Fifty years ago we embarked on an FA Cup run which ultimately led to us winning the whole damn thing at Wembley Stadium on May 1^st 1976.  I was 7, you do the maths.  With us being a Second Division side now and our away kit being yellow and blue (ish), I see no reason to doubt that come May, we won’t be celebrating lifting the FA Cup again.

Meanwhile, back on this planet, with the way that football in this country has evolved over the last fifty years, we, nor any other Second Division club has any chance at all of winning it. The last win from outside the top flight was by West Ham in 1980 and us in 1976 was the last time before.  Still, The Magic of the FA Cup…

Fifty years ago, we were drawn at home to First Division Aston Villa and drew 1-1, with an equaliser by Hugh Fisher in the last minute to send it to a replay at Villa Park, which we won.  No replays these days of course because there’s not enough midweek slots left in the calendar, now that the European competitions have got so over-inflated.  

Another thing that’s changed is the prestige of the competition and how important is for various clubs.  The big boys would rather finish 4^th in the league than win it, the rest will place more importance on staying up and promotion chasers in the Championship, League 1 or League 2 will put out makeshift sides because there’s not much chance of getting a big pay day from a tie against the big boys, even less now that replays have gone.  It used to be ‘the’ competition and no matter how much the TV companies love to spin ‘The Magic of the Cup’, they ‘d rather be showing a Manchester United v Tottenham league game.

Anyway, none of that is the concern of Doncaster and Saints today, apart from maybe which players to rest.  Saints should probably use it to play the side that Tonda Eckert wants to play in the next league game.  It should be 4-2-3-1 and the likes of THB, Downes, Fellows, Azaz, Scienza and Armstrong should all be there.  I bet that doesn’t happen though as Tonda’s spreadsheet will be telling him to rest players all over the shop.  Doncaster will hopefully find a place in their line-up for Billy Sharp, who even though he turns 40 in less than a month, should be relishing playing against Saints defence.

I feel that the pasting we got at Middlesbrough was a bit of a tipping point with fans.  Put it this way, the approval rating of Tonda Eckert is firmly heading south as he looks more and more like a rabbit in the headlights with each passing game.  He needs to win this game and he needs to follow it up with a win in the league in the next game at St.Mary’s versus Hull. 

There’s been a few other bits of news this week, some for the present day and one for the past. Daniel Peretz signed on the dotted line for the rest of the season on loan from Bayern Munich, with the task of proving that he’s a better goalkeeper than what we currently have. If he can’t do that then we will be in trouble but at least everyone has to be congratulated on recognizing our most pressing problem and attempting to deal with it. A better keeper will hopefully move the backline up a few yards, which will have the knock on effect of closing up the spaces between defence and midfield and hopefully mean that the midfield will have a little less ground to cover. If Peretz can dominate even the 6-yard box it will make the defending of set pieces that much easier. It’s a gamble in that he isn’t playing at the moment, but signing a goalkeeper from Bayern Munich on a 6 month loan is not really a gamble at all when you consider how much we’ve stuggled with keepers this season. Surely he has to be an upgrade. As a sidenote it’s interesting to note that Tonda’s main decision regarding players since he became manager was to put Gavin Bazunu back in goal. That decision has proved to be so bad that we have broken the habit of a lifetime and signed a replacement at the start of the transfer window, instead of on a deal sheet in February.

We’ve had a couple of players leave as well. We might have acknowledged the need for a new goalkeeper very early in the transfer window but not as quick as we acknowledged the need to get rid of one of our main signings from the summer, with Damion Downs heading out on loan to Hamburger SV for the rest of the season. It’s another case of failing upwards because we signed him from a Bundesliga 2 club, he’s come to us for half a season and done absolutely fuck all, and he’s got a move to the top league in Germany. The writing was on the wall from the moment he missed the open goal from one yard against Wrexham and then showed his consistency by falling over the ball one yard out against Northampton. He might come back one day but if he doesn’t, he would have had a better career at Saints if he had never set foot on the pitch worse than Ben Brereton Diaz is not something I ever thought I would ever be saying about a Saints striker.

On Friday we had a player leaving and we need to talk about Ronnie Edwards because Saints have accepted a £4.5 million pounds offer from QPR and he’s gone. I’m struggling to summarise what I think about this in a few words so for now I will go with “ This is absolutely fucking stupid“.

Let me tell you how this is going to play out. THB will leave in the summer, probably for about £10 million and then we will be looking for a replacement who will cost us considerably more than £4.5 million and probably on bigger wages, unless it’s another mad 100-1 shot from somewhere in the lesser Bundesliga. Ronnie has a higher ceiling as a player than probably any of our central defenders bar THB and having scouted him when he was a raw talent at Peterborough, we are going to give up on that because we have taken the football opinion of either Will Still or Tonda Eckert. Two 32 year-old managers who have so far not proven that they know their arse from their elbow.

It’s not as if a club has come in and offered us £15 million for him. I can only speculate at the cost of Jack Stephens three year contract that he got at the start of the season but this seems like a muddled thinking at the very very least. Ronnie struggled this season in one game in particular, against the behemoth that is Kiefer Moore, mainly because Still didn’t have it about him tactically to instruct Josh Q to follow the Wrexham striker around. In addition to this we are selling him to a team in the same division, which seems absolutely absurd. I guess that from Ronnie‘s point of view, he would probably be better off getting away from this shit show and going somewhere where he will be appreciated even though it’s a different manager at QPR from when he was there on loan. Good luck to him.

Some sad news incoming was the announcement of the death of Martin Chivers. He was more of my dad’s generation than mine as he moved from Saints to Spurs in the year that I was born. Saints have hardly registered in the articles relating to his death of course, despite Martin being born in Southampton and scoring 106 goals for us and being part of the side promoted to Division 1 in 1966. Same as it ever was – Saints develop the player and then they leave to go to one of the big boys and it gets forgotten where they came from. To be fair, he scored 174 goals for Spurs and went on to represent England 24 times, scoring 13 goals. His England career ended in 1973 after the infamous Jan Tomaszewski World Cup qualifier draw with Poland which meant England failed to qualify for World Cup 1974. In that Poland game, he played alongside his replacement at The Dell, a youngster who later played in the 1976 FA Cup Final and he wasn’t a bad player. His name was Mick Channon.

Channon was part of the publicity around the release of the commemorative 1976 shirt which will be worn by the players today. We’ve made about £120 profit from the sale of Ronnie Edwards, which is the cost of the new shirt – roughly double the normal price. It’s not been a great week for PR from the club.

Team news and it look like a back four on papaer, though there is a way for it not to be so if Tonda plays Jelert on the left. In the event though, it is a back four of Jelert, THB. Josh Q and Welington – with Downes and Bragg in front of them, with Fellows, Matsuki and Robinson in behind Archer. I’m somewhat beffled by Oriol Romeu not being there. Tonda says he needs minutes yet he’s not even on the bench, so there’s some bullshit going on here.

Away we go and to be honest, Donny don’t look very good, with us looking much the sharper. Downes wins the ball in midfield and to allow Bragg to run towards the edge of the box. He plays it left to Matsuki, who shoots and it’s half-blocked and saved by the keeper and Bragg follows in to run the rebound into the net. 1-0. Great fucking start. Get in. Wembley here we come. Get some more £120 shirts printed up.

Downes then intercepts and plays the ball into Archer and Pearson absolutely trashes through the back of him but the referee doesn’t give it. He’s not playing advantage because Archer is flat on his arse but with Pearson hanging about on the floor with some imaginary injury, Archer is up and plays on for and hits a shot, which deflects off a defender in loops over the top of the goalkeeper and into the net. Lovely… 2-0. Ker-fucking-ching in the club shop.

Josh Q has been decent so far in the back four and he takes him time and floats a ball over the top for Archer who is clean through from the angle and it’s a decent effort but the keeper sticks out a foot to save well.

Doncaster’s best way back into this looks like set pieces and they win a free kick about 30 yards out after a Downes foul, and Gibson sends it towards to top corner and Peretz flies to his left and pushes it out of the top corner. It’s not right int he corner but a good save that.

Donny’s brief flurry is snuffed out soon after as Archer finds Matsuki in midfield and he spreads it wide to Fellows. Fellows lines up the left back beats him easily and chips it back into the middle and there is the leaping Matsuki to head back to where it came from, over the top of the goalkeeper and into the net for three. Brilliant goal.

Half time and this should be completely done but I don’t know what Eckert said during the break, but whatever it was has resulted in Doncaster pressure and winning a disputeable corner off of Jelert. In it comes and Peretz is nowhere as it’s headed into the net by Pearson from about 2 yards. Bollocks. Pearson is being marked by Jelert – all 5 foot 3 of him.

We’ve gone to shit now and Doncaster have worked out that just putting the ball in the mixer causes absoloute havoc. In come a cross from our right wing and it’s nodded down unchallenged and Okoronkwo slices wide from about 6 yards. OPut the yellow shirt order on ice.

And with that, we completely doze off again as Donny take a throw on the right to a player who has four of ours in attendance and no one doing anything, and they work it across to the other side courtesy of another unchallenged players and there is Gibson is all on his own on the left to smash it past Peretz at his near post. Shite.

Tonda gets all procative at this point (or maybe he shits himself) and Jelert and Robinson are off to be replaced by Wood and Scienza and we’ve gone to the default three at the back. Immediately we look better due to Scienza carrying the fight back to them and the ref needs to get to grips now with Doncaster sticking the foot in as Leo gets binned by the agricultural Pearson. Leo’s free-kick is acrobatically tipped away by the keeper, who could have left it as it was going a yard wide.

Archer and Bragg are replaced by Stewart and Jander. Bragg is all over the place, courtesy of a ridiculous challenge from Gibson who steams into a header with full force as Bragg jumps vertically. Not much intent to play the ball there and in a VAR-World, I feel that would have been interesting. Stewart adds energy straight away and chases down a ball back to the keeper, who takes to long and batters it gainst Ross’ foot and it loops about a yard wide. Lucky bastard keeper.

More Donny pressure as we get into the seven additional minutes. The corners are causing absolute havoc as per usual and Johnson gets on at the end of another one that is half cleared and lashes an effort over the bar.

We get to 96 minutes and Peretz comes steaming out to claim a cross and drops it and more carnage and another corner. In to the mixer and again we don’t get the first knock as it’s headed goalward and pushed away by Peretz and we don’t get to the rebound either which is headed at goal again by Sharp and Peretz has to save it with his other hand. Fucking ridiculous how hard we’re making this but the ref’s had enough so we’re through..

Well that was a proverbial game of two halves and a throwback to interim Tonda, when we blew teams away in the first half and were absolutely fucking shit in the second half. I’m beginning to wonder what on earth he says to them because unless he says “stop running, stop competing and everything will be fine“ then they are not following instructions. It looks luck they all tuck into an ‘all you can eat’ buffet or something. No half decent team allows a team from the bottom of League 1 to get back into the game from 3-0 down, but the way that second half played out, it was entirely feasible that Doncaster scored a third, though we did wrestle back some control after they got their second until the last few minutes of course, when it was absolute fucking carnage.

All eyes were on Daniel Peretz this afternoon I think that on balance, he comes out in credit. The one black mark was obviously the first goal which was headed in from about 3 yards out. He managed to get himself too close to the near post and when he tried to back track he got blocked off by a Doncaster player who had every right to be standing there. Other than that, he was decisive with when he came for crosses and he swept up well behind the defence, as well as looking assured with his feet. He made a really good save from the free kick in the first half and the double save at the end, though neither of them will particularly difficult, is what his performance will be remembered for and was what ultimately got us over the line.

We finally went with a 4-2-3-1 formation and in the first half of course it looked absolutely superb, with Fellows being freed from his defensive obligations as a wing-back and combining particularly well with Matsuki, who is beginning to look like a very interesting option going forward. He has to stop the stupid dissent that he seems to get booked for every time he plays, but it was a good performance by him, playing a major part in the first and of course the third goal which he took well, with an excellent header having played the initial pass out to Fellows on the right wing.

I felt that we lost control in the second half because of a general malaise but also because of the two in midfield. We set up with Bragg being instructed to get ahead of Downes, but we have to rein that end when we’re under a bit of pressure, like we were always going to be at the start of the second half. Another set piece goal from a corner where yes, the keeper doesn’t cover himself in glory but if you freeze-frame it, we have NINE outfield players in the 6 yard box (Jelert is hidden, J-Rob was on the penalty spot) and none of them do anything. Also, we have their massive centre back being marked by Jelert – what the fuck are we doing? This blocking with small guys bullshit is not working – so why not simplify it and just have our big guys marking their big guys. Also, less bodies in there = more space for the keeper to come for it or for the centre backs to attack the ball. What harm can it do?

How manay players can you fit in a 6 yard box?

The back four of course got binned off when Doncaster got their second goal and to be fair, it did allow us to get back some control over the game so how much of that was the formation change and how much of that was having Scienza on the pitch to make Doncaster concerned about our attack again.

The back four looks pretty solid in the first half with THB and Josh Q in the middle, flanked by Welington and Jelert. I do like Welington defensively because he just commits to everything and he might not get there all the time but at least he’s trying to defend it he looks like he’s interested in defending . Josh Q looked much better in a two then he does in a 3

Though it was only a cameo, I was quite impressed with Ross Stewart’s contribution, especially as hold-up play and ability to knock the ball off to other players in the same coloured shirt. Every time I see him play for any length of time I find myself thinking ‘what if’. What if he had stayed fit? I certainly think we would be much higher up the league this season but he is what he is and we just have to make the most of any time he is actually able to play..

Jay Robinson faded badly in the second half out on the left. He showed all his usual traits of holding onto the ball too long and never knowing when to release it. That will come with experience though. Some defensive nous will hopefully come too, because he is a prime candidate to lose his player in virtually every situation.

So, Tonda got away with it. Hopefully he’s seen enough to know that we can go with a back four and it does give us lots of attacking options, and he can drop this bullshit that he came out with about losing some attacking threat unless we play with the back three. I will give him credit though for changing the formation when the game threatened to get away from us because it worked and it was proved right to go back to central defensive three in the second half. He has to realise that he can do it the other way as well and change to a flat back four when we are struggling to score, which is something he has not grasped in any of the previous games that we’ve had. There are two ways you can look at it. He either panicked and went to his default formation, or he made a positive change and the end justified the means. These are the sort of decisions he needs to make on a regular basis and not just stand there with his hands in his pockets staring into the middle disatance and then making like for like substitutions and thinking we are suddenly going to get better outcomes.

So, through to the 4th Round we go and I expect the club hope that we’re away from home and playing in yellow, so we can flog a few more £120 shirts. On to Hull at home next Saturday to see if Tonda has his big boy pants on for a league game.