It’s the hope that kills you.
Hot on the heels of our embarrassing FA Cup exit we turn our attention to the
14 games that remain in the Premier League. Whilst I believe that we have next
to no chance of staying up, a look at the league table reveals this not to be
the case with us being just four points below the line. There of course needs
to be back-to-back wins at some point which unlikely to happen even if we
win today because the next game is away at Manchester United, but Leicester at
home today is a definite opportunity to get three points on the board.
Not only have we beaten them once this season already but they are struggling
themselves, not in any immediate danger so there is a chance that they will try
and coast through today unless Brendan Rodgers can get them fired up but then,
Brendan is not the manager that he thinks he is.
This season, Brendan has worn the look of a man who knows it is all gone a bit
stale and deep down knows that he’s not gonna be there for much longer and is
sizing up his next move. It can’t be
denied however that Leicester are under performing with the players that
they’ve got. There is a bit of a
changing of the guard going on at the moment. Kasper Schmeichel left in the
summer and the other mainstay, the arch shit house Jamie Vardy is kind of
reaching a natural end now at the age of 35.
You could argue that they have built all their success since 2015, winning the
Premier League and winning the FA Cup, of the back of recruiting Jamie Vardy
for £1 million from Fleetwood. To have that priceless commodity of a striker
who can score that many goals is a wonderful thing for a team not in the Super League
6 to have. We’ve all seen the struggles
Saints have had to replace the strike force that they had since 2016 and
Leicester are at that stage now. With
Vardy now officially reaching ‘over the hill’ status, Kelechi Iheanacho has
stepped up on occasions but Patson Daka isn’t good enough and if they don’t replace Vardy‘s goals soon, they could well go the same way that
we have gone, certainly since Danny Ings left.
Also, you can’t imagine James Maddison and Youri Tielemans sticking
around much longer if it looks like being a lower mid-table slog in future.
They’ve even got rid of Ayoze Perez which is a bit of an oversight given that
he has 27 career hat-tricks against Southampton. Their forward line will still be a threat
today with Tete, Iheanacho and Barnes all being capable and of course there is
James Maddison. I’m not going to say “one-man
team” but he is their best player by a long, long way and though he’s been out
injured recently, he is supposed to be back today. His partner in midfield
Youri Tielemans, I’ve never really understood. He never seem to do anything much at
international level with Belgium and it seems that being linked away to Super League
clubs has certainly played a part in his dip in performances. There was a time not so long ago when the
midfield three of Ndidi, Tielemans and Maddison was right up there with the
best in the league.
Leicester of course have two former Saints at the club but we won’t be seeing
Ryan Bertrand or Jannik Vestergaard today. Bertie has been injured more or less
since we played Leicester in that dismal behind closed doors FA Cup semi-final
in 2021. Of course, he was playing for
us in those days and Rodgers revisited the obsession with signing Southampton
players that he brought with him from Liverpool. He did it again with the signing of
Vestergaard and I think the fact that Leicester have signed about three more
centre backs, including fellow massive immobile lump Harry Souttar, since that day tells you all you need to know about Jannik’s place
in the pecking order.
Whereas a win at Leeds would’ve given us a genuinely decent shout of staying
up, a win today is absolutely essential to keep in touch. With Manchester
United away up next, a defeat today could well leave us right in the shit. Four
points is not too bad but being eight or nine adrift is in all likelihood going
to be terminal.
So, what is Ruben Selles going to do? The side he picked against Grimsby and
the B team that played against Nottingham Forest on Friday night gave a few
clues. The centre back pairing will be interesting. With Salisu not being fit
it will be interesting to see if Bednarek or Caleta-Car is seen as the least calamity
prone option. Another interesting thing will be to see where Sulemana lines up.
For me, it absolutely has to be on the wing.
In the event it appears to be a 4-3-3 or a 4-2-3-1 with Charlie
Alcaraz, Lavia and JWP all selected. Che Adams has been recalled in place of Tall Paul and there is a place for Theo Walcott off the back of his decent
performance against Grimsby. Whilst Walcott may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I’m
all in favour of the meritocracy. You wait for your chance and if you play
well, you stay in the team. Should work the other way round as well of course
if you put in an absolute stinker. On that note, the new Chuckle Brothers Mara
and Adam Armstrong, are on the bench.
Maitland-Niles makes a very strong burst on the right hand side in an Arsenal
reunion with Theo Walcott who returns the ball to him with AMN getting right to
the byline before pulling the ball back for Theo but the shot is easily
blocked.
Leicester settle down and start passing the ball nicely and we seem to struggle
to get a foot in. There is some strange
shit going on whenever Saints get a goal kick.
Bazunu clearly wants to tap it short to either of the centre backs and
Leicester are queued up on the edge of the penalty area like sprinters at the
starting blocks waiting for him to do so.
The idea of this tactic is to play through the first line of the press
and have space further up but none of our defenders are comfortable enough with
passing the ball to make this viable (we have 4 right footed defenders) so what
we are doing is two panicked passes from Baz into a centre back, back to Baz
and then he belts it up the pitch and we lose it near halfway.
Leicester win a free-kick on the left-hand side when Walcott takes out Maddison.
Maddison whips it in and Iheanacho is
completely unmarked and meets it solidly with his face and the ball goes wide.
You can tell it’s a really bad miss because he checks round to frantically
check with the linesman to make sure that he was offside.
Alcaraz is showing up well and breaks, playing one-two with Walcott but he
leaves his foot in when the challenge comes in from Castagne and looks a little
bit relieved that only a yellow card comes out from Robert Jones.
25 minutes gone and Saints actually start to play some football now with JWP
feeding the ball into Walcott who plays a 1-2 with Adams and gets to the line.
He crosses and the sliding Castagne has both his arms in the air and it hits
one of them. Penalty given. Fucking hell, we don’t get given those usually.
There is always a slight dread when JWP steps up to take a penalty and no one
looks particularly confident that he’s going to score and bang, goes for his
favourite side and Ward reads it all the way and pushes it away easily. Shit.
Lavia wins the ball back at right back with AMN picking it up and finding Adams
who turns and slides a ball between Souttar and Castagne and Alcaraz breaks
through and from the edge of the box, slots it across Ward and into the far corner.
Fucking brilliant finish and big celebrations and then guess what, we’re off to
fucking VAR. Time goes by, civilisations rise and fall…..
And it doesn’t get disallowed – this must be our day. There is a slight
facepalm in that Charly Alcaraz has clearly injured himself in the celebration. Knee slides never seem to be the most sensible
thing to do to me and let’s hope he can run it off.
Leicester are playing with a ridiculously high line considering they’ve got the
immobile Souttar in defence and Sulemana gets a chance as another ball is lobbed
over the top. He has to go the long way round having brought it down but
manages to fire in another shot which is comfortably enough saved by Ward.
Half time and it’s just about whether Alcaraz comes back out or not. The worrying thing is that Elyounoussi was
getting warmed up as the replacement and as Charly was basically playing as an
attacker, that wouldn’t be a good replacement.
Brendan has decided to take off invisible Harvey Barnes at half-time and
bring on Dennis Praet and he’s playing him on the left wing. Tate
picks out Praet on the left-hand side he puts in an inch perfect cross onto
Iheanacho’s head but again he appears to shut his eyes and it plops wide of the
post.
It’s clear that Alcaraz can’t carry on and so is replaced and Ruben has decided
to replace our new dynamic forward running full of ability number 10 with, as
suspected, Elyounoussi. Groan. Could’ve used Stuart Armstrong who is ideal for
that number 10 role or could even have brought on Tall Paul and dropped Che
back in there but not so. More groans a
few minutes later as Che Adams and Theo Walcott, who have both been excellent, are
replaced with the Chuckle Brothers, Mara and Adam Armstrong. Okay, we now have absolutely zero attacking
threat.
KWP gives Baz a horrendous back-pass which he tries to smash clear but can only
smash it straight to Iheanacho on the edge of the box he has the whole goal to aim
at but places it over the bar on the roof of the net. Fucks sake lads.
In the course of the next half an hour we manage one attacking move where we
keep the ball for more than three passes with JWP finding Mara out on the left.
He in turn finds Sulemana and on to Adam
Armstrong who hits a shot at the fucking moon.
Murder.
Sulemana, who has had a decent game is replaced with Stuart Armstrong as we go
into the last 10 minutes. Iheanacho,
having missed a load of easy ones then tries a difficult one from the edge of
the box and curls it over the bar. The
only player we really have to worry about is Maddison who has been excellent
all game. JWP carts him over on the left
hand side to give them a free kick. Maddison’s free kick is cleared by ABK heading
it up in the air and it lands on top of the net. Maddison’s corner is headed away but Maddison is still trying his magic
out on the left-hand side and works himself a yard before crossing the ball
into the mixer and Bazunu comes flying out for a ball he’s not going to get
anywhere near and Souttar gets above it and we’re all waiting for the net to
bulge but he hits the top of the bar and over.
Thank fuck for that.
First things first and I would like to say to everyone in television media
and anyone who supports Leicester who likes shitting on about a game that
happened four years ago…. you can stick your fucking 9-0 up your arse. Six
points, thank you very much.
Well it turned out to be a brilliant day with all the teams around us losing
and us managing to hang on to the lead given to us by Charly Alcaraz’
first-half goal. Any win in the Premier League it is hard earned of course, but
we got there today courtesy of some very good luck and a limp performance from
an insipid Leicester team, managed by a manager who doesn’t seem to give a
shit. Leicester had an element of not really being arsed today, apart from
James Maddison who tried his best and showed his obvious frustration with those
around him., I wonder how many of the
others can really look at themselves in the mirror tonight. I’m sure Brendan
looks in his mirror every night and asks who is the fairest of them all.
Despite a few kamikaze moments in
our defence, Leicester didn’t manage to get a shot on target. It’s crazy to look at the table to see that
they are now only three points ahead of us.
Great to win of course but let’s not kid ourselves that all is fine.
Having showed the way to win the game in the last 20 minutes of the first half,
we went back into our shell in the second half, not helped by Alcaraz getting
an injury in celebrating his goal. He
had been a revelation in the number 10 position and we had to take him off and
bring Elyounoussi on, mortally wounding us as an attacking force. Not content
with a mortal wounding, Ruben Selles then picked up the knife and stabbed our
attacking play to death by bringing on the Chuckle Brothers and removing Che Adams and Theo Walcott who had both
been really good. So, our three
substitutions were a massive downgrade and lo and behold, we didn’t keep the
ball up front at all and had no goal threat.
So, the last half an hour was spent almost exclusively without the ball and was
absolute murder, just waiting for someone to fuck up. Bazunu had a good go, kicking one straight to Iheanacho
(mind you, that was a shocking pass by KWP) and then coming out for a cross that
he was never going to get in the 95th minute. Normally you would say that we won’t win many games by
sitting back onto 1-0 lead for the last half an hour but Ruben has managed to
do it twice in his opening three games. However, the same tactics against Leeds
when we were drawing left us 1-0 down with nothing on the pitch to get back into it. What would’ve been catastrophic is if
Leicester and scored with 20 minutes to go and we would’ve had nothing out of
the pitch to try and get another goal.
After the Grimsby game, I wrote about players getting something for nothing and
it was a prime example of that today. Mara and Armstrong should not have even
been on the bench after their performance against Grimsby. They were so shit in
that game, they should’ve been playing for the B Team on Friday but not only
are they on the bench, they get half an hour each on the pitch.
Selles did get a lot right today. The main revelation was Charly Alcaraz, who played the number 10 role brilliantly. Predominantly a midfielder of course, he gets about the park and closes people down but also he has that energy to get up with a striker and is always looking to shoot from the edge of the box. Hopefully his knee slide induced injury will be bad enough to stop him doing it again but not bad enough to keep him out of any games.and Theo Walcott
had a superb game on the right wing. Surprise surprise, Kamaldeen Sulemana looked
better in his preferred position and Che Adams put in a proper shift as the
lone striker.
Though we kept a clean sheet and I’m certainly not going to complain about
that, I felt like this was achieved more because of Leicester being shit than
our defence being rock solid. ABK did have a very good game and Bednarek had
one of his better games. His last four games have been shit, decent, shit,
decent so we’ll see what happens next week when he will undoubtedly be in the
team again.
Another footnote from this game was JWP missing a penalty. For some reason, his
penalties never look that convincing and I think it’s probably time to try and
find someone else to take them.
I do not want to see an unchanged team for next week away at Manchester United.
It is a completely different assignment. I feel that Tall Paul absolutely has
to play some part in that game bearing in mind he will be up against Lisandro Martinez. I would also like to see a more balanced
defence with at least one left footed player in there.
Today’s result actually moved us off of the bottom of the league and even if we get beat at Old
Trafford next week, it should tell the players that we can get out of it if
they carry on putting in a shift. We won’t be fortunate enough to come up
against under-performing opposition like Leicester every week so we have to be
better and carry a goal threat for the whole game. Do that and you never know.
It’s the hope that kills you.
League 1 Minus 10 
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