Having won four home games in a row, we couldn’t have much more motivation to make it five than the identity of today’s opponents who don’t have to travel very far to get here. Yep, our friendly neighbourhood Skates are in town. As far as the fans are concerned, this will be a game where as is usual these days, there will be no contact, with those of a blue persuasion being herded around in their bubble, straight into a compound behind the Chapel / Kingsland corner of the ground.

Them down the road currently sit 19th in the table on eight points, just the two behind us with our deduction, though they do have a game in hand. Two wins, two draws and three defeats means they are following more or less the pattern of last season of being very very average and on course, as usual, to spend the vast majority of the season just above the relegation zone and just above it will be where they will inevitably finish – the turd that won’t flush. It might look like they’re going to go down or that they might get dragged into it at various points of the season, but they never fucking do and always win a couple of home games towards the end of the season when there’s always a couple of teams who turn up at Fratton Park and don’t fancy it. These wins tend to keep them out of trouble.

With many things being the same as they were last season, one thing that is surprisingly the same is that John Mousinho is still in charge, as he looked to have reached the end of his rope at various times at the tail end of last season and it was widely expected that he’d depart in the summer but for whatever reason it didn’t happen. The truth probably is that he has taken them as far as he can go, but just couldn’t snag himself a better job.

By their standards they have actually backed him and spent a bit of money this summer with Marco Millovanovic, Abu Kamara , Tyrese Shade and Rocco Shein all arriving for around the £2 million to £2.5 million mark. One familiar name in their ranks this season is Jaden Meghoma, who of course left us for Brentford and has now arrived at Fratton Park on loan for the season. Let’s hope that he still plays at left back and has not learned how to defend. My abiding memory of him is being really good going forward and spending most of the game chasing back to get goal-side of the winger who had already beaten him.

Saints of course had seen the buildup to the game disrupted by the interminable wait for the FA to make their fucking mind up… and then they did. Well, fair play, I got this one spectacularly wrong. After the summer verdict, the endless outrage, and a national media campaign that made it sound like Eckert and Phil Parsons were going to be the inspiration to Guy Ritchie’s next gangster series, I was fully expecting the FA to launch Tonda directly into the sea, or at the very least, ban him for long enough that we had to fire him. Instead, what we’ve got is a punishment that is actually pretty consistent with previous cases. Strip away all the hysteria and social media pearl-clutching and it turns out the rulebook hasn’t been rewritten after all. Tonda’s fine works out at roughly £10,000 per offence, Bielsa got £200,000 for a season’s worth of spying. A £28k fine and a suspended 6-week total football ban is the verdict. The FA wanted more but the independent commission thought otherwise. The saga is over. It’s amazing what happens when process is followed and the independent commission is truly independent.

To be honest, this feels like common sense prevailing. The purpose of any punishment is pretty straightforward. Punish the wrongdoing, stop the person doing it again, and send a message to everyone else. Job done. They’ve taken into account the punishment already handed down by the EFL – the suspended ban means Tonda knows he can’t get his binoculars out again and I can’t see any manager looking at everything that he and the club have gone through over the last few months and thinking, “Yeah, that’s worth it”.

The bottom line is though, he’s still a very lucky boy. What annoys me most when I think about the whole shitshow is what was taken away from supporters. Saints fans don’t get many occasions like Wembley, promotion chances, huge games and a chance of those massive moments that live with you forever. There was absolutely no need to put all of that at risk. Dragan’s decision to stand by him was a huge gamble, giving the FA the opportunity to piss all over his chips, but in the end it’s worked out. I also enjoyed the dig at the EFL process in the club statement. Even in victory, Dragan is still swinging.

Social media is a funny thing – I get how it works and that it’s basically a race for clicks, and I know that I’ll probably be accused of being a miserable git, but I can’t get on board with the triumphalism. Man is allowed to keep job after breaking rules and robbing fans of a huge game at Wembley and the chance of getting promoted. As for Tonda, there’s a pretty simple way to make this right. Get us promoted – he owes us that.

The biggest positive is that the whole thing is finished. Done. Over. Filed away. No appeal. No fresh hearing popping up in April – unless Steve Gibson gets ideas. No more uncertainty hanging over the club. The Skates had spent the last few weeks convincing themselves this was somehow going to derail our season and hand them a psychological edge on Sunday. Unfortunately for them, that’s gone now as well and if anything, the exact opposite has happened. Saints have had a lift and a cloud has been removed.

So after months of being told Eckert will be gone, we’re left with a punishment that feels entirely reasonable, a manager still in place, and a promotion race to focus on. Debate will rage as to whether it’s soft or not but we should not concern ourselves with what others think – the debate is pointless now though it’ll be interesting to see how the Middlesbrough fans who wanted a dead body and a chalk outline will deal with this. At this stage it’s nothing to do with them and no Middlesbrough opinion matters. It stopped being about them the moment they got put into the playoff final. We weren’t the reason they didn’t get promoted – they did that themselves.

So, not quite the crime of the century after all and despite the verdict being released, we are not the main story these days – that of course is the Manchester City case. Our three games of offences is considerably less than their ten years. I’m still waiting for Manchester City to get kicked out of last season‘s FA Cup to allow Saints to play Chelsea in the final. John Mousinho made a comment about Spygate when he said that if anyone wants to watch his team train, all they have to do is rock up and buy a coffee, or words to that effect, essentially minimising the whole thing. Their keyboard warriors are almost as bad as Boro fans for pearl-clutching, yet stay remarkably quiet when their touchline mutants are attacking opposition players with fists or spitting at them as they run down the wing at Fratton Park.

Anyway, the international break has been the predictable bollocks that it always is with both Daniel Peretz and Cyle Larin reporting minor injuries. First though the positives – Kuryu Matsuki has started his Japanese International career in fine fashion and is now looking likely to be selected for the Asia Cup which, with Japan almost certainly going deep into the tournament, will mean that he misses five games later on in the season. It’s hard to gripe about this to be quite honest because he thoroughly deserves all the success that comes his way.

The Larin injury just seems like a muscle twinge and he should be OK, but the Peretz injury throws Aaron Ramsdale‘s name back into the mix. In the normal scheme of things you would expect your number 2 keeper to play but if Aaron Ramsdale is available and you play George Long, in a game against this lot – and then Long fucks up, then you are laying yourself open to get absolutely fucking slaughtered in a way that will make any punishment from the FA seem like child’s play.

For what it’s worth, I think the situation we have with the goalkeeping unit this season is perfectly simple. Daniel Peretz is clearly the number 1, George Long is the number 2 and Jamie Jones is the number 3. The number 2 goalkeeper has the role of sitting on the bench and playing in an absolute red card / injury emergency. The number 3 goalkeeper is there to help with the warm-ups and that’s it. We also have Aaron Ramsdale who is of course, a number 1 goalkeeper, so I cannot imagine for a minute that he won’t be starting the game against the Skates, should Peretz be injured and the number 2 and number 3 stay exactly where they were and do exactly what they were brought to the club to do. No one will be expecting George Long to play – not George himself, none of the fans, his mum and dad, his wife and kids. You have a choice between picking Aaron Ramsdale and George Long for a huge game that you cannot lose through doing something stupid. No one picks George Long unless they’re from a PO postcode. They have keeper selection issues of their own – why give us the same?

Last year of course, this game was fucking tedious as Mousinho sent his team out to waste time from the first whistle and we’re allowed to do it by a referee, who then stopped the game approximately every thirty seconds. The biggest pisser about the whole game was the fact that we went into it with Will Still in charge, and though we didn’t lose, it was one of the games that made me severely worried about which way we were going under him. We were tentative and no one wanted to put their hand up and be the hero. We stood off and allowed them to walk to half-way before engaging. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since that game of course and it’s all the water (and shit) that went on at the end of the season and the subsequent FA investigation which has meant that I haven’t really given that lot from down the road too much of a thought this season. They are what they usually are and we need to fucking win this one, especially given our last performance, which was the abject defeat at Wrexham.

This game is of course about much more than the three points at stake. This game is everything to the supporters of both clubs and after last year’s two draws kicked the can down the road for a year, fans of both sides will be even more desperate to get the three points today. Neither team has won a league game against the other since the 2004/2005 season. We have to get the win and send them back home in their own miserable bubble. You put their eleven players in another teams shirt and we beat them comfortably, so we have to play the players in front of us and not the occasion.

The fan experience inside and outside at St Mary’s for derby games is so different to what it was. Even back in 2004 I recall strolling through mounted police on my way to the game and my eyes darting right and left for any sight of opposition fans. There was an edge and a sense of danger. It was never ‘getting pelted with bricks walking down Goldsmith Avenue’ danger but there was a definite feeling that transmitted to heightened tensions inside the ground. There’s none of that now and that should maybe allow us to have a better chance of just concentrating on the game.

As I said, part of the problem last year was that we played with fear. There should be none of that this year. I expect JWP and Flynn Downes to be in their faces and if our forward line fires then we will be in for a great Sunday lunchtime. Leo Scienza will be all over this. He will want to be the hero and it’s the kind of stage he loves and he prioritises fan reaction to him above nearly everything and he will know that there’s no better game to perform in than this one (apart from maybe the away game). As long as Azaz and Larin come back fully healthy from international duty then we can look forward to this with confidence.

It’s a game of course where legends are made. Mention the name ‘Steve Moran’ and what goal do you think of? More recently, Danny Ings scored quite a few goals for Saints and you can recall a fair few of them – what two do you think about straight away? Yep, the knee-slides. In recent-ish times, James Beattie, Marian Pahars, Matt Oakley, Peter Crouch, Kevin Phillips, Nathan Redmond, Jim Magilton, Neil Shipperley and even players like Dexter Blackstock and bloody Cedric are a fond memory for goals in wins in this fixture. At the end of a bit of week for Tonda Eckert, he should be looking to cash in and be mentioned in the same breath as Lawrie McMenemy, Gordon Strachan and…. erm… Steve Wigley as Saints managers who have won this fixture. We had another manager who won one as well but he can go fuck himself.

Tonda got through his press duties for the game and after all the FA verdict questions, we got down to the important stuff about the game. It looks like both Peretz and Larin will be fit, which saves everyone from the Ramsdale discussion and all that’s left now is for Tonda not to overthink it (which is a danger as he’s had three weeks without a game) and send our best team out there and get the job done. Sounds easy doesn’t it? It won’t be.

There was a bit of a fear before the game that having had three weeks to think about it, in amongst all the Spygate shit, that Tonda Eckert would overthink it a little bit and when the team news drops, that appears to be the case with Cameron Bragg brought in to augment Downes and JWP in midfield and no right winger, with both Matsuki and Fellows on the bench. The other surprise is the return of Captain Jack replacing Nathan Wood. I can see the logic with having Jack in the team for this particular game but it’s a bit of a concern because he’s had a really ropey start of the season and based on performances, does not deserve to be in the side. I’m in the fan zone behind the Northam End before the game and it is absolutely mobbed. There is a really good atmosphere going on but there’s a definite feeling of slight bewilderment when the team news drops. Why have we changed the way we play for this lot? The Visitors line-up contains no real surprises. League 1/2 Colby Bishop is up front and there are places for Marlon Pack, who I know can’t run and Jaden Meghoma who I know can’t defend.

Once inside the stadium, the first thing I notice is the visitors badge being displayed in red and white on the scoreboard and the name of the opposition has been replaced with the word ‘Visitors’. It’s petty but amusing. As kick-off approaches, someone decides they are feeling brave and give Mark Dennis a microphone. It’s a fine line that Denno treads between whipping up the fans in the red and white and calling the blue-clad fans Skate Bastards but he just about manages to stay on the correct side of the line. Defend our ground, defend our city. He does love a war analogy, obviously brought on by Fratton Park 1984.

Away we go and Ryan Manning picks up the ball in the left back slot, gets his head up and pings a diagonal in to Larin, who has got goal side of Meghoma and the wrong side of Dia and his first touch to bring the ball down is brilliant but he can’t quite get enough on his left footed effort and Schmid gets out well to block it. Whilst we are always going to play the ball around at the back to try and work an opening, it shows that there is no harm in going long at times because the visitors central defenders are not going to be able to handle Larin and there’s a nice comforting feeling that Meghoma is still a shit defender.

Saints cough up possession and the Visitors play the ball out down our right and Shade has the ball and holds it up long enough for Meghoma to join him but the former Saints youngster has no idea of what to do really and limply drills the ball straight at Peretz and no danger. On target effort though.

Meghoma clearly fancies this now though and he plays a 1-2 and works his way into the penalty area again but with two players in the middle he shows an amazing lack of composure to blaze it over the bar and into Row Z. That’s really shit. It does however highlight that we have a few problems in wide areas, especially down that side where we have no right winger. JWP is the furthest right of the midfield three but he is not getting the ball when we’ve got it and he’s being bypassed quite easily when they’ve got it. Tactical adjustment needed I think.

There’s a long ball forward by some random Skate and it runs through to Peretz on the edge of the box but there seems to be a bit of a miscommunication with Stephens so he ends up heading it. The ball finds Schlotterbeck who plays it through to Azaz on the left-hand side and Swanson lets him wander infield and get his head up and he chips a lovely ball over the top of Meghoma to the arriving Bree, who takes a touch across the defender and then with his left foot passes the bouncing ball around Schmid and in off the post. Absolutely brilliant finish and fucking have that you bastards. Bree is over in the corner by the Visitors fans giving it fucking loads it’s beautiful to see and absolute limbs everywhere. I cannot stress how good a finish that is. It’s a brilliant goal all round, drag the defence over one side and then chip the ball over the other, behind the left back who cannot defend.

It gets a bit feisty straight after that and the first yellow card is not long in coming as Manning takes a slightly risky throwing across the pitch and Bragg turns into trouble, Adams next ball off him and Bragg brings him down. The dickheads want a red, despite a defender being directly inbetween the foul and the goal. They are however, getting in down the sides a little bit too easily and Shade gets in behind Bree and hits a first time cross which falls to Kavuma-McQueen on the edge of the box but his first touch is absolutely rotten and the chance disappears. These are all formation induced problems that we have brought on ourselves.

And then a rarity, a booking at a corner as whilst Manning is waiting inside the box for JWP’s delivery, Adams just throws Manning to the ground and sees yellow. He’s turning into a bit of a panto villian – scores with his arm at Fratton, trying to get Braggy sent off and then chucking our players around at a corner. Dick.

And then disaster. We try and play the ball out from the back and it’s out to Bree on the right, infield to Bragg, who once again turns into trouble and gets his pocket picked by Adams and Bragg pulls him back and down he goes. We all know what’s coming and Adam Herczeg has absolutely no option but to dish out a second yellow card and fuck. 40 minutes gone and down to 10 men. There is a distinct lack of composure in our ranks as the free-kick gets tapped short and crossed in and Bishop has a free header from 6 yards and heads it down towards the post, but Peretz keeps it out easily enough… fuck sake. More pressure and Kavuma-McQueen takes aim from the edge of the box but this one’s a couple of feet wide.

Half-time and great to be ahead obviously but fucking hell, have we made this hard for ourselves now. I think we can quite safely call Cameron Bragg a selection gamble that didn’t pay off. More on that later, but for now we have to adapt. We have basically given them a way back into this game now which before the red card, they didn’t look remotely capable of taking. I would’ve predicted that this would’ve been a comfortable second half, but of course, now it won’t be. We have to maintain some sort of attacking threat or else this will be absolute murder to get through.

As we line up for the second half, it is noticeable that Finn Azaz has taken station over on the right so it’s a 441 formation. Mousinho has taken off his liveliest forward in Kavuma-McQueen and brought on Segecic.

The Visitors start the second half on the front foot and Adams puts in an aimless cross which is cleared by Bree down the line to Azaz, who chopped back away from Meghoma and then sweeps it right to left and Scienza is clean through on the half-way line and it’s Fratton Park last year all over again as the Brazilian heads towards the penalty area but this time he can’t work it onto his right foot as Dia comes across, he hits it with his left foot and Schmid flicks up an arm to deflect it over the bar. Good effort and a really good save.

A problem is beginning to develop down our left, with Swanson and Kamara doubling up against Manning and Scienza is not getting close enough to help. I’ve forgotten Kamara was playing to be quite honest. He was the big hope for them when they signed him a month or so ago. His low cross is cleared to the edge of the box, a shot comes back in which is blocked out to Segecic and he drags it wide. It doesn’t matter how hard you swing your leg at it if your technique is shit.

Scienza and Manning between them get done again down our left and Swanson‘s low cross is kicked away from about 3 yards out by Stephens. Back it comes into the box again and it’s Segecic again who proves he has no shooting technique and drags it wide of the near post.

With that, Scienza is off to be replaced by Matsuki. I’m not gonna lie I’m a little bit unhappy with this because that’s our best forward running player and the game is undoubtedly going to open out as the Visitors press for an equalizer. Anyway, onward with a Kamara’s effort headed out by Captain Jack. It gets worked down the left and there’s another optimistic scuff, this time from Shade and it’s into the side netting with no danger whatsoever.

The ball gets played up to Azaz on the right and Adams runs through the back of him but inexplicably the referee does not give a free kick. What happens next is a direct consequence as Azaz loses his head and rattles straight into Adams over by the left touch line. Fucking hell, that’s not good and it’s a big relief as it’s just a yellow card that comes out.

Mousinho goes full Hail Mary just after the hour and Adams is off before he gets sent off and Meghoma and Bishop join him for the more conventional reason of being not very good. Three more Skates come on.

Time drags on and we get to the 72nd minute and Tonda decides that he’s had enough of Azaz being a bit of a defensive liability on the right, but he doesn’t take him off, instead it’s Larin that walks off and Azaz gets put up front as Jander.

Another fifteen goes by with no real alarms. We don’t get up the pitch much but it really looks like the visitors have blown themselves out. 87 minutes and the corner comes in from the left which is cleared out as far as one of Visitors subs Bailey and he lashes it from 20 yards, but once again it is comfortably wide and Peretz just watches it go.

The visitors new striker Millavanovic or Marezi or whatever the fuck his name is, was one of the three subs thrown on and he makes a decent dart in front of Stephens but from in front of the near post his effort is kind of shit and nowhere near the goal.

Five extra minutes and it’s really weird – they aren’t scoring – they could play all fucking night. It’s really weird to not have that feeling of inevitability. Manning wins a header out towards the right wing and Azaz gets pulled for offside. Schmid gets the ball and tries to steal ten yards before the ref sends him back to where it should be. He launches the goal kick and then the final whistle goes. Have that you fuckers. Get in there boys. Absolutely fucking brilliant in that second half to get the job done with ten men. Ten men, we’ve only got ten men. No funny handshake from Mousinho this year.

Though it always seems terrifying at the time when you’ve only got ten men, the fact is that they barely threatened the goal. Just before halftime there was the Bishop header that Peretz pushed wide but all they managed in the second half was a couple of off target efforts and a couple of crosses for Daniel to catch and that was it. Zero quality and unless they got a lucky bounce of the ball or there was a horrific mistake, the feeling was that they were never going to score. If you look at the second half, the best chance fell to Scienza, who forced the keeper into a decent save.

I reckon if we keep 11 on the pitch, we win that game 3-0 as we find more space as the game opens out in the second half. It’s a real shame that we didn’t get to see a competition between our full attacking strength and their defence. As frequently stated, left back Meghoma cannot defend and the centre back is obviously a distant cousin of Ali Dia. He looks 6 foot 5 and completely uncoordinated with the signals taking too long to get from his brain to his feet. Some of the very deliberate passes straight out of play and nowhere near anyone in the second half were a joy to behold.

Cameron Bragg will be very relieved that his red card didn’t cost us in the end. He is a young player and he will learn, but both yellow cards were kind of similar in that it was a bad first touch and then an instinct to grab/foul the player who had nicked the ball, having not been previously aware that the player was there.

Tonda explained afterwards that he picked Bragg today because basically, he is a Saints fan and he wanted players who knew what the Derby meant. Strange one. Whilst that worked with Jack Stephens who put in an excellent performance, disrupting the midfield shape was a strange one from the manager. There seemed very little need for it given that one of the two in midfield was Marlon Pack, who cannot run. It kind of took away our right hand side with JWP being very peripheral out wide. However, where did our goal come from? Azaz found the perfect ball for James Bree to get in behind Meghoma and there you have it. 1-0 and a lead that we never looked really like relinquishing, even with 10 men.

The Visitors do have a legitimate argument that we could’ve been down to nine when Azaz went flying in on Adams. I feel that if we hadn’t already had a player sent off then he may have walked there and it was basically fucking stupid for such an experienced player to put us in the position where we could’ve ended up with nine men. I do however feel that the ref didn’t give the initial push by Adams on Azaz because he knew that Saints players would have been in his face for a second yellow. The referee was just about okay but they definitely seem to be a two tier approach to yellow cards being handed out, with the Skates getting away with at least a couple more that should’ve resulted in yellows when deliberate fouls went in with no attempt to play the ball.

With the red card having happened and us being a goal ahead at half-time, I was absolutely convinced that we needed to keep and attacking for it on the pitch and that Scienza would be key, given that he is our paciest forward. Though he was having an absolute shocker defensively and what was basically a 4-4-1 formation in the second half, I was irritated by the fact that he came off and with it went all our pace up front, which I thought we’d need against a slow-ish defence that would be pushing up as the halfway on. However, the end justifies the means and it was ultimately Azaz thrown up front for the tiring Larin with 20 minutes to go as we shored up the wide positions with Caspar Jander and Kuryu Matsuki. Obviously you wouldn’t choose to play with 10 men but everything that Tonda did today barring that slightly odd team selection, worked out.

Last year‘s game, we had no one who even wanted to be the hero. James Bree is the man whose name will go in Saints history alongside Moran, Beattie, Ings, Channon, Phillips and others previously mentioned who have scored in a Derby Day win. What a great run and finish it was as well. I have been somewhat critical of him this season as I feel his form has been very mixed but he can do whatever ever he fucking wants now.

Bree might reach iconic status now but they were all heroes to be fair. Manning blocked crosses, Big Kev and Captain Jack were magnificent. JWP and Downes were everywhere in that second half in particular and then you have Larin, Azaz and Scienza, who all had their moments in what was a tough game for forwards. Azaz, bloody hell, the pass for the goal and the pass to send Leo away were something else – just maybe ease up on the flying tackles.

So, up the League table we go once more courtesy of a fifth home win in a row. Unfortunately, we have to play an away game now and it’s Carrow Road and Philippe Clement’s Norwich team, who will undoubtedly kick the shit out of us and then deny that it happened, like they did in both games last year. We will worry about that another day however, and for now we will bask in the glory of sending those fishy bastards back in their miserable little bubble, back down the M27. Ten men, we only had ten men. The pressure is off now somewhat for the return game, but we do have a glorious possibility of a League double for the first time since 1975/76.

Up the fucking Saints