Hey Joe!
So
after the first part of pre-season – new signings and cautious optimism and all
that – comes the visible side of actually playing matches and hopefully, give
us some confidence that issues apparent at the end of last season are going to
be corrected. Our issues at the end of
last season were that we were crap, everywhere.
Our defending was crap, our defending in midfield was crap because the
wide players didn’t contribute and of course, we were crap up front and not
scoring any goals or even looking like we were going to unless JWP did
something. Overall, a pretty
comprehensive list of things to fix. The
first couple of pre-season games are only ever about fitness and then of
course, you hope to see improvements as you get towards the start of the season
and you don’t lose 4-0 at home to a below average German side or whatever.
So, off to Austria we go and a chance for the more reactionary keyboard
warriors to lose their minds as we have a friendly against Ralph’s old team RB
Leipzig and for those looking for pointers, it was interesting that we lined up
in a 3-4-3 formation, which is a formation that we have never played well in so
far.
The first half team had Gavin Bazunu in goal with a back three of Bella-Kotchap,
Bednarek and Salisu with KWP and Moussa Djenepo as the wing backs. The two in
the centre of midfield were Romeo Lavia and Ibrahima Diallo and three up top
being Elyounoussi, Tella and Joe Aribo. Leipzig for their part had all their
big guns playing including the star players from both Hungary and Sweden, Szaboszlai
and Forsberg. Bazunu looked incredibly
confident right from the start and pulled off a brilliant save to tip a Szaboszlai
rocket over the bar. Bella-Kotchap looked comfortable in defence and Lavia
showed up well in midfield. Overall, we looked pretty decent. At the other end of the pitch it was a
different story however with Elyounoussi repeatedly succeeding in picking out a
Leipzig defender whenever he tried to cross the ball, Aribo hardly being
involved and Tella switching between right wing and centre forward with the
equal lack of success.
On 60 minutes the whole 10 outfield players changed to join Alex McCarthy who
had gone in goal on 45 minutes. With Stephens, Lyanco and Simeu in defence and
only one defensive minded midfielder in Romeu, we looked a lot more open and
Leipzig took the lead for a free-kick from the edge of the box where McCarthy
lined up his wall, took a step behind it and then got beaten in the other
corner. Poor goalkeeping it has to be said. We had made a slight adjustment in
the second half in that we now had three in midfield and two central strikers
with Adams and Adam Armstrong. Consequently,
we looked more of a threat going forward but Smallbone and Stuart Armstrong
didn’t give her my much help with defending.
Smallbone at the attacking out of the pitch though was having a good
impact and his superb cross from the right was flicked in by the head of Adam
Armstrong to put as level. Shocked as we were with scoring a goal, we
immediately conceded one before conceding again with a couple of minutes to go
as no one closed down the Leipzig left winger who absolutely smashed one into
the top corner. There then followed a rather bizarre extra 15 minutes which
allowed us to give debuts to Mateuz Lis who did ok and Diamond Edwards, a winger
from the academy.
Talking in general terms, it was interesting to see a back three and it’s
probably a clear indicator of where we’re going to go this season. The worry
for me is as mentioned, we have never played well in that formation, mainly
because we don’t seem to have any progressive passing within it and any way of
really scoring a goal. You could see that new players were definitely needed at
the front end of the pitch. Positives were the performance of the Bazunu, Bella-Kotchap,
Bednarek, Salisu, KWP and whisper it gently, Djenepo was decent at left-wing
back. Lavia looked very lively in midfield but it’s the top end of the pitch
where we’ve got the problems.
The result doesn’t matter and that it’s purely about fitness but to my mind, fringe
players who are not definitely in the starting 11 have to be putting it in from
the first minute of the first game, so I was a little disappointed in the
slightly lacklustre performances by the likes of Stephens, Diallo, Lyanco,
Tella and Elyounoussi
The problem is at the top end of the pitch show themselves in full glory again
in the second friendly against Klagenfurt, who featured a certain Patrick Hasenhuttl,
son of Ralph. Will Smallbone hit the post, Diallo hit the bar and Adam
Armstrong missed a penalty in the second half. We also missed some absolute
sitters through Djenepo and Adam Armstrong again. Of the attacking players, Will
Smallbone and Stuart Armstrong looked half decent and Joe Aribo showed some
nice touches but again, all the positives were in the back half of the team.
Bella-Kotchap, Bednarek and Salisu again looked very good and Yan Valery was
decent on the right hand side of the three in the first half. In terms of ability, Valery should be ahead of
Jack Stephens but with Yan only having a year left on his contract and Stephens
having signed a new one, the situation is complicated somewhat. Also, we can
only pray the Roman Perraud is fit for the start of the season because Thierry Small
is too naive defensively to play Premier League games and the reality dawned in
this game that Djenepo is Djenepo. Romeo Lavia is clearly going to start in the
Premier League in the centre of midfield.
In the build up to the third friendly against Watford, the Bordeaux Twitter page announced that they had agreed to sell striker Sekou Mara to Southampton. This caught everyone on the hop a little bit because Saints clearly weren’t gonna announce anything until all of formalities were sorted. The backstory is that Bordeaux are very close to going out of business and so they wanted to announce that they’d agreed a fee of about €11 million, to I assume stave off their creditors. Unsurprisingly, it’s another youngster with Mara being only 19 years old. The feelgood factor in this story from Saints perspective is that we have paid them a decent transfer fee for the player which probably enables them to stay in business. Allegedly, Newcastle and Everton were waiting to see if Bordeaux went bust so they could pick Mara up for nothing. I can understand it from Everton because they are widely thought to be skint and they are having all these FFP problem at the moment but Newcastle? Words fail me.
There was more transfer news with Will Smallbone joining Stoke in the Championship for the season. Yes he’s looked good in these pre-season games so far but regardless, I think is an excellent move for him. Ralph clearly didn’t see him making much of an impact on the first team this season and going to the Championship for a season is absolutely ideal for Will and it will hopefully toughen him up. If he can get about 30 games in, then it will serve him massively well for the rest of his career. Thierry Small also departed for a season in League 1 with Port Vale so maybe he and Smallbone can share a flat seeing as the two clubs are only 15 minutes’ drive apart. It’ll be really interesting to see what Port Vale make of Small. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him turned into a left winger.
Back at base, lack of international clearance meant that Sekou Mara wasn’t in the line-up when we played Watford (in Wealdstone) but it did provide more pointers towards what Ralph thinks is his best side at the moment with JWP making his first appearance of the season in the centre of midfield with Lavia. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we didn’t score again and it was a rather turgid 0-0. Everything comes with the caveat of it being pre-season and the game being played at a very slow pace but I can’t help be worried by this formation. When we play against teams that we should be beating, we just don’t seem to create anything and this seemed to be the pattern that emerged at the tail end of last season as well. There is no real pace in the forward line, which is I guess is why Adam Armstrong his preferred to Che Adams, who I genuinely think Ralph just doesn’t rate much.
Also, surely if we are going to play full-back back on the wrong side, it is better to play KWP on the left and Valery on the right. Djenepo is an absolute disaster waiting to happen when we play a decent side. Talking of which…
We returned to St Mary‘s to play Monaco and this was a proverbial game of two halves with us being terrible in the first half of Monaco being decent and then the roles completely changing in the second half. We got stronger as the game went on because we brought on our better players who are more likely to be starting the first league game, whereas Monaco seemed to stop pressing and allowed us to stroll to the edge of the penalty area before they made any sort of challenge. There were some very encouraging patterns of playing in the second half and important thing is that you can see what we are trying to do in terms of attacking.
In what was a dull first half, we went behind just before half-time with another goal that Alex McCarthy won’t be looking at with any affection as he was beaten at his near post. If it was a competition between our two goalkeepers where they start at 0-0 and then get a point for every great save and lose one for every cock up, The pre-season score is currently Bazunu 3 McCarthy -3.
In the second half we got back into it with a bundled goal by Adam Armstrong but it was when the likes of JWP, Stuart Armstrong, Joe Aribo came on that we suddenly clicked into another gear, with Aribo creating the second goal for Stuart Armstrong and JWP rattling in the third on the break after possibly the most hilarious dive by Monaco player in a penalty area, which was what gave us the ball in the first place. It was nice to win by a relatively comfortable 3-1.
Pushing Romeu slightly further forward is a really interesting development because it shows how good he is on the ball and it enables him to win the ball much higher up the pitch. He has basically swapped roles with the more dynamic and quicker Diallo who had a decent game at the base of the midfield, but that position will be taken by Romeo Lavia.
The striker situation is also going to be really interesting. One of the two is going to be Joe Aribo and the other one could well be someone else push further forward than usual in the shape of Stuart Armstrong. We’re gonna be like Spain when they won the Euros with Cesc Fabregas playing as a striker. It was good in this going to see Roman Perraud back from injury and he had a fairly solid first half at left back before he was replaced with Moussa Djenepo in the second half. Though he was half decent going forward, the fact that Moussa decided to try a nutmeg on the edge of his own penalty area tells you absolutely everything you need to know about the prospect of him playing in the Premier League. Absolutely horrifying.
After the game, Ralph let it be known that we were still looking for two more in the transfer window and reminded everyone that there are 36 days left of it. After the sensible season or two where the transfer window ended before the first game, we now have it ending 5 weeks after the season starts. Whether this is because of the World Cup in November or because of some reason that benefits the bigger clubs, I don’t really know.
The final friendly was against Villareal at home and we lined up with the majority of what will playing against Spurs. In the first half, Villarreal basically were too good for us and we went in 1-0 behind, but the second half will be remembered for the Joe Aribo picking the ball well in his own half and he went full Sofiane Boufal as he dribble past about four players on the edge of the box before calmly slotting it past the goalkeeper. A superb goal which served purely to irritate Villarreal who went straight up the other end and went back in front. Both of the goals that we conceded looked preventable with Bella-Kotchap getting skinned down the line for the first goal and Bednarek finding a reason to fall on his arse for the second. Overall, I guess it’s been a normal preseason. There have been some performances that have been very dodgy in terms of entertainment and there have been some parts of games where we’ve looked decent. After 45 odd years of following Saints I still have no real idea what constitutes a good or bad pre-season. No one appears to have picked up any injuries which is of course a good thing. Ralph has been very decisive from the outset that we are going to play with three central defenders. I feel that maybe in his heart of hearts he would like to partner Salisu with Bella–Kotchap in a flat back four but at the moment, that pairing would be just too inexperienced, hence why he wants a third defender in there. It looks like Bednarek will be the man in the middle of the defence but rumours still persist about whether he will still be at the club at the end of the transfer window. I’m not a body language expert but I do wonder if he really wants to be here. Elsewhere in that department, the one who was really stuck his hand up in pre-season is Yan Valery. The fullback situation is one that we have not really addressed as the season arrives and we won’t be bringing a player this week who will be pitched straight into the starting line-up against Tottenham at the weekend. KWP will obviously play and it looks like Moussa Djenepo will be at left back, which is not ideal. What you want from your defenders is solidity and for it to be a surprise if they make a mistake. For example, it would be a shock if KWP made a mistake that led to a goal against us. If Djenepo did it, it would be the most unsurprising thing in the world. I trust him about as far as I could spit a rat.
In midfield, Romeo Lavia has added some dynamism and we have seen one formation which set him up as the sole defensive midfield player with two number eights in front of him in the shape of JWP and Oriol Romeu. The configuration of the midfield seems to be up for grabs though because in other games we’ve gone for Stuart Armstrong as the third member of the midfield. At other times we’ve just had two in there and then we’ve had two number 10s behind a lone striker. I guess that this is where Ralph will tinker depending on our opposition.
Joe Aribo will obviously be one of the forward players but none of our out and out strikers are particularly looking like the real deal at the moment. Che Adams seems to have been relegated to the role of bit part player, Adam Armstrong has to of course, do a lot better than he did last season and he is not suited to playing as the main striker. Sekou Mara is clearly not ready yet and nor should we expect him to be as a 19-year-old kid newly arrived from France. One thing that can’t be denied is that the new owners Sport Republic have backed the manager and refreshed the squad and as I write, we have not had to sell a player to do it. We have had a couple of hefty wage earners leave in the shape of Forster and Long but no one has left for a transfer fee. There is still time for this to happen however. I feel that line has been drawn under last season with us likely to have at least four new signings in the starting line-up for the first game of the season. I also feel that line has been drawn under the season regarding Ralph who under normal circumstances, would be under pressure with the run of results we had at the tail end of last season. I believe that he will have until the World Cup break in November to try and get a tune out of the squad of players. We have to hope that we can perform above expectations in this opening run of fixtures and then the youngsters can hopefully perform without any added pressure that a bad start would bring. We undoubtedly have a couple of issues still, namely full-back and striker but I approach this season with a cautious optimism, same as usual.
Up the fucking Saints.
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