Brentford at home in the game that was originally
supposed to be played on the weekend that the Queen died. Due to the way the
fixtures have fallen, it is a chance for us to get a win that would take us out
of the bottom three for the first time in what feels like forever. Brentford
have already provided one of many nadir days for the season because it was when
we went to their place that we lost 3-0 and Nathan Jones had his incredible
dickhead interview, statistically.

As I was pondering before the last time we played them which was only a couple
of months ago, Ivan Toney still has not been banned for betting breaches and
he’s even admitted some of them. Strange one. Brentford have carried on from
where they were at that stage and have been around the eighth or ninth in the
league and on a pretty long unbeaten run which came to an end at Everton at the
weekend. As we know ourselves, there are always teams who are doing
unexpectedly well and then the wheels fall off towards the end of the season,
so we have to hope for the Everton defeat can be repeated today.

In the recent past, there have been a few occasions when Saints have had a
chance to win one game and for example, push into the top half of the table and
on virtually every occasion, we have proved that we are not good enough to do
so. This is a game that we have to believe we can win and getting out of the
bottom three, even for a few days, will be huge if we can manage it. We are
getting to the stage of the season where the league table does start to play
psychological games with everyone involved. The difference going into the
Tottenham game on Saturday will be huge depending on whether we are 16th or
flat last.

A lot will depend today on our new found defensive resilience. The
aforementioned Toney and Bryan Mbeumo will provide a very stiff test for Janny
B and ABK.  Recovery from the Manchester
United game will be important as well so you wonder about Theo Walcott playing
two games in four days but I do not expect any sort of rotation today because
we are at the stage of the season and in the situation where you have to target
the game that’s in front of you and not think about the one in three days time.

Talking of the Manchester United game, their fans, fucking hell.  A quick scan of Twitter give you the biggest
collection of football illiterates you could ever come across in one place. The
majority still don’t think Casemiro should’ve been sent off and also believe
that United should’ve had three penalties and some even think KWP deserved the
racist abuse he got and that the racism was Anthony Taylor’s or VAR’s fault.

Anyway, tonight, Itchen Bridge, raining. 
Team news and meh!  Ruben has
decided to rest both Romeo Lavia and Theo Walcott, two of our better performers
recently and replace them with two players off of my shit list. Mt shitlist is
a list of players who cannot be relied upon to play two decent Premier League
games in a row. Elyounoussi and Diallo are starting.  It’s really hard not to be pessimistic but
assuming we line-up with the same formation, our creativity is going to be
provided by two wingers, Elyounoussi and Sulemana, with zero goals and zero
assists this season.

Away we go and Brentford are predictably the more assured looking side from the
off. We are defending solidly enough but predictably are not creating a thing.
Brentford are course very good at set pieces and from the first of them, Ivan
Toney find himself completely unmarked at the back post but someone gets a boot
to it and we just about get away with it.

Hickey gets in across from our left which is flicked on and Mbeumo meets at the
back post and Baz just throws himself at it making himself as big as possible and
it hits his foot – great save and booted clear.

It’s a temporary reprieve though as Brentford win a corner on our left.   In it comes From Mbeumo, flicked on at the
near post by Norgaard who makes a really simple movement and there is Ivan
Toney at the back post to knock it into an empty net. Brilliantly simple and 1-0
to Brentford.

In the 15 minutes that follow before half time, we do absolutely fuck all aside
from one always rising shot from Alcaraz, which comfortably clears the bar and
surely there has to be changes at half-time. We are so fucking static in front
of our midfield when we’ve got the ball and there is absolutely no one to pass
to. We come for the second half with exactly the same 11.

We do actually start the second half well with JWP and Alcaraz combining for
Charly to put a lovely ball inside the full back for KWP to run onto. He gets
to the line and pulls it back to Adams who of course, doesn’t score.  He manages to not hit th e goalkeeper this
time but manages to hit the one defender who has got back behind the keeper.
Can’t blame Che for that one.

We win a freekick on the right hand side as KWP gets chopped down and JWP tries
a swinging effort at the far post but it swings quite a long way wide than it actually
looked at the time.

The substitutions eventually arrives and mercifully it’s not the Chuckle Brothers
today but it’s Romeo Lavia and Theo Walcott replacing the two stand-ins who
have both been incredibly average.

The referee is beginning to get on my tits because Brentford are now time
wasting for England and he is doing nothing about it. Every single challenge
sees a Brentford player stay on the deck and the time taken over throws and
goal kicks is getting ever longer.

Tall Paul is on for Alcaraz and we actually get a ball into the mixer, with
Paul challenging Raya and through the keeper takes the ball comfortably enough,he
then decides he wants some afters and gets in to Paul’s face.  Paul just looks at him and laughs. The
referee fusses over and does fuck all.

Ivan Bet365 then follows in a shot that Baz comfortably reclaims having palmed
it out and clearly goes to leave something on the goalkeeper.  Bednarek gets in his face and the referee
decides that that’s worth a booking. Toney is booked as well, thus bringing in
the bet he had on Ivan Toney scoring and getting booked.

90 minutes are up and there are seven minutes of extras for all the time
wasting but Brentford are really good at it now and the first six minutes of it
sees about a minute and a half of actual football as the referee does fuck all.
 In desperation, we throw everyone
forward with one minute to go and Baz’ goal-kick is met by a Brentford player,
then flicked on by Toney and Wissa has a free run at goal and draws Baz out before
slotting it past him. 2-0. Mass exodus. There should of course be about another
four minutes to play, not that it matters but of course, the whistle goes
straight away.

Well, we just fucked aren’t we?  Today
started as another day of hope, a day when we would win and be out of the
bottom three for the first time in ages. However, as usual, when given a clear
target to achieve, we absolutely shat the bed on with a typical performance.

The likelihood of this happening started of course with the team selection.
It’s a home game against a team that you have a decent shout of beating. Ruben
picked a line-up to protect a couple of players with Walcott and Lavia left
out, basically to save them for the more difficult game against Tottenham at
the weekend. I could kind of see the logic of leaving those two out following
the Manchester United game but it cannot be denied that the replacements chosen
were a massive downgrade. Diallo is half the player that Lavia is – quite
literally. If Lavia was struggling with the after affects of the United game
then he shouldn’t be on the bench but if he wasn’t then he has to be on the
pitch for us, bearing in mind how a few games he’s got left in a Southampton
shirt.

Whereas Lavia will always find space to get attacks moving, Diallo simply does
not though the lack of movement in front of him didn’t help him much.  On that score, it was actually the loss of Walcott
it was felt most keenly especially when we went behind. Theo, despite his age,
has that one thing that none of our other wide players have and that is
movement ahead of the ball.  He gets
himself into spaces with darting runs away from players. He uses the ball well.
I’m not for a second saying he is a wonderful player anymore, but we are
dealing with a pretty low bar here when it comes to wide players.

I heard people all around me moaning when the ball gets passed sideways across
midfield but you can only complain if there was a forward pass on and the
option was not chosen. 99% of the time when the midfielders have the ball,
there is absolutely no forward pass on because none of the forwards fucking
move. We are so static when our central midfielders have the ball but literally
the only pass available is out of the full backs or back to the centre backs.
The best central midfielders in the world wouldn’t be able to find forward pass
with these strikers.

Elyounoussi has many flaws in his game or one of the worst ones is his lack of
movement and he needs to move because he’s not quick enough to beat a player with
pace and he’s not skilful enough to beat a player using a trick or dribbling.  He is just there. On the other wing we have
Sulemana, who cost us £22 million to basically sign the same player as Sam Edozie,
one that works hard, does the occasional dazzling thing on the ball but one who
has absolutely zero end product, none whatsoever. He basically can’t pick out
anyone with a cross and if it gets anywhere near the goal has absolutely zero
composure.  Like Edozie he has a load of
potential but potential has to turn into excellence (I sound like a LinkedIn
Twat) right now because of where we are.

Che Adams battled away but he was as guilty as anyone of being static and
Pinnock and Mee will really have had an easier afternoon. I think we took them
out of their comfort zone once at the start of the second half and that was it.
The introduction of Tall Paul in the last 25 minutes did little to change
things. Again, I think we gave him one cross to compete for but he does look
painfully out of his depth.

There will be people looking at our January transfer dealings and saying “ I
told you so –  Sulemana from a French
teams reserves, Onuachu from the Belgian league, Bree from the Championship,
Orsic from the Croatian league… What impact of any of them had? I think we all
had reservations about all of them. 
Charly Alcaraz has contributed well but we kind of needed more than 1
out of 5 to hit the ground running.

Brentford didn’t have to be any good to stop us scoring. Once they went ahead
with the free-kick move, all they had to do was remain organised and we had
absolutely nothing. We completely wasted the half hour following going behind
and for a team that needs as much time as possible to get the ball in the
opposition there, that’s not good enough. Yes we have tightened up the defence
and we needed to do that but when we get relegated, it’s going to be because
three managers this season have not come up with any plan for the attacking
third of the pitch. Surely movement off the ball is a coachable thing?  Since the World Cup we have scored seven
league goals, five from JWP, of which most are free kicks and two from Charly
Alcaraz. You don’t stay up with the lack of contribution we are getting from everyone
else. Ultimately the reason that we couldn’t beat 10 man Manchester United was
because we couldn’t stick the ball in the net and the reason we didn’t get
anything out of the game today was because we couldn’t create anything and stick
the ball in the net and ultimately the reason we will get relegated is because…
You know the rest.

As if today couldn’t get any worse, there was another hamstring injury for KWP,
one of our few genuine Premier League level players. With AMN being injured,
the next cab off the rank was James Bree who seems to struggle regulating how hard
he kicks the ball. He can ping a diagonal 60 yards from one flank to another
but when it comes to getting any quality on a cross then it’s the knee-height
dribbler that doesn’t reach. 
Statistically though…

Thomas Frank, the manager who we should’ve gone all out to get when we
appointed Nathan Jones, summed us up in one sentence and his post-match interview
when he said that we were decent between the two penalty areas but the game is won
in both boxes. Mic drop, the end.

In a week where consistency of refereeing has been questioned, we had a great
one today involving the goalkeepers. David Raya threw his toys out of the pram
because he got challenged by Tall Paul. It wasn’t a foul, it was just an aerial
challenge. No one got booked. Ivan Toney takes a kick at Bazunu on the ground
and Bednarek gets annoyed about it and Bednarek gets booked.   Also, there were seven minutes of injury time
to be played and whilst ultimately Brentford scored again to make it
irrelevant, the first six minutes out of the seven saw the ball in play for
about a minute and a half as Brentford employed every Mickey Mouse time wasting
trick in the book. There should’ve been another three or four minutes after
Brentford scored the second goal, not that it would’ve made any difference.  If we had played until I had walked back over
the Itchin Bridge in the rain and got back into my car, we still wouldn’t have
scored.

Still, a win against Tottenham and we will have a little bit of optimism again
but make no mistake, today was an absolutely major blow. We had an opportunity,
and we blew it. We will not be getting many more opportunities and with a
depressing manner of this defeat, I don’t blame anybody for preparing for the
inevitable.