Premier League Match 36 - Southampton 0 Fulham 2

It's Time to Play the Music...

Another day, another last chance as we take on the Fulham at St Mary‘s. All things are possible, we could win and be relegated today, we could do the infinitely more likely lose or draw and be relegated today or we could win and drag this shitshow of a season on to Brighton next week. If the law of sod is to apply, then that is what we will do.  I kind of want it to be done and dusted and I want no possible excuse left for not starting the rebuild that will be needed for next season. I see absolutely no point in wasting time.

Fulham have had a season of over achievement which is markedly contrasted with their usual efforts in the Premier League when they usually find themselves roughly where we are now and immediately return back to the Championship. Not this season though. They were floating around the European places for a while around Christmas but it all came crashing down when they had an FA Cup tie at Manchester United and managed to get two players and the manager sent off in one incident.  The most high-profile fallout from that was of course that their main striker Alexander Mitrović got banned for eight games. Guess who his first game back is against? Yes it’s us today.  Fulham are a very high energy side with the width provided by the full backs Teté and Robinson and the guile provided by 34-year-old Willian. They also of course have Harrison Reed in the centre of midfield who I imagine will be slightly conflicted about what is likely to happen today seeing as he came through the ranks with JWP and joined the club at age 8.  Fulham also have Harry Wilson in their ranks, who has always stood out as a whiny little twat.

I will trudge to St Mary‘s today with very little enthusiasm and I’m sure I will be joined by every other Saints fan who is in there. Yes, we technically still have a chance of staying up but it will take about 15 results between now and the end of the season going our way. Have you ever won a 15 match accumulator when 3 of the results have to be Southampton winning? I very much doubt it.

It will be interesting to see if Ruben Sellers has completely given up himself. His press conference on Thursday revealed that Che Adams was struggling to make the game so will he actually pick a striker or will he go with the false nine bollocks. Will he bring in Dom Ballard and give him a game to see what he’s got or will we go for the same old tried and failed shit. Will the random selection tombola be out in force? If so, will we get Mislav Orsic or will we get Tall Paul, our £18 million striker. I cannot wait to see what Ralph Little comes up with. Maybe he’ll find a new hybrid position for Ainsley Maitland-Niles to be shit in.

Che out, Tall Paul starting klaxon and Lyanco in for ABK but otherwise it’s the same as the Forest game.  Fulham have left Mitrovic out but they scored 5 last week so what’s the rush.  There are a lot of empty seats, usually occupied by Season Ticket Holders – let’s hope they regret not coming and we have a half decent entertaining game at least.

So it’s like a fairly promising start with Stuart Armstrong looking lively as he has done in the last few games, running and beating Tete on the Fulham right but his cross is easily claimed by Bernd Leno when it really needed to be pulled back to the edge of the box.  Then Tall Paul manages to win the ball high and due to lack of support, tries a speculative effort from 35 yards on the angle and Leno just picks it up.  Intent, anyhow.

Fulham have a great chance when Cairney plays the ball square to Wilson the chips into the box with everybody going out for the header, the ball hits Lyanco clearly on the arm and bounces through to McCarthy.  On first glance, I have no idea why this is not given as a penalty as he clearly blocks a goalbound header.

Fulham are taking over now and a crossfield ball sends Tete away on the Saints right and he has all the time in the world to find Wilson, who bursts past Maitland-Niles before setting up Reed and his shot is deflected to Willian, who tees himself up and volleys it past McCarthy but Lyanco has got back to head it off the line. Great defending to be honest and a mad celebration.

Lyanco Celebrates His Clearance

Fulham are keeping the ball well and we are doing absolutely nothing and it’s the same pattern as so many of our home games. It’s really noticeable how deep Walcott and Armstrong are playing which in turn makes Tall Paul completely isolated with Alcaraz trying to get up and support, but we’re not good enough on the ball to enable aim to get there. Theo Walcott on the right is having an absolute beast of a game.

Half-time and that was really fucking boring.  To be honest I’d take Walcott off at half-time and shove Sulemana on and see if he can make anything happen but Selles doesn’t think like that of course so there are no changes.

Ten minutes into the second half and we build up to the right hand side with some decent hold-up play by Tall Paul allowing KWP pick out JWP breaking forward and his ball sends Alcaraz through on Leno one on one, and one of the few good finishers we’ve got at the club sticks in the net and the flag goes up straight away. Close but it’s certainly felt like offside when the ball got through to him.

Straight after that KWP, tries to press gets caught out and Fulham break with Cairney finding Wilson on the right hand side and his ball across the box is read by Lyanco who tries to clear it but it deflects off of the sliding Reed straight to Vinícius who has an open goal. A bit lucky but absolutely fucking typical.  Dead.

KWP tries to make amends by bursting past Willian down the right and slings over a great cross and Tall Paul rises and head is it narrowly over the bar. Lots of power but not much direction but the closest we’ve come to a goal bar the offside.

Having had his first chance and probably feeling a bit better about himself, the big man of course gets substituted along with Walcott, who hasn’t improved.  The boos accompanying Tall Paul off are ridiculous.  It’s not his fault we signed him and it’s not his fault we’re getting relegated as he hasn’t been in the team.  On come Sulemana and Sekou Mara.  Fulham have taken off Vinicius and put on Mitrović and needless to say it’s their sub that works better. Fulham spread play out to the right hand side and Harry Wilson has all the time in the world to measure a cross into the middle to find Mitrović, who bullies KWP out of the way and heads it back across McCarthy and in. Easy.

The rest of the game is an absolute fucking shambles as Selles goes shit substitution mental. Alcaraz and Stuart Armstrong come off to be replaced by Elyounoussi and Moussa Djenepo. It always feels like self-sabotage. I know we’ve lost the game already and we are going down already but it’s like smacking supporters in the face, making them watch those two jokers. As if that’s not enough, off comes AMN to be replaced by Adam Armstrong.

Fulham fail to clear a ball and it drops to Sulemana on the edge of the box and he drags his shot across goal and wide. Fuck all happens for the rest of the game apart from Fulham substitute Solomon cutting in on the left-hand side and trying to curl one into the top corner but McCarthy is equal to it.  Fucking rubbish, again and we are finally mathematically down.

It’s probably about 40% of the original crowd left and the players are just standing around chatting to the Fulham players because that gives a chance for more people to leave before they go on Mike at half past efforts with knowledge the supporters. Down if you do and damned if you don’t I suppose. Personally, I decided at that point it was time to go.

The Fat Lady Sings

A completely useless flaccid performance to confirm our relegation to add to all the other completely useless flaccid performances that we’ve seen.  Fucking hell, what a load of shit that was.  An absolute piss boring first half followed by a second half capitulation and another round of my new favourite game show, “Ladies and Gentlemen, come on down and let’s play Selles Shit Substitutions“…. The object of the game is to make up to 5 substitutions and to make your team worse as many times as possible.  It was good that he brought on Adam Armstrong, Elyounoussi, Djenepo and Mara so they could actually be on the pitch when it was finally confirmed how shit we are.

Not that it really matters but the game itself had the most tediously dull first half with neither team looking like they were ever going to score but Fulham at least looking like a functioning team with some sort of idea how to pass the ball to each other and get it from one end of the pitch to the other. Saints had no clue and passed the ball about until they tried to go forward when they lost it.  We didn’t even try to hit the big target man upfront, hamstrung as we were by Selles defensive tactics yet again as Armstrong and Walcott were clearly reined in. No changes at half-time and the key two minutes of the game was when we had a goal correctly disallowed, closely followed by Fulham taking the lead through Vinícius.  Of course, we were never gonna win at that point to carry on till next week but we weren’t even going to draw either and the rest of the game was absolute fucking wank as Selles played his substitution gameshow and brought on mostly utter garbage. Moussa Djenepo had obviously been on speed at half time because he came on, ran around like an idiot, crashed into people, ran randomly offside and was his usual embarrassing self. Remember, we gave this guy a new contract at the start of the season when we had already watched him be shit for three years.

The second Fulham goal by Mitrović sparked a bit of a stampede for the exits as many people understandably couldn’t be arsed with the last 10 and couldn’t be arsed with the crocodile tears from players pretending to care. We all know the ones that care and there aren’t many of them.

Selles turned up in his milk tray man outfit today, winning in the fashion states and that’s all, as usual. Prick.  He bounced up and down on the touchline berating everybody and anybody all day. Once you notice it, you realise how fucking annoying it must be to be trying to concentrate on what you’re doing on the pitch when you have this fashion model in his first managerial job barking constantly like an irritating Jack Russell from the sidelines.

Fulham won the Championship last year and they were light years better than us. Even before they scored, they were the only team who passed the ball with any intent and they kept finding space because their players made intelligent runs off the ball.  

Sellers of course gave rare start to Paul Onuachu today and once again the team totally failed to play to his strengths. One cross came his way in the second half which he headed narrowly over, but other than that there was next to nothing. Not one cross for him to attack in the opening 50 minutes. We weren’t even playing long balls up from the back. Having said that we didn’t play to his strengths, his first touch is often dreadful, he is incredibly clumsy and very slow and his inclusion today probably explains why Selles shat himself and made Stuart Armstrong and Theo Walcott play as conventional wide midfielders in what was basically a 4-4-2 formation, old style. I guess he did that because Paul is not going to lead the press particularly well. I mean, we needed to be careful today because it wasn’t like we actually needed to fucking win or anything. Selles is a joke and the club right now is like a shit episode of the Muppet show.

It's a shame that he was partly, unluckily involved in Fulham’s first goal today but I was impressed with Lyanco.  He has personal pride in his performance and cares about doing well.  I certainly wouldn’t be against him being around next season and with a run of games, he might be a very good option next year.

Rasmus and Henrik Waiting for Metrics to Work in 2063

Now we are officially down, Sport Republic can stop deluding themselves that everything is okay and can get to work and find people behind the scenes to fill the senior positions that have suffered the exodus. Next season starts on the first week of August so we have 2 and a half months, about 11 weeks.  No time for fucking about, no excuses. Learn from your mistakes, draw a line under it, move on, get things done quickly.  In the aftermath of the game came a statement which didn’t really say much, just a promise that a further announcement was incoming that would say something.  Talk is cheap though.  The statement and the early activity as a result had better be good though because season tickets will be a hard sell next year.  Finding £500 to £800 isn't easy these days (is it Rishi?) and fans will need encouragement.  A decent manager appointment would of course, help massively.  I would suggest that appointing Selles would guarantee selling less than 10,000. 

Life is going to come at Sport Republic fast.  To give yourself an idea of how much work there is to be done before the start of August, imagine for a second that we had this manager and this squad of players in the Championship next season? Where do you think we would finish? I would suggest that if your answer is top half then you are wrong.

Next up is a trip to Brighton for a dead rubber – not for them though because they have Europa League places to chase whereas all we can get out of it is to blood a couple of youngsters to give the travelling fans something to look forward to.  We can’t move in the table, we are finishing last so there is no excuse for not doing so.

Just two dead rubbers to go.  Thank Fuck for That.