost us a bit and some good pressing in midfield
sees Eriksen smash a ball against Diallo and it bounces to Adam Armstrong, who
smashes it across Raya and in… Get in…. fuck off… offside… and it is,
just.  Bollocks.

The 5 good minutes we had before half time will no doubt mean that Ralph will
delay changing anything in the vague hope we’re getting better and so it proves
as the teams emerge for the second half. 
Saints do start reasonably and Redmond picks up a pass from Diallo and
knocks it through to Broja.  He is met by
Raya rushing out and taking a massive swng at the ball and missing.  Though he’s missed the ball, it certainly looks
like he’s taken Broja out but the referee gives fuck all.  If there is a VAR check then it’s very quick.  Truth is I can’t really be bothered to get
annoyed about it.

The first change eventually arrives around the hour mark and it’s weird as fuck
with Diallo being taken off and Elyounoussi coming on in the centre of midfield
which basically means that our best player, JWP, the one who won all the awards, is not able to get forward at
all.  Elyounoussi’s first involvement is
to be on the end of a poor Brentford clearance following an ankle height
Redmond cross and the Norwegian takes it down on his chest before volleying goalwards
but Raya sees it all the way.

The lack of physicality in our defence is alarming when following a long throw,
there is absolute carnage in our box, which ends with Toney having a swing from
about 3 yards and Forster blocking it and then two more shots as the ball
pinged about and we got away with it.

At 2-0 we still have a bit of a chance but we pathetically give them a 3rd
goal.  Redmand stabs a shit clearance out
to Norgaard on the edge of the box and Ajer picks it up, swats away Redmond’s
token challenge, walks past Salisu and slides it between Fraser’s legs.   Embarrassing and pathetic, 3-0, dead.

3-0 with 20 to go and maybe time for the youngster but Ralph pisses off a
majority by bringing on Romeu for Stuart Armstrong to make us more defensive,
3-0 down against (with all due respect) Brentford.  “You don’t know what you’re doing” can be
clearly heard.  Nothing happens for the last 20 which was probably the aim.  Brentford bring on a kid to play the last 10,
we don’t, so we learn nothing and gain nothing. 
A wasted day, pathetic.

Fucking useless.  How familiar was that?
Start the game reasonably well, conceded with the oppositions first attack,
conceded again, 15 minutes gone game over.  Oddly enough, if we had scored at any time
between their second and third goals then it may well have been like the
Brighton game last week where we came back and nick to draw but we didn’t
deserve to, based on the 90 minutes.  The
game was finally put to bed with the Redmond assist for the third Brentford
goal. They deserved the win and they were by far the better team which bearing
in mind they aren’t actually that good, shows how bad we have become.  It was another game where what we did in the
penalty areas just wasn’t good enough to win a game of Premier League football.
We had no real plan going forward and all the balls into the penalty area were
hopeful rather than purposeful and the defending at the key moments was
absolutely shit.  All three of the goals
conceded were shit and were too easy to score. 

Despite its familiarity, today was a watershed moment when a significant number
of the away fans turned against the manager. The tipping point was the second
substitution when Stuart Armstrong, who had been our brightest attacking
player, was substituted and replaced with Oriol Romeu, which meant that Ralph
basically settled for 3-0 defeat against Brentford.

It is getting harder and harder to defend Ralph at the moment. Again, we had an
absolutely unexplainable team selection.  Nathan Redmond was picked again despite having
done absolutely nothing in the last two games. Predictably, he did next to
nothing in this game either, spent most of the game running away from the ball
and if ever there was any sort of challenge to be made then forget it. Jan
Bednarek was picked yet again and predictably; he was dreadful again.  Salisu has been dropped when his form tailed
off but Bednarek is bombproof despite in the main, being worse.  Salisu would be much better with a better partner.

One
of Ralph’s major flaws is that he is just too loyal to some players who are
never going to pay him back for his faith in them.  He is too slow to pull the trigger on some
players and this also manifests in game management when he’s too slow to change
things when they are not going well.  It’s
like he has blind faith that things will suddenly change or that a player who
is shite 95% of the time will have a great game today.  Again today, there should have been changes
at half-time but again we had to wait until halfway through the second half
when his change left us with a central midfield of JWP and Elyounoussi which
basically meant that JWP couldn’t get forward at all.

Then, the Romeu for Armstrong sub put me in mind of that famous substitution
when Claude Puel brought on a right back to play on the wing when we were
drawing 0-0 at home for the fifth game in a row.  In fairness, at 3-0 down, we were fucked
anyway today.  Again though, I am
wondering why we couldn’t have got something out of the game by putting Tyler Dibling
on the pitch for the last few minutes. 
Overall though, it was another generally lacklustre performance with no discernible
plan.

I’m beginning to think we are like a Poundshop Manchester United under Ole
Gunnar Solskjaer.  Lots of overpaid half-arsed
players who have a weak mentality and are not good enough to get the club where
it aspires to go and a manager who people in the main want to do well but he’s
not helping himself.   It is always the
manager that gets sacked at the end of day.

It’s certainly shaping up to be another major test of Martin Semmons loyalty to
Ralph and his belief that he is “the best manager that Southampton could have”.
 Of course it is no longer solely Martin
Semmens decision and it’ll be interesting to see the influence that Dragan Solak
and Rasmus Ankersen bring to bear on the situation.  Even if it was still just Martin Semmens
decision, he is not going to be happy with a lower number of points and finishing
lower in the table than last season, given the investment that was made in the
squad in the summer.  It wouldn’t
surprise me at all if the Sport Republic guys want to go their own way which of
course is quite often the way when a new ownership rides into town, especially
when they’ve got people who are seen as football people, on the board.  Another thing to consider is that Ralph is
generally held to be one of the highest paid managers outside of the big
boys.  Maybe that’ll count in his favour
as he’ll be too expensive to sack or maybe the new owners will think they can
get better value for money elsewhere.

It could go any which way at the moment – maybe Ralph could be gone by mutual
consent when the season is over or alternatively, it really could be as fragile
as seeing what we do in the next two games. I believe there needs to be some sort of
indication from Ralph to the people in charge that he can get a tune out of the
team. Two more insipid performances and unless it really is too expensive to
get rid of him, I can see a change being made in the summer and there is no way
that three months ago I would’ve been thinking that.

Ralph’s
coaching staff can’t escape scrutiny either. 
Whilst we have no idea what Craig Fleming and Kelvin Davis do, balls,
bibs, cones and cheerleading respectively I expect – we know that Dave Watson
is in charge of set pieces.  Whilst he
can take no credit for JWP pinging free-kicks in to the top corner, why do we
look totally unthreatening at corners when we have one of the best set piece
takers?  He’s also in charge of defending
set pieces and fuck me we are dreadful and we don’t learn.  How many times did Ivan Toney peel off round
the back today and win the ball easily? 
We defend corners with the three biggest guys standing on the 6 yard
line and the small guys attempting to block the opposition giants – any ball in
between the penalty spot and the 6 yard line is fucking carnage every
time.  Oh.. and we let opposition
attackers stand on our goalkeeper?  What
the fuck?  Then we have free kicks that
are crossed in where our defensive system involves standing still in a high
line and hoping the opposition get caught offside.  A 12 year old could sort out defending set
pieces better than that.

As for the players today, I thought Broja put in a lot more effort than of late
and Adam Armstrong was lively in the first half and unlucky with the goal that
was chalked off for offside – he faded second half as expected but was left on whilst Che Adams warmed the bench.
 Stuart Armstrong made some very
intelligent runs as usual but his final ball was lacking and I thought both a
full backs did a fairly decent job in trying to get something going forwards.
The centre of midfield was poor with Diallo not really doing anything whilst at
the same time restricting JWP’s ability to get forward. The two central
defenders were dreadful in the main. Salisu was the better of the two (not difficult
as Ivan Toney made Bednarek look like a 14 year old playing mens football for
the first time) but he didn’t cover himself in glory on two of the Brentford
goals, whilst Fraser Forster didn’t have a chance and was let down by the
players in front of him as per usual.

Next up is Liverpool at home, which will be played three days after they have
played the FA Cup final against Chelsea. 
One would assume that they will not be at full strength but whatever XI they
put out will be too much for us in our current state. Leaving the thrashing by
Chelsea aside, this group of players do seem to show up when we play against
one of the good sides because they know that they have to. You will see a lot
of people over the next few weeks saying it will be a typical Saints thing to
do to get something against Liverpool but I would say there is about a 1%
chance.  They are brilliant and we are
shite and that’s all there is to it at the moment. As I said earlier though,
Ralph might need us to do something here in order to safeguard his job for next
season.