Onwards we march to Ewood Park and Blackburn Rovers. Will the weather be shit and will the wind be blowing and will it be freezing cold? Yeah, all of that.

Of more relevant concern is how Saints attempt to bounce back from the Bristol shit show from Tuesday night. A win today and that game will largely be consigned to the bin but another poor result, and by that I mean not winning, will bring that Bristol game into sharper focus.

There has been one development since that game and that’s the alleged interest of Italian giants Juventus who have been linked with Johannes Spors, who they might want as their Director of Football. If there is any truth in this rumour then he’s gone because no one turns down Juventus to stay at Southampton. Fear not though because we have a man in the building who has already stepped up into that role once – Rasmus Ankersen take a bow, your time is now. I am of course taking the piss because I don’t think anyone, even in the at times tone deaf hierarchy at Sport Republic, would fail to read the room on that particular possibility.

Because of Gerhard Struber the former 1FC Koln manager being in the dugout against us on Tuesday, Damion Downs, who was his striker last season has been discussed. Downs of course is the main stick that has been used to beat Spors with. The Bristol City manager was a pains to point out that they trusted him at Koln and gave him a run of games and also that he had a strike partner with him. He also hinted that the creativity of Scienza would certainly give Downs opportunities. All that remains to be seen however, but as it stands, of the eight players that Spors brought to the club, it’s only Downs who has been outright dreadful so far but the problem is, he was the one we most needed to hit the ground running. Struber‘s comments about Damion‘s age really do highlight the fact that we gambled massively and it so far has failed. It would be a massive gamble again to start him against Blackburn but then, could he produce less than Cameron Archer has produced so far? From what we’ve seen so far, he almost certainly would.

Valerian Ismael is the manager of Blackburn, and he’s doing the rounds of Championship clubs. He was one of Watford’s ex-managers for five minutes, and even if he wasn’t, it’s a pretty good guess because every journeyman Championship manager has been their manager at some point. I vaguely remember him being at West Brom for one game against us. He’s been making the same noises that Struber made before the Bristol City game in that they need to sort out their home form, which has not been good so far. It’s our job, of course, to make sure that poor home form continues, but for as long as I can remember, Southampton has been the team you want to play to end your bad run, be you a club or an individual player.

One player in the Blackburn squad who we have come across before is Todd Cantwell, who spent time at Norwich City where, with his Robbie Savage hairdo, was a player who you would certainly like to see kicked up in the air because he couldn’t handle it and went to bits when that happened. Maybe he’s grown up a bit now, but unfortunately for Blackburn, because he is a good player, and for fans who like seeing players kicked up in the air, we are going to have to wait until the return game to play against him because he’s injured.

A new feature I’m going to occasionally do is about historic grudges with today’s opposition. This could well be Number 1 in a series of 1 but whenever I think Blackburn, I still think about Alan Shearer. Just about to explode as centre forward for Saints and up rock Blackburn with Jack Walker’s millions and Kenny Bastard Dalglish and Shearer moves to Blackburn and scores about 500 goals and we end up with a completely fucked Kerry Dixon and his little bastard mate David Speedie as replacements. Still, Ian Branfoot promised that our guys would outscore Shearer. You were wrong, weren’t you Ian. Tim Flowers and Jeff Kenna joined them as well of course, won the league and then we signed the knackered Stuart Ripley off of them and got one good game out of him in four years.

We did have their pants down for Kevin Davies however, selling him to them for £7.5 million, getting James Beattie for £1 million at the same time and then getting Davies back a year later and sending Egil Ostenstad their way. We defintely got the batter of that little round of transfer activity.

Anyway, Will Still always seems to react to poor performances by individuals or by the team with a raft of changes, so it will be interesting to see how much goes in the bin after Tuesday. There are a few whose places in the team will be under threat. I can see Ronnie Edwards, Wee Man, Caspar Jander, and Cameron Archer being the most likely to drop out, either due to tactical reshuffles or being a bit shite at Ashton Gate.

In the event, for some reason Josh Quarshie is recalled for THB and the illness in the camp has also affected Flynn Downes because of course, if there’s anything going around, Flynn is Patient Zero and the one who will donate his body to science so experts can cure every ailment known to man. Azaz and Charles are therefore in midfield and Archer given yet another chance to contribute anything up front.

The remodeled Saints start well and put together a move on the right-hand side that involves Azaz a couple of times, Armstrong, and Roerslev and ends with Arma putting a lovely ball across the 6-yard line to the waiting Archer, who makes contact, but somewhat predictably, the ball doesn’t end up in the net and instead ends up with the goalkeeper lying on top of it. A reminder of where we are and what it’s like here is next as Blackburn win a corner on our left and standard Ewood Park conditions play huge part as the corner comes and is blown towards goal, curls over McCarthy, hits the bar and away.

As is the norm these days, Saints are comfortably looking like the better aside with Armstrong breaking through midfield and finding Scienza on the left and his curled effort goes wide of the far post. We almost look, dare I say it, dynamic in attack.

Cameron Archer is doing his best to set up chances but unfortunately he’s doing it at the wrong end with a crap touch, losing it and allowing Blackburn to break on us which they do down the left and the De Neve’s low crosses met in the middle by Ohashi, who puts it over the bar.

It’s all a bit scrappy and Josh Q chips the ball forward and it’s headed back towards Manning who stabs it forward again and then two Blackburn players obligingly tackle each other and suddenly Leo Scienza is running in on goal from the left. A quick ball roll to sit the keeper down and he fires it into the far side of the net. Brilliant finish from a quality player. Surely this is the game that we don’t fuck it up.

However, first we have to do what we always do when we go in front and be absolute shit for five minutes. Blackburn pick it up in between our midfield and defence and Ohashi has a pop and McCarthy does well to push away. Ohashi is not having a great time and after a clash with Edwards, he is patched up and ends up with what looks like a black condom on his head.

Half time and if we can’t beat these, we might as well pack up and go home. It’s been a half very short on quality with only the occasional pass from Azaz at the general excellence of Scienza standing out in amongst lots of pretty aimless hoofing the ball up the pitch.

However, the second half starts with a big booming hoof into the box by Roerslev and Nathan Wood is up there and knocks it down from Ronnie Edwards to ram it into the net. Not too much excitement because the flag is already gone up but when you see the replay, you see the Wood was not offside and nor was Edwards after he knocked it down , so that’s a fuck up by the linesman. Of course we get the one that ignores the directive about leaving your flag down as long as possible and has a hair trigger flag.

The game is opening up now and at the other end a good 1-2 down the left and Blackburn are in and de Neve’s low cross is met by Condomhead but McCarthy spreads himself to pull off another good save. Despite being ahead, it doesn’t feel like we’re in any sort of control anymore and there is always the unpredictability that Josh Q brings to the proceedings and it’s time for the Josh Q show, as under no pressure, he plays a big left footed swinging air shot. Ronnie Edwards covers across to dig Josh out of the shit and Josh clumsily runs into him and takes him out to put Mirashita clean through on goal with McCarthy to beat and he live upto his name and shits himself and puts it well wide as the keeper comes out. Macca is busy again after more good play down the left by de Neve, and his cross is accidentally prodded goalwards by Ronnie Edwards and McCarthy again makes a very good save.

The corner goes over everybody and Saints win the ball and we have a four on two break with Scienza leading the charge with Archer and Armstrong up with him. He uses Archer as a decoy, which is definitely the best used for him and slots it through superbly for Armstrong with just to keeper to beat and he tries the dink finish again, but from much further out then on Tuesday, and the keeper makes a comfortable safe and even if it had gone past him there was defender on the line. Bad choice and bad execution, I’m afraid.

Archer then contributes something and goes down with an injury and is not replaced with a striker and instead, it’s Wee man on the right with Arma moving into the middle. Some good defensive awareness by Roerslev stops a Blackburn attack and once again we’re away this time with Roerslev on the left and he finds Azaz on the right but the former Middlesbrough man is still waiting for his first goal or assist and puts the shot high and wide

Azaz has been relatively decent in central midfield and has got a few tackles in. He wins the ball off of Blackburn’s shit right back and bursts forward before playing a superb defence splitting pass through to Armstrong who is clean through on goal, and he bears down on the goalkeeper and he he tries something different and tries to slot it under him and it hits the keepers foot and bounces off the post.

With the game becoming stretched, Still decides and needs to make a change but fuck me what is this? Off goes Leo Scienza who has been by far our best player, and he is replaced with Jack Stephens who I assume is going to go into midfield with Azaz going wide left. That’s fucking mental on the face of it.

Stephens is immediately lumbering around looking totally lost in his position as Blackburn build up down the right and under no pressure, a scuffed cross comes in from the shit right back and everybody misses it and bounces past McCarthy into the middle of the goal. Fucking hell. Off he goes to the corner to celebrate with the few Blackburn fans, like he fucking meant it.

Things go from bad to worse when Charles goes for a run down the left and pulls a hamstring, which precipitates a slew of substitutions with Charles, Ryan Manning and Ronnie Edwards coming off to be replaced by Welington, Jay Robinson and Cam Bragg, wearing the blood replacement shirt which of course has no name or number on it. Amateur hour. It looks like we’ve gone to a back four but it’s kind of hard to tell because no one seems to know where they should be and it’s an utter shambles. It’s really hard to put a finger on where Jack Stephens is actually playing though it does look like he is still plodding around in midfield.

In comes a cross and complete carnage as the ball hits Bragg and bounces down and gets smashed at McCarthy who blocks but Gudjohnsen follows into into the net. Honestly, we are fucking shambolic and not a serious football team.

With frustration boiling over, Welington smashes into a header in the middle of the park, with his elbow raised and leaves Gudjohnsen on the deck and Bobby Madley is stood right next to it and out comes the red card. Hard to argue really.

Jesus Fucking Christ. What have I just witnessed. The first half was one of the worst quality halves of football I can remember witnessing and you have to remember, we have witnessed some absolute shit at the last few seasons but usually, at least the opposition are decent. Blackburn were absolutely fucking dreadful and we were not much better, but we just had one player with a bit of quality as illustrated by the excellent finish by Leo Scienza.

In the second half, of course we should put the game to bed. Adam Armstrong is put clean through twice, tries another chipped effort which this time, given the defenders behind the goalkeeper, was never going to work and on the second one, hitting the post. Then came the Will Still show, taking off our best player Leo Scienza in order to put Jack Stephens in midfield and we immediately went to shit, conceding from a cross when Josh Q dummied his own goalkeeper after Charles and Manning had let a simple cross come in and then, after a shower of shit substitutions, we cough up a winner.

So, let us start with the substitution of all substitutions. I could maybe understand it if he thought the problem was Azaz in central midfield, but if you thought that, then why not just do a straight swap for Captain Jack but no, take off our best player and our only player who is any better than mediocre, push Azaz out of position on the left and put Stephens in midfield. This is the same Jack Stephens, who Will Still has fifth on our list of central defensive options.

So, the manager thinks he’s shit in his preferred position, and he must think he’s pretty shit to have him behind the other four in the pecking order, yet despite thinking he’s shit, he thinks he’s the answer in midfield. Jack Stephens was so shit in midfield that Still eventually had to bolster it with Cameron Bragg, who was only added to the squad of the last second and was clearly never meant to play because he didn’t even have a number on his shirt, which is something that made us look incredibly tin pot and embarrassing, especially given that we knew we had some illness in the camp and we have Joe Aribo and Kuryu Matsuki sat at home. Blackburn equalised soon after that first abortion of a substitution when the right back, who was absolutely fucking shocking, scoring with a cross that he scuffed and unfortunately, Bragg was involved in the clusterfuck that led to the winning goal for Gudjohnsen, a player who hasn’t scored all season. Have no fear, you haven’t won at home all season your centre forward hasn’t score all season, here come Southampton.

The only way we were ever going win that game in the second half was by scoring a second goal and yet our manager decides to take off our one good attacking player and try and defend our 1-0 lead. Using Stephens in midfield just made me want to know why the fuck Joe Aribo, is not being picked when he is still a Southampton player and still at the club. Is it some sort of ploy from the board to freeze him out to make him move in January? If it is then we are just choosing to punch ourselves in the bollocks. Who do you think is going to play better in central midfield in a championship game? Joe Aribo, a kid out of the under 21s who has not been near the squad all season, or Jack fucking Stephens?

Another marvellous substitution came earlier, when the mainly useless Cameron Archer was substituted and Ryan Fraser came on to produce the square root of fuck all. He didn’t beat a player all game and didn’t get any crosses in. That sub also moved Adam Armstrong into the middle so he could miss chances from a different angle. Nick Oyekunle was right there and would undoubtedly have had a better chance of giving us that second goal which as I said, was the only way we were going to win the game. I know I’m contradicting my Aribo argument a bit there but this is a kid who is scoring goals for fun for the Under-21s and at 1-0 up, that was the call to make.

In the end, of course, we lose the game. Josh Q, recalled to the defence by Still for no readily apparent reason, spent the second half playing like someone who was not fully in control of his legs. Good defending is about consistency but with Josh, you can never tell if he’s gonna clear the ball, or play a big fucking air shot, crash into a fellow defender, or do what he did on the equalising goal which is basically dummy his own goalkeeper. He could’ve cleared it and he went to clear it but he stopped going for it like he’s got a call from his goalkeeper who is never going to make a call for the ball in that situation. Manning and Charles didn’t cover themselves in glory on that goal either in fairness. Josh always struggles with committing to a header or a challenge and it seems to me that he’s always second guessing himself. Basically, he’s not good enough at the moment. He might be good enough in the future but he is not the required level at the moment and he should never have played, especially because THB was no worse than the other two central defenders on Tuesday and because he can comfortably play on the left-hand side, which Josh cannot, as he struggles enough as it is without playing on his wrong side.

Josh Q’s struggles this season point to a bigger picture. Bristol City manager Gerhard Struber, who won Bundesliga 2 with Koln last season, mantioned during the week that the Championship was a miles better league than Bundesliga 2 – you would have thought Johannes Spors would have know that and therefore the striker and defender that we prioritised from the start of pre-season, would maybe not have come from there. My guess is that Spors underestimated the Championship.

To Josh’s left, Ryan Manning continued his recent trend of just being a prick. Too busy fucking about, not interested in defending, only interested in throwing himself on the ground, arguing with officials, arguing with opposition players, giving away stupid pointless fucking fouls when the player is not going anywhere and generally trying to be a shithouse. Great performance Ryan. He could be a half decent player if he concentrated on doing th basics and not being a prick. Shame that we’ve got to keep him in the team the next few weeks because Welington managed to get himself sent off for flying into a header with his elbow raised. I don’t think he actually made contact with the striker but it looked like the intent was there and the striker made a meal of it. He gave Bobby Madley the chance to make a decision and I’m the first to slaughter Bobby Madley usually but I can’t really complain about that. He might get away with it on appeal if he didn’t make contact with the players head but I doubt it.

Will Still is in desperate trouble now after two pretty pathetic defeats in a week. He gives the impression of a man who really is not sure about what he’s doing. The mad gambles he seems to make with substitutions in every game are a massive concern. He ended up trying to correct his own shit substitutions at Derby a few weeks ago and today’s substitution, which had no logic about it, was just a wild punt and it didn’t work. When you make wild punt substitutions and it works, it will be regarded as inspirational but if it doesn’t work, you are going to get absolutely fucking battered for it and he deserves it as it was entirely predictable. We were winning at that point as well – why not make a straight swap? Still always seems to move other players around when he brings on a sub. Fine if you are losing and it’s not going well but we were still winning.

Aside from anything else tactical, the Scienza/Stephens substitution absolutely killed the away fans who had travelled all that way in shit conditions. Scienza is our one player who gives our fans any hope at the moment and you take him off. A pattern is also emerging that opposition managers suss us out in the first half of games and then make changes that win the game for them whilst Still makes his wild punts. You could easily argue that the substitutions were contributary factory to both goals. It’s the right back who scores, the one who no longer had Scienza to worry about and the second goal came after the reshuffle in the defence and Cam Bragg finding himself on the pitch when he was clearly never meant to.

The bad news keeps coming with Shea Charles having got injured as well and he will no doubt be out for a few weeks now, so if there is any clash between the manager and Flynn Downes (and I suspect there is), it needs to be sorted for next week and if Flynn could just refrain from being ill for a week, that would also be good. Last time in the Championship, we couldn’t win a game when Flynn didn’t play and this season is more or less proving to be exactly the same.

Tune in next week for the latest installment of the Season 25/26 shitshow when we take on Preston North End at St Mary’s.