5 At the Back – Get In

A trip to Saint James‘ Park to play one of the form
teams in the country in front of nearly 60,000 expectant Geordies and to make
matters even harder, we are of course 1-0 down already. Yes, Saints and Nathan
Jones have certainly got a job on their hands today.

In the end, with having 10 men for the last 10 minutes, it was good to get here
just the one goal behind but what that does mean is that in order to have any
chance of going through today, we are going to have to score twice, so Jones
has to set up the team to have some sort of attacking plan and threat from more
or less the first whistle.  If we are to
go out tonight, which is the expected outcome, then we have to go out having at
least had a go and having tested the opposition goalkeeper.  If we just turn up, sit tight and get beat,
then it really isn’t going to be good enough. When asked about this upcoming
game, Jones used the question to almost try and prove how clever he is, saying
the fans were moaning because we were not going forward with 10 men in the last
10 minutes. It was a strange and needless argument to try and win.

Whilst we were struggling to get past Blackpool in the FA Cup fourth round,
Newcastle had a weekend off so we can fully expect them to be at full strength.
The aforementioned FA Cup win gave Jones some food for thought regarding Romain
Perraud who quite simply, really should play today because if nothing else, he
offers a goal for it in a team that doesn’t have much… oh, and he’s our only
natural left back and having got shafted down that side in the first leg, a natural
left back might be a good idea.

During their weekend off, Newcastle managed to spend £45 million on Anthony
Gordon from Everton, which I find a bit of a strange one. Gordon had a couple
of eye-catching performances for Everton at the end of last season but every
time you see him highlighted in a game recently, it’s usually because he is diving
about. That’s diving not driving, which Joelinton won’t be doing for a while.

If I could pick an outcome for this game, it would be for Saints to win 2-0
with a winning goal from Caleta-Car in the 94th minute and him celebrating in
front of the Newcastle bench with a little camp wave of his hand.

The game is of course being played on transfer deadline day, so there was all
kinds of shit going on in the build-up. Having been linked with Portuguese
striker called Vitinha in the morning (he eventually moved to Marseille), we
have signed a Nigerian international 6 foot 7 striker in Paul Onuachu from
Belgian side Genk.  His goal scoring
record is excellent in the Belgian league but as we know, players from that
league don’t always do well over here, Moussa Djenepo being a recent example.  Rather confusingly, we have also spent over £20
million on a winger in Kamaldeen Sulemana.  I say ‘confusingly’ because Nathan Jones
doesn’t really want to play with wingers and wants them to be wing-backs and
also, Sulemana can’t get into the Rennes team as it stands so it’s a bit of an
odd one that we’ve spunked that much money on it.  However, Sport Republic cannot be criticized
for not backing their manager.  Maybe
they can be criticized for backing this particular manager but Nathan Jones can
have absolutely no excuse for not getting us above the relegation line by the
end of the season.

Ours is the Big Guy

Anyway, back to tonight and the concept of trusting Nathan Jones is given an almighty
kick in the bollocks with the team news. 
It’s fucking strange because the starting 11 has clearly been pulled out
of a tombola or some other device that does random shit. Whether Jones is just
trying to be edgy or different is hard to fucking tell.  It’s very clearly a back three – you know,
that formation that never fucking works for us especially when we need to score
goals. Not only that but Caleta-Car is going to find it hard to score the
winner from the bench.  Somehow, Bednarek
is playing in his place.  Is this that Jones
knows what everyone thinks of the decision to bring Bednarek back so he’s
trying to prove he was right?  At right
wing back is James Bree, playing his first ever game above Championship level
and he is straight into the team in a semi-final at St James’s Park. Sink or
swim time for James and it also means that KWP will be on the left which as we
all know, he’s not his best side. Roman Perraud, fresh from scoring two goals
at the weekend, it’s still a substitute. Up front, somehow, there is a place
for Adam Armstrong with Sam Edozie having been left out.  You just know that we’re going to be shit and
here we go.

It takes four fucking minutes. Alcaraz plays a careless pass across midfield
and gives the ball away but Joelinton’s heavy touch gives it to Lyanco who promptly
gives it away again. Bruno Guimaraes picks it up and works his way across the
field to find Longstaff.  On to Trippier who plays a short ball inside to Longstaff
who is in absolutely fucking acres with all our defenders nowhere and he takes
a touch and scores.  Wank. Absolute wank.
So many things are shit about this goal from our point of view and best of all,
we’re fucked, game over.  3 goals up here?  No chance.

Not learning and not changing anything, Longstaff again picks up the ball plays
it to Bruno and continues his run into the box where no one goes with him and
he really should do better than controlling and shooting wide. We’re gonna get
fucking hammered here at this rate.  Willock and Joelinton combine and build up the left.  Willock leaves Lyanco for dead and finds Almiron,
who cuts it back and Longstaff is again unmarked and smashes it into the net.  2-0, 20 minutes gone, hilarious.

We settle for a bit and ten minutes later, Dan Burn plays a ball down the
left-hand side to Willock who plays a horrendous pass behind the Newcastle
midfield and Che Adams picks it up, turns and then absolutely laces it across Pope
and into the far corner of the net.  What
a fucking goal that is… where the fuck did that come from and all that.  Che – scores from 35 yards, misses from 1.

Having got back into it, Lyanco, who is having an absolute shite of a game,
decides to put his arm around Wilson‘s neck and drag him over as a cross comes
in from Trippier. That’s a penalty all day long but somehow the referee Paul
Tierney and VAR have decided not to bother. 
More trouble though as KWP goes down with what looks like a hamstring
injury and  has to be replaced and it’s
Sam Edozie going into the left wing back role which is guaranteed to not get
the best out of him.  Still we get to
half time just the 2-1 down on the night.

It’s been a mare to be honest.  Bree has
been all over the place which is not surprising and not his fault and he’s not
been helped by Lyanco who has paused his recent improvement to be abysmal.  Bednarek has been ok after standing off, along
with everyone else for the first goal. 
Elsewhere, Alcaraz and JWP have been invisible and this single ‘pivot’
thing has just been run all over by Newcastle. 
We are also in effect playing with 10 with Armstrong just occupying an
area of the pitch.  Jones has to pull a
rescue act from the bench to try and rescue us from his fuck ups and with Romeo
Lavia and Roman Perraud coming on for Lyanco and Alcaraz.  Back four to try and rescue it again.

We start the second-half reasonably well and are keeping the ball a lot better.
Newcastle have dropped and look happy to see the game out. We are however completely
clueless about finding a way through and it takes half an hour before Nick Pope
even sees the ball. Diallo has gone off for Aribo by this stage.

Romeo Lavia is pulling the strings and midfield and slides a lovely ball
through to Adam Armstrong who is clean through on the edge of the box but
needless to say, he takes too long, gives Pope enough time to get off his line
and fucks it.  That was the last chance
to make them a bit edgy about things.

Newcastle aren’t threatening much but a long ball forward sees Botman push
Salisu out of the way and then head the ball against him and everyone goes up
for a penalty.  Fuck off. Should’ve had
one of the first half but no way. The ball bounces free to Longstaff he smashes
it and it’s only way for a hat-trick until Baz takes off to pull off a decent
save.  More Newcastle pressure and Bruno
drives forward for midfield after Lavia plays an air shot and attempts to curl
on with his left foot and it flicks off
the post.

Guimaraes is a great player but he’s also a dick.  He finally gets the booking he deserves after
three fouls in three minutes as Edozie cuts infield and Bruno takes him out.  He’s pissing and moaning about getting the
booking and this is interesting, it’s going to VAR as a potential red card.

“Paul, Paul, Stockley Park here”
“What’s up?”
“Only one game on tonight so I’m here on my own watching porn on the other monitor”
“Nice – did you have one eye on the game at least?”
“Yes Paul – It’s a bad one, over the ball, stamps on his ankle”
“We can’t give it mate, y’know (whispers)… the Saudi’s
“Grow a pair Paul, look at the screen”
“oh ok…(walks over)…. Fuck that’s bad”
“Has he apologised or checked that the kid’s alright Paul?”
“Has he fuck, just bitching about the 3 fouls I didn’t book him for in the last
5 minutes”
“Red card then Paul”
“Get ready for him to take 5 minutes to get the fuck off the pitch”

Fucking hell that’s dreadful and it has to be a red and sure enough, Paul Tierney
cancels the yellow and out comes the red. Fucking dirty bastard. Bruno still
hangs around like he’s got some sort of right to not get sent off. Just get off
the pitch you wanker.

Anyway, 8 minutes to go and JWP lines up the free-kick and this really has to
go in but unfortunately it gets blocked by Isak‘s head in the wall and he stays
down like he’s been punched by Tyson Fury. 
In the mean time, we chuck on Mara for Salisu, so now we only have one centre
back and it’s Jan Bednarek.

Bree has been much better in the second half playing in the flat back four and
one of his deliveries from the right hand side get nodded behind for a corner.
JWP pulls out a routine from the training ground and finds Lavia on the edge of
the box but his first time effort is always going up and into the crowd.  There’s a few minutes added for Guimaraes not
getting off the pitch and Isak getting hit with the ball but it would have needed
about another 3 hours I reckon.

And out we go with a whimper – yes the second half was better because we killed ourself in the first but even so, it was hardly the alamo on the Newcastle goal.
We were out of the game as soon as Jones handed his team sheet in at 7 o’clock.
Shit formation, crazy selections and it only took four minutes for the game to
be completely dead as far as us getting through to Wembley was concerned.  If you want to keep it tight at the start then
don’t pick a back 5 that have never played together before.  Bednarek and Bree starting in that defence
with KWP on the wrong side and it was a shambles from the start, admittedly not
helped by midfielders not tracking runners.  The midfield not tracking runners is
all Jones needs to completely excuse himself from any wrongdoing with the
personnel, tactics and formations. He is very quick to blame the players for
not taking information on board which the coaches apparently gave them to
divert attention away from the fact that he completely fucked it.  He always says that formations don’t matter,
which everyone knows is utter shit and if they don’t matter, why do you fucking
change formation between one and six times a game?

Jones defended his pet formation in the post-match interviews and he just
sounded like a prick who won’t accept that it doesn’t work with these players
that we have. Jones says that we were passive, which was more of a problem than
the formation but he is being disingenuous because he is basically saying that
he doesn’t trust the defenders to defend with a four, so he puts an extra body
in there and that immediately puts us on the back foot. This one is on you
Nathan – you didn’t give us a chance.  You fucked the first leg by not playing with a left back you fucked this one as well.  The manager sets the tone for the performance
and even though we were already 1-0 down from the first game, he sent them out
with a mindset to sit off, with his shit formation. Even Che Adams said in his
post-match interview that we were better with a four.

What Jones also doesn’t seem to get is that three at the back makes us passive
and everybody seems to shirk responsibility because none of our defenders are
good enough to take responsibility unless there is absolutely no choice. The
opening goal is absolutely pathetic with Alcaraz and Armstrong totally failing
to track the runners and then all five of our defenders are in a line on the 6
yard line but the trouble is, Longstaff has the ball 10 yards out and he has
enough time to take a touch before smashing it into the net. Goalkeepers
positioning was absolutely shit as well.

The second goal was different but similar with Alcaraz just jogging back not
realising the Longstaff was behind him, this was after Lyanco and Bree had done
absolutely nothing to prevent the attack building down our right hand side.
Longstaff really isn’t that good and he hadn’t scored a goal at St James’s Park
for four years but it just goes to show that if you leave a player unmarked in
the middle of your penalty area, the chances are he might score… Unless he’s
wearing one of our shirts of course.

2-0 down and we get back into it with a goal that was created by a loose pass
by Newcastle and finished with an unbelievable strike by Adams. He is so
fucking random. Maybe it’s a final third thing. 
As soon as he gets in the final third he goes to shit so maybe he needs
to spend the game more than 30 yards out.

Having switched to a back four once again, in the second half we will probably
the better side as Newcastle didn’t really need to go chasing the game but even
after Bruno got deservedly sent off for his ridiculous over the top challenge
on Edozie, we didn’t really test the keeper. We had one real effort in the
whole of the second half when Adam Armstrong found himself clean through but he
had two choices, either take one touch and hit it or dribble it round the
goalkeeper and unfortunately he chose to take two touches which gave Pope
enough time to get out of there and smother it., thus summing up Adam Armstrong
completely. Simply not good enough.

I felt sorry for James Bree. Thrown into a game that he should never have been
thrown into and he struggled like fuck in the first half with a right-hand side
pairing of him and Lyanco being a complete disaster. He improved massively in
the second half as a right back in a flat back four and his arrival and
improvement will be needed with KWP seemingly injured again.

More Nathan Jones strangeness was apparent in the role of KWP who was nominally
at left back, of course not playing on his best side but when are centre backs
had the ball and we were desperately trying to find a way of getting out of
defence in the first half, KWP was doing that Manchester City thing and sitting
in the centre of midfield which basically meant that there was no width
whatsoever on that side. The injury to KWP was what forced Jones to try and be
more attacking with the introduction of Edozie.

Of the centre backs, Lyanco as earlier discussed, was a fucking nightmare and
seemed to spend the whole game on his arse. Salisu was strong enough and didn’t
make any mistakes and Bednarek improved after not covering himself in glory on
the first goal. With all the substitutions of the end, Bednarek was the only
centre back on the pitch, which is something you certainly would’ve predicted a
couple of weeks ago.

In midfield Alcaraz and JWP were completely anonymous in the first half and JWP
was only marginally more prominent in the second.  Diallo tried his best but his lack of quality
on the ball was again evident. Romeo Lavia made an absolutely huge difference
when he came on and looked to be back to more or less his best. Up front, Che
banged in a wonderfully instinctive goal and worked hard throughout and Adam
Armstrong was Adam Armstrong. 

We don’t get to many semi-finals so it’s not nice to come away from one feeling that though we lost to a good side, we could have undoubtedly done better.  Anyhow, back to the league and a trip to Rasmus Ankersen’s former club, Brentford. No
doubt we are going to see a debut for our new massive striker. I’m also
sure that Jones will have a tactical master plan on how to use him.  He’s had more backing than any other manager in Saints history – the question is “can he deliver?”