We Have Lift Off, Perhaps.

Blackburn Rovers visit St.Mary’s in the last home
game before Christmas, and it’s a chance for us to put another three points on
the board having drawn the last couple of games on our travels. Blackburn
arrived at St Mary‘s having just beaten Bristol City at home. In general, they
seem to be the sort of team that beats the likes of Bristol City and other strugglers
like Birmingham and Stoke but they had no joy against Leeds and also lost away
at Sheffield Wednesday recently, who are admittedly showing signs of life.

Blackburn’s manager of is Jon Dahl Tomasson who I remember as a big money flop
signing for Newcastle back in the day, before eventually moving on to the likes
of Feyenoord and AC Milan where he forged a very successful career.  The group of players of players at his disposal
includes Sam Gallagher, a centre forward who was never really given a chance at
Saints before he was sold to Rovers. It looks like he’s been injured recently
so we are unlikely to see him today.

Most of their goals this season have come from Sammie Szmodics, who has 14
goals which for a player who doesn’t play as an out and out number nine, is
pretty impressive. They are a team who don’t have a great defensive record so
this really should be a game where we get amongst them and if we go ahead,
really put the foot down.

As the team is announced, there are a few changes which on the face of it look
fairly positive. Sam Edozie gets a start and there is the welcome return of
Flynn Downes into the midfield. James Bree has also been called up to take the
place of Ryan Manning who I think is being punished, not so much for the mistake
that he made on giving the ball away against Coventry but his lack of action
after that. Maybe that’s the reason Shea Charles has dropped to the bench as
well with Joe Aribo keeping his place.  Blackburn
have eleven players on the pitch and they have about eleven fans in the away
end. It’s hard to remember a more sparsely populated away end.

Away we go and unsurprisingly it’s the usual pattern or Saints possession with
the opposition sat deep and waiting for the chance to break.  KWP is at left back with Breezy on the right
and it looks like Stuart Armstrong as a false 9.

Blackburn do spring an attack and get down the left-hand side and the ball is
pulled back from the by-line to the onrushing Wharton on the edge of the box
and Downes slides in doesn’t quite get there and trashes him.  Free kick inside the ‘D’. Szmodics absolutely
smashes it past the wall and Baz blocks it but can’t hold it but then reacts
quickly enough to block the rebound and Edozie manages to clear it.

The referee Graham Scott his one who we’ve had in the Premier League before. I
remember him being involved in the legendary 9-0 defeat at Old Trafford with
some of the worst VAR officiating I have ever seen in conjunction with on-field
referee, Big Mikey Dean.  Anyway, he gets
the next decision right as KWP turns out of trouble and Callum Brittain just
grabs him and pulls him back even though he is only a few yards outside of the
Saints penalty area.

We should’ve had a penalty as Stuart Armstrong ball-juggled his way away from
Carter, who basically just grabbed his shirt and threw him on the ground,
practically begging for a penalty to be given. Referee Scotty was having
absolutely nothing to do with it however. 
They’ll even out over a season.

40 minutes gone and Saints are playing decent football without much threat and
it’s only when Edozie gets it on the ball on the left that we become a bit more
direct because he has his full back on toast. On this occasion he wins to
corner. In comes the corner from Breezy on the left and it’s an in-swinger
along 6 yard line and in amongst all the big central defenders competing for
the ball, there is all eight stone of Sam Edozie who flicks out a leg in front
of a defender and knocks it into the net. Get in.

Half-time and all is well.  It hasn’t
been brilliant and the fact that we are rotating players into the centre forward
position doesn’t seem to be causing as much consternation in the Blackburn
defence as we hoped, but there is definitely something to work with in the
second half. Blackburn don’t look much to be honest and it’s going to be a case
of whether we can make this comfortable or not. No changes and away we go again

Normal service is resumed with Saints controlling possession and we work a
chance to Stuart Armstrong on the edge of the penalty area from the left-hand
side he goes for the far corner with his right foot and keeper Wahlstedt takes
off to claw away a very good save.

Edozie takes on his man and gets barged to the ground with Scotty giving us a
free kick, only for a Rovers player to welly the ball up the pitch in
frustration.  To massive amusement we
realise it’s the already booked Callum Brittain and Scotty pulls out a yellow
and then a red card.  What a fucking
idiot. As he walks off he gets a consoling
pat from Russell Martin who probably says “cheers mate“ as it goes, but the
Blackburn manager Tomasson completely blanks him.

The ten men are unsurprisingly parking everybody behind the ball whilst we knock
it around. Smallbone plays a ball in to meet Downes run and he slips as he
knocks the ball inside the defender and Stuart Armstrong finishes easily past
the keeper to make it 2-0 and this game is well and truly done.

Russell Martin clearly thinks so as well because it’s time for the
substitutions with Ryan Fraser coming on for the excellent Sam Edozie and Jack
Stephens gets his first game for a few months replacing THB. Not long
after that we get Sekou Mara and Charlie Alcaraz on for The Armstrongs.

Alcaraz looks determined to make an impression and slides an excellent ball through
to Mara, who does what he can in a limited time he has but it’s a good save by
the keeper as he flies out. The less said about Aribo’s follow-up effort the
better but we can all guess which row of the Chapel it landed in. I’m going for
a row EE.

Stephens then chips over the defence and Mara is in and clean through until in
comes a challenge from the clumsy Carter, still determined to make up
for not giving a penalty away earlier and he flattens Mara to give us a penalty. With Adam Armstrong off the
pitch, there are a few discussions going on but Alcaraz has the ball and after
a word from Captain Jack, he is the man to take it. I’m not overconfident as he
steps up and he proves me entirely right by trying to chip the ball down the
middle and floating it over the bar. Fucking hell, what a load of shit.

Saints seem to feel that they have a duty to keep pushing for goals after that
and with Blackburn attacking more in hope than expectation, Saints win it back
and break four on three and work the ball out to Ryan Fraser on the left and he
gets to the edge of the penalty area and cuts in on his right foot before going
for the far corner but Wahlstedt pulls out another top drawer save to keep the
score down.

Not to be denied though, and it’s time for Fraser to do his usual out on the
left and work himself just enough space to flash a cross over with his left
foot and there is Mara at the back post to slide it into the net for 3-0 and
with 95 gone, you would assume that was that.

No so as Blackburn just want to get out of there now but Saints keep pushing as
the clock ticks towards 97 and Smallbone takes aim from the edge of the box and
it’s another decent save by the keeper, but there is Alcaraz to smash the
rebound into the net. He doesn’t celebrate too much just puts his hands
together as if to apologise to the supporters. Young lad, he’ll learn.

Well wasn’t that a nice end to the game with the opposition completely falling
apart and us actually been good enough to take advantage.  It was a bit of a strange game in fairness, with the first half being largely
forgettable from our point of view as Blackburn’s game plan of stifling the
shit out of it worked pretty well. We basically played with a different centre
forward at every opportunity with Stuart Armstrong, Joe Aribo and even Will Smallbone
taking turns to be the most advanced player but the end result was that we
hardly got a shot on target in the first half and despite all our possession,
scored a goal through a corner into the mixer and Sam Edozie getting on the end
of it and flicking it in.

We started the second half better and though they weren’t doing any attacking,
Blackburn were still in the game at 1-0 when they suffered one of the most
hilarious and pointless red cards that I can ever remember seeing. Getting a
second booking for kicking the ball away has to be right up there with one of
the most brain-dead things you can do as a professional footballer. It wasn’t
as if he just tapped it away either and it was over officious refereeing. He
fully wellied it the length of the pitch. Dickhead. The managers response and
completely ignoring him as he walked off, said it all.  Oh and his first booking was for pulling a
player back 80 yards from his goal.  He clearly wanted next week off.

After that, you have to say that Saints were excellent and ruthless in putting
the game to bed (apart from one incident of course but we’ll get to that
later). Stuart Armstrong’s excellent finish put the game to bed before we have
the icing on the cake with the girls from Mara and Alcaraz.

We have course had a ridiculous dickhead moment of her own as Charly Panenka’d
a penalty over the bar in embarrassing fashion. At least he had a good grace to
apologise when he did score a goal. Honestly though, other members of the team
had worked so hard to win that penalty and to shat it over the bar like that
borders on the disrespectful.  Don’t do
it again if you ever get to take one.

Having won 4-0, are all our goal scoring problems solved?  Of course they’re not but it was nice to score
a few and it can only give confidence for the tougher days to come.

For me today, the main success was Sam Edozie who was by far and away the best
player until he got substituted and having scored again and proved effective
from the start, he really should stay in the team for a run of games now.
Elsewhere, it was another clean sheet for Baz and I would say playing Bree on
the right and KWP on the left was a success in terms of attacking output. In
attacking terms, Kyle doesn’t offer quite as much on the left as he does on the right
but Bree offers nothing at all on the left and puts some good balls in from the right. At least
the opposition have got to worry about both sides of the pitch with this
combination.  Defensively, the back four
and the goalkeeper dealt with any sporadic Blackburn threat pretty efficiently.
It was interesting to see Jack Stephens get given twenty minutes at the end to
get him back on the pitch and the message of that substitution was that Mason
Holgate may well be thinking he would be better off returning to Everton.  Talking of substitutions, Sekou Mara coming
on ahead of Che Adams sent a message as well in my opinion.  There is an opportunity in our forward line
to really break into the team and make a difference and Sekou has to aim to be
the man.  Whether he is capable of doing that is another question altogether.

It was another good day for Stuart Armstrong in midfield, capped of course with
a very good goal and Flynn Downes returning just made the whole engine room
more dynamic. Joe Aribo was solid enough in midfield and at least now he’s not
a liability.

Blackburn manager Tomasson had the red card to use in mitigation for his team getting stuffed and also somewhat strangely, called us a Premier Leaue Club with a Premier League Squad.  Off the top of my head, I’m wondering how many of our squad have been decent at Premier League level at some point in the past… KWP, Bednarek, Stu Armstrong… that’s about it from the starting XI.

Our 14 game unbeaten run is next to be put to the test couple of days before
Christmas, at Queens Park Rangers where once again, nothing less than a win
will do. It was a day when a couple of the results went for us with both Leeds
and Ipswich only managing one point each today. We are now level on points with
Leeds and ten behind Ipswich. Maybe it can be done after all.

Up the fucking Saints.