When I looked at the two games we had coming up this week, away trips to Sheffield United and Derby, I set a target four points and was of course expecting the Sheffield United game to be the more difficult one, despite The Blades being lower in the League table. The target has been revised though because having won at Bramall Lane, we don’t want to waste that by dropping points today. This needs to be another win.

Derby got promoted a couple of years ago into the Championship and struggled last season but just about survived. They are widely predicted to be struggling down near the bottom this season as well and so it has proved so far. They were struggling so much they thought the signing Ben Brereton Diaz from us for a season was a good thing. It’s probably a good job that Ben can’t play against us this afternoon because he would undoubtedly find the net, despite not looking like he could find his arse with both hands in a Southampton shirt. It did look very odd seeing him score a worldie for Derby last week. If he’d had a red and white shirt on, he’d have fallen over the ball before he even had the shot.

Derby at Pride Park always transports me back to 2007 and the Championship playoff semi-final, when George Burley’s Saints won 3-2 but then contrived to lose on penalties. There was so many incidents in that game but it will always be memorable. It actually started in the first game with Derby kicking Gareth Bale out of the second game and when the second game arrived, Burley picked Kelvin Davis for his first game in months and he fumbled us 2-0 behind in the first minute before Colombian druglord Jhonny Viafara scored twice and I sorry I ruined the party, before Leon Best’s impossible own goal, before Rasiak took us to penalties, before ex Derby penalty King Idiakez, smashed his penalty at the fucking moon. Billy Davies’ Derby went up and subsequently got 11 points, which, as we all know, is a record that still stands today. There was a shit team who came very close to breaking it last season but they got away with it. Can’t remember who they were.

Oh ok, it was us. Of course we found ourselves mentioned in the same breath as Derby for the second half of the season. Journalists wrote articles interviewing Derby fans about how much they hoped we’d lose every game and shock of shocks, Robbie Savage was a dick about it. It was such a shame to leave Robbie with that particular record.

Will Still has had the Saints players staying at St George’s Park since the Sheffield United game and there’s not been much exciting to report from press conferences and I think we can largely expect the team to be the same as it was at Bramall Lane. The expectation is that Ross Stewart will be okay for a third game in a week. I’m guessing there may well be a change at the back with either THB or Captain Jack coming in for Josh Q. Finn Azaz may also find his place under threat and it could be anyone from Jay Robinson, Ryan Fraser or Leo Scienza who gets the nod should Azaz drop out.

2pm and Scienza is the headline inclusion, replacing Azaz. Tom Fellows also misses out to Wee Man but otherwise it’s the same team as Sheffield, with Ross Stewart playing his third game in a week. Away we go and what’s this? We’ve got an attack all moving and all connecting and playing quickly. With the ball zipping about it gets fed in to Stewart by Charles and a first time layoff to Manning bursting into the box and he must score but no, instead of that he falls on his arse and slices it wide. It’s one of those classic cases where everyone goes ‘unlucky’ but it was actually a shit effort.

Derby’s twin-donkey defence of ex-Skate Matt Clarke and Dion Sanderson can’t deal with our movement and speed of play at all and in the resulting confusion, following more good link play by Stewart, Scienza gets carted on the right side of the penalty area. It’s prime Irish-Bale territory and it’s decent by Manning, up and over the wall at the near post but Zetterstrom pulls off a save for the cameras.

More good link play from Stewart and he finds Adam Armstrong in the box and in typical Arma fashion, he runs headlong into a clutch of defenders and the ball bounces off one and back to him, bounces off him and past another via a deflection and somehow Arma comes up with a ball and simply side foots under the keeper to put us one up. Get in! Come on lads, let’s hammer this lot as they are shit. Just the seven minutes gone.

As far as I was concerned, the plan was to push on, assert supiority and dominate but instead of that we did the opposite, backed off and went to shit. Within 30 seconds we don’t deal with a ball into the box and it drops for Weimann, who forces a brilliant save from McCarthy. Was that save a wake up call? Nope. Wood fails to deal with a high ball pumped forwards and Morris beats Jander too easily on the edge of the box and he gets his shot away towards the far post and McCarthy has to get airborne again to push it away.

Our defending is full-on panic stations. Our three cente backs are playing pretty narrow and generally ball watching. Manning in particular is not stopping the cross coming in at all and when it comes in from Johnston, Agyemang competes for it and McCarthy has to make another save on the line as it drops in the box and hits Weimann, who can only stab it goalwards., The three central defenders are all looking at each other and abdicating responsibility and we are just about getting away with it again, like we did in Sheffield. It can’t last however.

We awake from our slumbers and think it might actually be a good idea to go forward again and it’s lovely football again to get Manning in a crossing position and it’s a great cross, a powerful header on the run fromt Stewart and another good save but the Stewart injury curse has struck again and in all too familiar fashion, he grips his hamstring. Down and out. Off he goes and it’s Fellows coming on with Arma moving into that central striking role he’s so good at.

Derby are not shy of leaving the foot in and their captain Travis, gets booked for going in late on Charles, which is the booking he should’ve got when he went through Manning in the first few minutes. We seem to be back on track with some great play between Fellows and Weeman on the right and eventually Scienza takes aim and smashes it from 30 yards and the keeper parries it away.

Saints can of course concede a goal from any conceivable situation and here’s another one. An aimless cross field ball towards no one is completely harmless until Manning decides to try and head it and in the eyes of the linesman, it flicks off him and goes for a Derby throw. Manning decides to tell the linesman what he thinks and is busy doing that rather than actually fucking defending. A quick throw and Weimann has all the time he needs, due to our full-back arguing with the linesman, to measure a cross to the back stick and Agyemang gets above Edwards and heads easily into the net.

We respond with Scienza putting a brilliant ball through the defenders to Fellows who gets a shot in and the keeper parries it. Armstrong is on his heels a bit so can’t convert the rebound but works it back again to Scienza, who curls it wide of the far post.

Half time and how the fuck are we not winning this? The worry is that our attack dies now, with Stewart having gone off. We have still been threatening whenever we go forward but you just sense that we’re a lot less likely to score again than we were before the injury. No further changes and away we go and Scienza goes bursting through having played a neat 1-2 with Manning before taking the wrong option and trying to pass Armstrong, rather than shoot.

There is no sense that we are going to control this second half and a ball over the top frinds Agyemang in behind Josh Q and he smashes it into the side netting. The defending is sadly still lacking the required intensity.

Scienza is the main hope for us going forward and he’s making things happen again, carrying the ball well before finding Fellows and then onto Wee Man out on the right and his low cross in perfectly finds Armstrong, who puts it wide. Has to score that I’m afraid. Big chance.

Substitution time on the hour mark and fuck off Will….. Damion Downs on for Scienza, which is ridiculous, because he’s been our best player. Not only that it moves Tom Fellows to the left. Bizarre and random substitution and a hell of a gamble bearing in mind Downs’ last sub appearance was the clusterfuck against Liverpool.

Back come Derby and Jackson hits one from the edge of the box and it’s brilliantly pushed away by McCarthy. We have Armstrong and Downs upfront now neither of whom can hold the ball up. Fellows has gone to right back with Flynn Downs and Azaz coming on. Flynn is a straight swap for Shea and I assume Azaz is needed for any hope of creativity, which Will removed when he took Scienza off.

The game drifts by with all our attack dieing on Downs first touch but he does then accidentally hold up the ball back to Azaz and he feeds the ball wide to Fellows who has no conviction with his shot and it’s well saved and once the corner is cleared, that’s the end of a disappointing afternoon.

What a weird game. Ultimately it’s a very disappointing result and it feels very self-inflicted. Until we scored, we looked like we were gonna blow them away as our attacking interplay between Scienza, Armstrong and Stewart had Derby chasing shadows but we stepped off again once we scored and McCarthy had to keep the scores level with a couple of really good saves. Stewart‘s injury meant our attack got worse and the game muddled along until Derby‘s equaliser which was pathetic by Ryan Manning. Manning has seemingly given up on defending recently. He’s been decent going forward but defensively it looks like he can’t be bothered and this was never illustrated more than when he was too concerned with arguing with the linesman to be bothered with getting back into position and maybe doing something about the cross coming into our box. That wasn’t the only incident as there were about ten crosses that came into our box from his side in the first half, which is inexcusable when you’re playing as a wing-back with three central defenders. Also inexcusable is arguing with thelinesman when the game is going on. Fucking idiot. You get told not to do that when you’re about 8 years old for fucks sake.

We still looked the more likely to score at the start of the second half and then, on the hour another one of Will Still’s random ‘hunch’ substitutions, but unlike at Sheffield United during the week, this one did not work because taking off Scienza, who was one of our best players, and replacing him with Downs, basically meant we were playing with ten for the last half an hour. I think Damion managed to lay the ball off to one of our players once in the remaining 35 minutes and that one was because a defender barged him in the back and it luckily bounced to one of our players.

Overall it’s a fair result and Derby certainly worked our keeper more than we worked theirs in the second half. It was an impressive display of shot stopping by Alex McCarthy and he had to be at his best today because our defending just wasn’t there. There was not enough intensity and desire to go and win challenges. Everyone was okay without being dominant. Nathan Wood had a ropey game in the centre of defence but the main problem was out on the left, particularly in the first half. We saw a lot of the drawbacks of playing three central defenders today where they were all too close to each other and Ryan Manning was occupying a back four left back position which basically meant there was no one out wide to block crosses and the three central defenders in the middle were all seemingly hesitant and allowing other people to do their job instead of doing it themselves.

Attack wise, we initially looked like we’re going to score every time we go forward, but not quite as much as we did when Ross Stewart was on the pitch. His injuries of course down to playing three games when he’s just not used to it and the reason he has to do that is because everyone else has been absolutely dreadful who has played up front, including Adam Armstrong, as identified in the week by Still, but he still went for it. Still obviously didn’t trust Downs, otherwise he’d have put him on when Ross got injured, as the like-for-like replacement. Why on earth then, is he the man on the hour mark, leaving us without Scienza or Azaz to supply any creativity. It was almost like his first substitution was wrong (should have brought on Archer), leaving us with less goal threat with Arma moved into the middle, his second tried to correct the problem he’d created and allow Arma to move wide again and then the third was to correct the issue caused by taking Scienza off and then needing the creativity of Azaz.

Ross Stewart of course paid the price for playing three games in a week. He has to play because the other options are proven terrible as we’ve seen, but regardless of how terrible the other options are, we have to accept that Ross can’t play three games in a week without it being a massive threat to his health, so he simply shouldn’t play midweek games. Hopefully, the fact that we’ve got an international break can mean that he’s back in contention as soon as it’s over as we actually look like we had an attack at the start of the game today with Ross, Arma and Leo.

So, we got the four points I wanted at the start of the week but we really should’ve got six, especially after winning in Sheffield. If we’d drawn at Bramall Lane and won today we would undoubtedly be happier about things and that’s odd in the big scheme of things. We are a team that has little spells in games where we look like we’ve got things sorted but that’s not enough. That’s one challenge for the manager and the other is to find a way of getting the attack to fire without Ross Stewart. I would love for him to be back and fit in a few weeks but as we all know, Ross doesn’t tend to do one or two week injuries.

International break and then back to St.Mary’s for the visit of Swansea. 3-0 in the FA Cup last time around and 5-0 in the Championship the season before. Something similar is needed

Up the fucking Saints.