All about the 'W'
It's the hope that kills you.
Not only have we beaten them once this season already but they are struggling themselves, not in any immediate danger so there is a chance that they will try and coast through today unless Brendan Rodgers can get them fired up but then, Brendan is not the manager that he thinks he is.
This season, Brendan has worn the look of a man who knows it is all gone a bit stale and deep down knows that he’s not gonna be there for much longer and is sizing up his next move. It can’t be denied however that Leicester are under performing with the players that they’ve got. There is a bit of a changing of the guard going on at the moment. Kasper Schmeichel left in the summer and the other mainstay, the arch shit house Jamie Vardy is kind of reaching a natural end now at the age of 35.
You could argue that they have built all their success since 2015, winning the Premier League and winning the FA Cup, of the back of recruiting Jamie Vardy for £1 million from Fleetwood. To have that priceless commodity of a striker who can score that many goals is a wonderful thing for a team not in the Super League 6 to have. We’ve all seen the struggles Saints have had to replace the strike force that they had since 2016 and Leicester are at that stage now. With Vardy now officially reaching ‘over the hill’ status, Kelechi Iheanacho has stepped up on occasions but Patson Daka isn't good enough and if they don’t replace Vardy‘s goals soon, they could well go the same way that we have gone, certainly since Danny Ings left. Also, you can’t imagine James Maddison and Youri Tielemans sticking around much longer if it looks like being a lower mid-table slog in future.
They’ve even got rid of Ayoze Perez which is a bit of an oversight given that he has 27 career hat-tricks against Southampton. Their forward line will still be a threat today with Tete, Iheanacho and Barnes all being capable and of course there is James Maddison. I’m not going to say “one-man team” but he is their best player by a long, long way and though he’s been out injured recently, he is supposed to be back today. His partner in midfield Youri Tielemans, I’ve never really understood. He never seem to do anything much at international level with Belgium and it seems that being linked away to Super League clubs has certainly played a part in his dip in performances. There was a time not so long ago when the midfield three of Ndidi, Tielemans and Maddison was right up there with the best in the league.
Leicester of course have two former Saints at the club but we won’t be seeing Ryan Bertrand or Jannik Vestergaard today. Bertie has been injured more or less since we played Leicester in that dismal behind closed doors FA Cup semi-final in 2021. Of course, he was playing for us in those days and Rodgers revisited the obsession with signing Southampton players that he brought with him from Liverpool. He did it again with the signing of Vestergaard and I think the fact that Leicester have signed about three more centre backs, including fellow massive immobile lump Harry Souttar, since that day tells you all you need to know about Jannik’s place in the pecking order.
Whereas a win at Leeds would’ve given us a genuinely decent shout of staying up, a win today is absolutely essential to keep in touch. With Manchester United away up next, a defeat today could well leave us right in the shit. Four points is not too bad but being eight or nine adrift is in all likelihood going to be terminal.
So, what is Ruben Selles going to do? The side he picked against Grimsby and the B team that played against Nottingham Forest on Friday night gave a few clues. The centre back pairing will be interesting. With Salisu not being fit it will be interesting to see if Bednarek or Caleta-Car is seen as the least calamity prone option. Another interesting thing will be to see where Sulemana lines up. For me, it absolutely has to be on the wing.
In the event it appears to be a 4-3-3 or a 4-2-3-1 with Charlie Alcaraz, Lavia and JWP all selected. Che Adams has been recalled in place of Tall Paul and there is a place for Theo Walcott off the back of his decent performance against Grimsby. Whilst Walcott may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I’m all in favour of the meritocracy. You wait for your chance and if you play well, you stay in the team. Should work the other way round as well of course if you put in an absolute stinker. On that note, the new Chuckle Brothers Mara and Adam Armstrong, are on the bench.
Maitland-Niles makes a very strong burst on the right hand side in an Arsenal reunion with Theo Walcott who returns the ball to him with AMN getting right to the byline before pulling the ball back for Theo but the shot is easily blocked.
Leicester settle down and start passing the ball nicely and we seem to struggle to get a foot in. There is some strange shit going on whenever Saints get a goal kick. Bazunu clearly wants to tap it short to either of the centre backs and Leicester are queued up on the edge of the penalty area like sprinters at the starting blocks waiting for him to do so. The idea of this tactic is to play through the first line of the press and have space further up but none of our defenders are comfortable enough with passing the ball to make this viable (we have 4 right footed defenders) so what we are doing is two panicked passes from Baz into a centre back, back to Baz and then he belts it up the pitch and we lose it near halfway.
Leicester win a free-kick on the left-hand side when Walcott takes out Maddison. Maddison whips it in and Iheanacho is completely unmarked and meets it solidly with his face and the ball goes wide. You can tell it’s a really bad miss because he checks round to frantically check with the linesman to make sure that he was offside.
Alcaraz is showing up well and breaks, playing one-two with Walcott but he leaves his foot in when the challenge comes in from Castagne and looks a little bit relieved that only a yellow card comes out from Robert Jones.
25 minutes gone and Saints actually start to play some football now with JWP feeding the ball into Walcott who plays a 1-2 with Adams and gets to the line. He crosses and the sliding Castagne has both his arms in the air and it hits one of them. Penalty given. Fucking hell, we don’t get given those usually.
There is always a slight dread when JWP steps up to take a penalty and no one looks particularly confident that he’s going to score and bang, goes for his favourite side and Ward reads it all the way and pushes it away easily. Shit.
10 out of 10 for the Goal, 0 out of 10 for the Celebration
Lavia wins the ball back at right back with AMN picking it up and finding Adams who turns and slides a ball between Souttar and Castagne and Alcaraz breaks through and from the edge of the box, slots it across Ward and into the far corner. Fucking brilliant finish and big celebrations and then guess what, we’re off to fucking VAR. Time goes by, civilisations rise and fall.....
And it doesn’t get disallowed - this must be our day. There is a slight facepalm in that Charly Alcaraz has clearly injured himself in the celebration. Knee slides never seem to be the most sensible thing to do to me and let’s hope he can run it off.
Leicester are playing with a ridiculously high line considering they’ve got the immobile Souttar in defence and Sulemana gets a chance as another ball is lobbed over the top. He has to go the long way round having brought it down but manages to fire in another shot which is comfortably enough saved by Ward.
Half time and it’s just about whether Alcaraz comes back out or not. The worrying thing is that Elyounoussi was getting warmed up as the replacement and as Charly was basically playing as an attacker, that wouldn’t be a good replacement. Brendan has decided to take off invisible Harvey Barnes at half-time and bring on Dennis Praet and he’s playing him on the left wing. Tate picks out Praet on the left-hand side he puts in an inch perfect cross onto Iheanacho’s head but again he appears to shut his eyes and it plops wide of the post.
It’s clear that Alcaraz can’t carry on and so is replaced and Ruben has decided to replace our new dynamic forward running full of ability number 10 with, as suspected, Elyounoussi. Groan. Could’ve used Stuart Armstrong who is ideal for that number 10 role or could even have brought on Tall Paul and dropped Che back in there but not so. More groans a few minutes later as Che Adams and Theo Walcott, who have both been excellent, are replaced with the Chuckle Brothers, Mara and Adam Armstrong. Okay, we now have absolutely zero attacking threat.
"And replacing Che Adams and Theo Walcott..."
KWP gives Baz a horrendous back-pass which he tries to smash clear but can only smash it straight to Iheanacho on the edge of the box he has the whole goal to aim at but places it over the bar on the roof of the net. Fucks sake lads.
In the course of the next half an hour we manage one attacking move where we keep the ball for more than three passes with JWP finding Mara out on the left. He in turn finds Sulemana and on to Adam Armstrong who hits a shot at the fucking moon. Murder.
Sulemana, who has had a decent game is replaced with Stuart Armstrong as we go into the last 10 minutes. Iheanacho, having missed a load of easy ones then tries a difficult one from the edge of the box and curls it over the bar. The only player we really have to worry about is Maddison who has been excellent all game. JWP carts him over on the left hand side to give them a free kick. Maddison’s free kick is cleared by ABK heading it up in the air and it lands on top of the net. Maddison’s corner is headed away but Maddison is still trying his magic out on the left-hand side and works himself a yard before crossing the ball into the mixer and Bazunu comes flying out for a ball he’s not going to get anywhere near and Souttar gets above it and we’re all waiting for the net to bulge but he hits the top of the bar and over. Thank fuck for that.
And We All Shat Ourselves
First things first and I would like to say to everyone in television media and anyone who supports Leicester who likes shitting on about a game that happened four years ago…. you can stick your fucking 9-0 up your arse. Six points, thank you very much.
Well it turned out to be a brilliant day with all the teams around us losing and us managing to hang on to the lead given to us by Charly Alcaraz’ first-half goal. Any win in the Premier League it is hard earned of course, but we got there today courtesy of some very good luck and a limp performance from an insipid Leicester team, managed by a manager who doesn’t seem to give a shit. Leicester had an element of not really being arsed today, apart from James Maddison who tried his best and showed his obvious frustration with those around him., I wonder how many of the others can really look at themselves in the mirror tonight. I’m sure Brendan looks in his mirror every night and asks who is the fairest of them all. Despite a few kamikaze moments in our defence, Leicester didn’t manage to get a shot on target. It’s crazy to look at the table to see that they are now only three points ahead of us. Great to win of course but let’s not kid ourselves that all is fine.
Having showed the way to win the game in the last 20 minutes of the first half, we went back into our shell in the second half, not helped by Alcaraz getting an injury in celebrating his goal. He had been a revelation in the number 10 position and we had to take him off and bring Elyounoussi on, mortally wounding us as an attacking force. Not content with a mortal wounding, Ruben Selles then picked up the knife and stabbed our attacking play to death by bringing on the Chuckle Brothers and removing Che Adams and Theo Walcott who had both been really good. So, our three substitutions were a massive downgrade and lo and behold, we didn’t keep the ball up front at all and had no goal threat.
So, the last half an hour was spent almost exclusively without the ball and was absolute murder, just waiting for someone to fuck up. Bazunu had a good go, kicking one straight to Iheanacho (mind you, that was a shocking pass by KWP) and then coming out for a cross that he was never going to get in the 95th minute. Normally you would say that we won’t win many games by sitting back onto 1-0 lead for the last half an hour but Ruben has managed to do it twice in his opening three games. However, the same tactics against Leeds when we were drawing left us 1-0 down with nothing on the pitch to get back into it. What would’ve been catastrophic is if Leicester and scored with 20 minutes to go and we would’ve had nothing out of the pitch to try and get another goal.
After the Grimsby game, I wrote about players getting something for nothing and it was a prime example of that today. Mara and Armstrong should not have even been on the bench after their performance against Grimsby. They were so shit in that game, they should’ve been playing for the B Team on Friday but not only are they on the bench, they get half an hour each on the pitch.
Selles did get a lot right today. The main revelation was Charly Alcaraz, who played the number 10 role brilliantly. Predominantly a midfielder of course, he gets about the park and closes people down but also he has that energy to get up with a striker and is always looking to shoot from the edge of the box. Hopefully his knee slide induced injury will be bad enough to stop him doing it again but not bad enough to keep him out of any games.and Theo Walcott had a superb game on the right wing. Surprise surprise, Kamaldeen Sulemana looked better in his preferred position and Che Adams put in a proper shift as the lone striker.
Though we kept a clean sheet and I’m certainly not going to complain about that, I felt like this was achieved more because of Leicester being shit than our defence being rock solid. ABK did have a very good game and Bednarek had one of his better games. His last four games have been shit, decent, shit, decent so we’ll see what happens next week when he will undoubtedly be in the team again.
Another footnote from this game was JWP missing a penalty. For some reason, his
penalties never look that convincing and I think it’s probably time to try and
find someone else to take them.
I do not want to see an unchanged team for next week away at Manchester United.
It is a completely different assignment. I feel that Tall Paul absolutely has
to play some part in that game bearing in mind he will be up against Lisandro Martinez. I would also like to see a more balanced
defence with at least one left footed player in there.
Today’s result actually moved us off of the bottom of the league and even if we get beat at Old
Trafford next week, it should tell the players that we can get out of it if
they carry on putting in a shift. We won’t be fortunate enough to come up
against under-performing opposition like Leicester every week so we have to be
better and carry a goal threat for the whole game. Do that and you never know.
It's the hope that kills you.
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