Hey Joe!

So
after the first part of pre-season – new signings and cautious optimism and all
that – comes the visible side of actually playing matches and hopefully, give
us some confidence that issues apparent at the end of last season are going to
be corrected.  Our issues at the end of
last season were that we were crap, everywhere. 
Our defending was crap, our defending in midfield was crap because the
wide players didn’t contribute and of course, we were crap up front and not
scoring any goals or even looking like we were going to unless JWP did
something.  Overall, a pretty
comprehensive list of things to fix.  The
first couple of pre-season games are only ever about fitness and then of
course, you hope to see improvements as you get towards the start of the season
and you don’t lose 4-0 at home to a below average German side or whatever.

So, off to Austria we go and a chance for the more reactionary keyboard
warriors to lose their minds as we have a friendly against Ralph’s old team RB
Leipzig and for those looking for pointers, it was interesting that we lined up
in a 3-4-3 formation, which is a formation that we have never played well in so
far.

The first half team had Gavin Bazunu in goal with a back three of Bella-Kotchap,
Bednarek and Salisu with KWP and Moussa Djenepo as the wing backs. The two in
the centre of midfield were Romeo Lavia and Ibrahima Diallo and three up top
being Elyounoussi, Tella and Joe Aribo. Leipzig for their part had all their
big guns playing including the star players from both Hungary and Sweden, Szaboszlai
and Forsberg.   Bazunu looked incredibly
confident right from the start and pulled off a brilliant save to tip a Szaboszlai
rocket over the bar. Bella-Kotchap looked comfortable in defence and Lavia
showed up well in midfield. Overall, we looked pretty decent.  At the other end of the pitch it was a
different story however with Elyounoussi repeatedly succeeding in picking out a
Leipzig defender whenever he tried to cross the ball, Aribo hardly being
involved and Tella switching between right wing and centre forward with the
equal lack of success.

On 60 minutes the whole 10 outfield players changed to join Alex McCarthy who
had gone in goal on 45 minutes. With Stephens, Lyanco and Simeu in defence and
only one defensive minded midfielder in Romeu, we looked a lot more open and
Leipzig took the lead for a free-kick from the edge of the box where McCarthy
lined up his wall, took a step behind it and then got beaten in the other
corner. Poor goalkeeping it has to be said. We had made a slight adjustment in
the second half in that we now had three in midfield and two central strikers
with Adams and Adam Armstrong.  Consequently,
we looked more of a threat going forward but Smallbone and Stuart Armstrong
didn’t give her my much help with defending. 
Smallbone at the attacking out of the pitch though was having a good
impact and his superb cross from the right was flicked in by the head of Adam
Armstrong to put as level. Shocked as we were with scoring a goal, we
immediately conceded one before conceding again with a couple of minutes to go
as no one closed down the Leipzig left winger who absolutely smashed one into
the top corner. There then followed a rather bizarre extra 15 minutes which
allowed us to give debuts to Mateuz Lis who did ok and Diamond Edwards, a winger
from the academy.

Talking in general terms, it was interesting to see a back three and it’s
probably a clear indicator of where we’re going to go this season. The worry
for me is as mentioned, we have never played well in that formation, mainly
because we don’t seem to have any progressive passing within it and any way of
really scoring a goal. You could see that new players were definitely needed at
the front end of the pitch. Positives were the performance of the Bazunu, Bella-Kotchap,
Bednarek, Salisu, KWP and whisper it gently, Djenepo was decent at left-wing
back. Lavia looked very lively in midfield but it’s the top end of the pitch
where we’ve got the problems.

The result doesn’t matter and that it’s purely about fitness but to my mind, fringe
players who are not definitely in the starting 11 have to be putting it in from
the first minute of the first game, so I was a little disappointed in the
slightly lacklustre performances by the likes of Stephens, Diallo, Lyanco,
Tella and Elyounoussi

The problem is at the top end of the pitch show themselves in full glory again
in the second friendly against Klagenfurt, who featured a certain Patrick Hasenhuttl,
son of Ralph. Will Smallbone hit the post, Diallo hit the bar and Adam
Armstrong missed a penalty in the second half. We also missed some absolute
sitters through Djenepo and Adam Armstrong again. Of the attacking players, Will
Smallbone and Stuart Armstrong looked half decent and Joe Aribo showed some
nice touches but again, all the positives were in the back half of the team.

Bella-Kotchap, Bednarek and Salisu again looked very good and Yan Valery was
decent on the right hand side of the three in the first half.  In terms of ability, Valery should be ahead of
Jack Stephens but with Yan only having a year left on his contract and Stephens
having signed a new one, the situation is complicated somewhat. Also, we can
only pray the Roman Perraud is fit for the start of the season because Thierry Small
is too naive defensively to play Premier League games and the reality dawned in
this game that Djenepo is Djenepo. Romeo Lavia is clearly going to start in the
Premier League in the centre of midfield.

In the build up to the third friendly against Watford, the Bordeaux Twitter
page announced that they had agreed to sell striker Sekou Mara to Southampton.  This caught everyone on the hop a little bit
because Saints clearly weren’t gonna announce anything until all of formalities
were sorted. The backstory is that Bordeaux are very close to going out of
business and so they wanted to announce that they’d agreed a fee of about €11
million, to I assume stave off their creditors. Unsurprisingly, it’s another youngster
with Mara being only 19 years old. The feelgood factor in this story from
Saints perspective is that we have paid them a decent transfer fee for the
player which probably enables them to stay in business. Allegedly, Newcastle
and Everton were waiting to see if Bordeaux went bust so they could pick Mara
up for nothing. I can understand it from Everton because they are widely
thought to be skint and they are having all these FFP problem at the moment but
Newcastle? Words fail me.

There was more transfer news with Will Smallbone joining Stoke in the Championship
for the season.  Yes he’s looked good in
these pre-season games so far but regardless, I think is an excellent move for
him.  Ralph clearly didn’t see him making
much of an impact on the first team this season and going to the Championship
for a season is absolutely ideal for Will and it will hopefully toughen him up.
If he can get about 30 games in, then it will serve him massively well for the
rest of his career.  Thierry Small also
departed for a season in League 1 with Port Vale so maybe he and Smallbone can
share a flat seeing as the two clubs are only 15 minutes’ drive apart.  It’ll be really interesting to see what Port
Vale make of Small.  I wouldn’t be at all
surprised to see him turned into a left winger.

Back at base, lack of international clearance meant that Sekou Mara wasn’t in
the line-up when we played Watford (in Wealdstone) but it did provide more
pointers towards what Ralph thinks is his best side at the moment with JWP
making his first appearance of the season in the centre of midfield with Lavia.
 Perhaps unsurprisingly, we didn’t score
again and it was a rather turgid 0-0. Everything comes with the caveat of it
being pre-season and the game being played at a very slow pace but I can’t help
be worried by this formation. When we play against teams that we should be
beating, we just don’t seem to create anything and this seemed to be the pattern
that emerged at the tail end of last season as well. There is no real pace in
the forward line, which is I guess is why Adam Armstrong his preferred to Che
Adams, who I genuinely think Ralph just doesn’t rate much.

Also, surely if we are going to play full-back back on the wrong side, it is
better to play KWP on the left and Valery on the right. Djenepo is an absolute
disaster waiting to happen when we play a decent side.  Talking of which…

We returned to St Mary‘s to play Monaco and this was a proverbial game of two
halves with us being terrible in the first half of Monaco being decent and then
the roles completely changing in the second half. We got stronger as the game
went on because we brought on our better players who are more likely to be
starting the first league game, whereas Monaco seemed to stop pressing and
allowed us to stroll to the edge of the penalty area before they made any sort
of challenge. There were some very encouraging patterns of playing in the
second half and important thing is that you can see what we are trying to do in
terms of attacking.

In what was a dull first half, we went behind just before half-time with
another goal that Alex McCarthy won’t be looking at with any affection as he
was beaten at his near post. If it was a competition between our two
goalkeepers where they start at 0-0 and then get a point for every great save
and lose one for every cock up, The pre-season score is currently Bazunu 3
McCarthy -3.

In the second half we got back into it with a bundled goal by Adam Armstrong
but it was when the likes of JWP, Stuart Armstrong, Joe Aribo came on that we
suddenly clicked into another gear, with Aribo creating the second goal for
Stuart Armstrong and JWP rattling in the third on the break after possibly the
most hilarious dive by Monaco player in a penalty area, which was what gave us
the ball in the first place.  It was nice
to win by a relatively comfortable 3-1.

Pushing Romeu slightly further forward is a really interesting development
because it shows how good he is on the ball and it enables him to win the ball
much higher up the pitch. He has basically swapped roles with the more dynamic
and quicker Diallo who had a decent game at the base of the midfield, but that
position will be taken by Romeo Lavia.

The striker situation is also going to be really interesting. One of the two is
going to be Joe Aribo and the other one could well be someone else push further
forward than usual in the shape of Stuart Armstrong. We’re gonna be like Spain
when they won the Euros with Cesc Fabregas playing as a striker.  It was good in this going to see Roman Perraud
back from injury and he had a fairly solid first half at left back before he
was replaced with Moussa Djenepo in the second half.   Though
he was half decent going forward, the fact that Moussa decided to try a nutmeg
on the edge of his own penalty area tells you absolutely everything you need to
know about the prospect of him playing in the Premier League. Absolutely
horrifying.

After the game, Ralph let it be known that we were still looking for two more in
the transfer window and reminded everyone that there are 36 days left of
it.  After the sensible season or two
where the transfer window ended before the first game, we now have it ending 5
weeks after the season starts.  Whether
this is because of the World Cup in November or because of some reason that
benefits the bigger clubs, I don’t really know.

The final friendly was against Villareal at home and we lined up with the
majority of what will playing against Spurs. In the first half, Villarreal basically were too good for us
and we went in 1-0 behind, but the second half will be remembered for the Joe Aribo
picking the ball well in his own half and he went full Sofiane Boufal as he
dribble past about four players on the edge of the box before calmly slotting it
past the goalkeeper. A superb goal which served purely to irritate Villarreal
who went straight up the other end and went back in front. Both of the goals
that we conceded looked preventable with Bella-Kotchap getting skinned down the
line for the first goal and Bednarek finding a reason to fall on his arse for
the second.



Overall, I guess it’s been a normal preseason.
There have been some performances that have been very dodgy in terms of
entertainment and there have been some parts of games where we’ve looked decent.  After 45 odd years of following Saints I
still have no real idea what constitutes a good or bad pre-season. No one
appears to have picked up any injuries which is of course a good thing.



Ralph has been very decisive from the outset that
we are going to play with three central defenders. I feel that maybe in his
heart of hearts he would like to partner Salisu with Bella–Kotchap in a flat
back four but at the moment, that pairing would be just too inexperienced,
hence why he wants a third defender in there. It looks like Bednarek will be
the man in the middle of the defence but rumours still persist about whether he
will still be at the club at the end of the transfer window.  I’m not a body language expert but I do wonder
if he really wants to be here.  Elsewhere
in that department, the one who was really stuck his hand up in pre-season is
Yan Valery.



The fullback situation is one that we have not
really addressed as the season arrives and we won’t be bringing a player this
week who will be pitched straight into the starting line-up against Tottenham
at the weekend.  KWP will obviously play
and it looks like Moussa Djenepo will be at left back, which is not ideal.  What you want from your defenders is solidity
and for it to be a surprise if they make a mistake. For example, it would be a
shock if KWP made a mistake that led to a goal against us. If Djenepo did it,
it would be the most unsurprising thing in the world.  I trust him about as far as I could spit a
rat.


In midfield, Romeo Lavia has added some dynamism
and we have seen one formation which set him up as the sole defensive midfield
player with two number eights in front of him in the shape of JWP and Oriol
Romeu.  The configuration of the midfield
seems to be up for grabs though because in other games we’ve gone for Stuart
Armstrong as the third member of the midfield.  At other times we’ve just had two in there and
then we’ve had two number 10s behind a lone striker.  I guess that this is where Ralph will tinker
depending on our opposition. 


Joe Aribo will obviously be one of the forward
players but none of our out and out strikers are particularly looking like the real
deal at the moment. Che Adams seems to have been relegated to the role of bit
part player, Adam Armstrong has to of course, do a lot better than he did last
season and he is not suited to playing as the main striker.  Sekou Mara is clearly not ready yet and nor
should we expect him to be as a 19-year-old kid newly arrived from France.



One thing that can’t be denied is that the new
owners Sport Republic have backed the manager and refreshed the squad and as I
write, we have not had to sell a player to do it. We have had a couple of hefty
wage earners leave in the shape of Forster and Long but no one has left for a
transfer fee. There is still time for this to happen however.



I feel that line has been drawn under last season
with us likely to have at least four new signings in the starting line-up for
the first game of the season. I also feel that line has been drawn under the
season regarding Ralph who under normal circumstances, would be under pressure
with the run of results we had at the tail end of last season. I believe that
he will have until the World Cup break in November to try and get a tune out of
the squad of players.  We have to hope
that we can perform above expectations in this opening run of fixtures and then
the youngsters can hopefully perform without any added pressure that a bad start
would bring. We undoubtedly have a couple of issues still, namely full-back and
striker but I approach this season with a cautious optimism, same as usual.

Up the fucking Saints.