Romeo, Romeo.... There You Are Romeo
And the Super League
clubs just keep on coming with Chelsea being visitors to St Mary‘s today. Last
year was the worst game of a season which had quite a few lows in it but none quite
as low as the 6-0 defeat that Chelsea handed us at our own ground. That was a game that was awful both from the
players and the manager.
The main architect of that Chelsea win was probably Timo Werner
who thankfully, has moved on and I say thankfully because he scored about 80%
of his Chelsea goals against us. Chelsea of course had a few issues last year,
what with the previous owner being mates with the guy who invaded another
country and all that. There was a glorious moment when it looked as if Chelsea
would actually face some sort of consequence for having dodgy money for
the last 20 years but of course that didn’t come to pass and they’ve been taken
over by consortium run by an American Todd Boely, who seems to be able to put
as much money into it as the previous owner did. This of course will satisfy
the Chelsea fans and their sense of entitlement because a majority will have
forgotten the old Second Division days and the club being sold for a quid to
Ken Bates. There aren’t many queueing up to say “I was there when we were shit“.
They did lose a few players in the summer who they probably
would’ve lost anyway regardless of the ownership. Their best defender Antonio
Rüdiger moved to Real Madrid and the underrated Andreas Christensen to
Barcelona. I don’t know if they’ve registered him yet but regardless, he is not
at Chelsea anymore. In have come Kalidou Koulibaly, a much desired centre half
and it looks like they’re going to bring in Wesley Fofana from Leicester after
they have finished putting the final nail in Brendan Rodgers coffin. The
slightly scattergun, money spraying approach got a bit weird when they signed
Cucurella from Brighton for a ridiculously inflated £60 million. The main
signing at the top end of the pitch is of course Raheem Sterling who has joined
from Manchester City. I’ve never been totally on board with Raheem Sterling but
his goal record is as good as anyone’s in his position and he should be able to
form a decent partnership with Kai Havertz upfront, even though Havertz is more
of an attacking midfielder than a striker. There are a few players who seem to
have fallen from the reckoning this season in Christian Pulisic and Hakim
Ziyech but regardless of what team Chelsea put out, this is still going to be a
massive test for us today - European Champions just over a year ago, remember.
Oh yeah, they of course have Skate Bastard Mason Mount who’s
in danger of being the next Dele Alli with his form going off a cliff in the
last six months and he will see a game against Southampton, against who he
always seems to play well, as the perfect situation to remind everybody what he
is about.
It’s been all positive about Saints since the Manchester
United game at the weekend. Despite virtually every media outlet questioning
the McTominay juggling non-penalty, nothing of course will happen about it. I
guess we might get an apology from PGLOL at some point but don’t hold your
breath and what fucking use is that anyway?
As I write, we are just two days left to the transfer window
closes, it has been silly season on the rumour mill again with Saints being
linked to strikers that Super League clubs are interested in full fees of £50
to £60 million. Yawn. There has also been the resurrections of links from a
couple of years ago with Ainsley Maitland-Niles on the ‘get rid’ list at
Arsenal. Remember, he joined West Brom instead of us a couple of years ago
declaring that he didn’t want to play fullback and he only wanted to play in
central midfield. If he signed for us then he’d be third choice in central
midfield at best and a cover fullback, so I can’t see that happening either
(UPDATE – I might have been wrong here – ha ha)
Getting to the game today has been an absolute fucking nightmare.
Fans coming out of the Ageas Bowl and an accident on one of the motorway
junctions have made Hedge End a huge car park, so having dropped off my
passengers by the gas holders in Northam, I eventually made it to my usual parking spot in
Ocean Village and then had to run like fuck, consequently, I was blowing a bit
like Luke Shaw after recovery run by the time I got to the ground. I’ve heard
the team news on the radio whilst sitting in the traffic we had Perraud, and
Diallo starting instead of Djenepo and Aribo. One interesting thing was that Oriol
Romeu was not on the bench which further fuelled the rumours that he is about
to leave, with a potential three-year deal to Girona, in his home region of Catalonia,
where he is from.
Away we go and Chelsea the better side.
We are struggling to get a foot on the ball and keeping it is proving
difficult also with both Diallo and JWP looking slightly lost. Adams is seeing how much Thiago Silva fancies
it but Chelsea create an early chance with Jorginho finding Mount and onto
Sterling and he has a free shot from the edge of the box on his left foot and he
scuffs it through to Baz.
We don’t wake up and Chelsea remain the better side. Loftus
Cheek runs forward with he ball and and plays Sterling through and this time he
fails thanks to another one of those ridiculously good tackles by ABK and a
resulting scramble sees Bazunu fall on the ball.
Whilst we’re all feeling good about ourselves about how great
our defending is, it all goes to shit as Havertz sends Mount weaving into the
box. His initial cross to Sterling is
blocked by the sliding Perraud and Bazunu, but Sterling is up quickest to turns and
find an open goal in front of him which he can’t miss. Bollocks.
Saints are pretty direct today and here's why - ABK bangs one forward and Adams flicks on to Adam Armstrong who
tries to give it back to Che but Azpilicueta puts it out for a corner. JWP plays
it in and Azpilicueta flicks it clear to the edge of the box to where Romeo
Lavia takes a touch before bending it
round the onrushing Mount and past Mendy before he can react. What a great hit that was.
As we approach half time we are coming more into the game and previously quiet
players are waking up. Diallo dribbles
past Jorginho’s half-arsed challenge and via JWP, the ball reaches Perraud on
the left. As he about to cross it, all
the Chelsea forwards retreat towards their own goal but Perraud cuts it back to
Adam Armstrong who has stayed out, and he smashes into the net left-footed with
a heavy deflection of Koulibaly. Just before half-time, fucking beautiful. Chelsea end – silent.
As the ref blows for half-time, Che is fighting for the ball with Jorginho in the centre circle and manages to boot the ball in his face. Jorginho, clearly mortally wounded by being hit by the ball realises everyone is laughing at him and then leads four Chelsea players in berating the referee. Arseholes – just get off the pitch.
At half time I am basking in the glory of an unexpected lead. We may not win but the last 20 minutes of the half have been great. Chelsea will undoubtedly be better in the second half but this time last year we were 4-0 down.
Right, can we get away from this habit of conceding at the start of the second half? Chelsea have brought on Kovacic for Loftus-Cheek and ten minutes in and it’s Chelsea who seem rattled. Koulibaly gives the ball away to Adam Armstrong and though he recovers, Perraud wins it back again and stands up a beautiful cross to the back post and Elyounoussi must score…. Fuck, No – he heads it at Cucurella in front of the keeper and when the rebound loops to him, tries an overhead volley thing which Mendy saves comfortably.
Oh shite, Lavia has done his hamstring on a recovery run and has to come off, with Joe Aribo taking his place with JWP dropping into a more familiar position. Tommy Tuchel rolls the dice as well five minutes later with Broja, Chilwell and Pulisic coming on for Azpilicueta, Jorginho and Havertz, who have all be pretty poor. Broja gets a decent reception as our fans in the main have a bit of class about them, unlike the Abramovich-apologists up the other end.
We nearly score again soon after as Adams batters Cucurella and wins a corner, which has the ridiculously-wigged defender raging at the linesman. In it comes from JWP, flicked on, bundled goalward by Salisu and flicked off the line by Thiago Silva. 15 to go and on comes Djenepo for the cramping Perraud and there’s only a slight alarm when Sterling gets in on the left and his cross goes straight to Bazunu.
Chelsea create a half chance as a deep cross is met by Broja at the back post but luckily, his heading hasn;t improved and Baz saves it comfortably enough. Five to go and it’s Lyanco time as he replaces Adam Armstrong. He actually goes to left back and Moussa is pushed forward, which makes sense until Lyanco brainlessly bundles through Pulisic on the wing. We get away with it and then it’s just a case of dealing with obligatory last minute corner with the Chelsea goalkeeper up and the biggest cheer of the day is for the Lyanco clearance that takes the remaining 30 seconds to come down out of the clouds…. And we fucking won.
Every win is a great win but any win against one of the Super League clubs, with the entitled fan base who are a massive bunch of wankers, is slightly better. What can I say lads, the better side won. So did the side that was more committed, had the better shape about them and had the better individual performers. It’s another win having gone behind as well, which continues this remarkable turnaround that sees us finishing games strongly. We weren’t just hanging on either because there was only one team that had chances in the second half. The only chance Chelsea had come from a player who was with us last year. Bazunu in all truth didn’t have a great deal to do, protected as he was by the man mountains of ABK and Salisu. Both full-backs were absolutely superb from a defensive point of view and it was nice to see the returning Perraud set up one goal and provide what should have been another when that Elyounoussi should’ve scored.
Romeo Lavia is going to be a huge player and we should enjoy him while we can but it looks like we are unfortunately going to be without him for a few weeks after his hamstring injury. After the game against Manchester United, I thought that the only weakness that this kid has is that he can’t shoot but he certainly put that one to bed today. Next to him, Ibrahima Diallo came in from the cold, started the game poorly but grew into it and in the second half he was looking much more confident, having had a major hand in the second goal. He’s got to look at this as an opportunity to play a few games now so hopefully he can step up. JWP seem to struggle a little bit in an unfamiliar number 10 role but again, kept us moving and continued his decent start of the season.
The entitled fans were something else as well. Made a lot of noise until their goal and then settled back, probably assuming that they were going to win it easily and then barely raised a noise throughout the second half when the team wasn’t doing particularly well and actually needed them. The entitlement born out of 20 years of dodgy money is large. I must however praise the brass-neck of the Chelsea fan in a traffic jam by Crosshouse on the way out of the ground, when he was blasting “blue is the colour” out of his car. Arrogant bell-end. You just lost to Southampton. At least Thomas Tuchel didn’t try and pretend that Chelsea with a better side of his post match interview, which is what he did after the 3-0 defeat against Leeds. He focused purely on their feelings which is fair enough. As for the other dug out, it’s fantastic to see the coaches all working together and showing a real sense of unity. It seems to be rubbing off on the players on the pitch. I am still waiting for the retraction from the Daily Mail about the players not playing for the manager. If there was a rat in the camp then it wasn’t anyone who was anything to do with that performance last night. It’s been a truly monumental effort from the boys over the last four days with two games against Super League clubs. The team survived the two games better than the pitch, which looked a bit shit. We were just an Andy Madley away from having four points out of six. So, from an opening five games that I initially thought we would struggle to get more than a couple of points from, we have got seven and now we move onto games where there are points to be had if we can put in the same level of performance, starting with Wolves away on Saturday. They have struggled at the start of the season as well and if we can overcome the one downside of today, the injury to Romeo Lavia, and we should be targeting at least a point on Saturday. Up the fucking Saints.
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