Boxing Day really wasn’t that long ago was it? Back in the day, the fixture computer used to
have two teams play the reverse fixture against each other the following week
and part of the problem with that was there everyone remembered who kicked them
the previous week, so the second match invariably ended up with all sorts of
vendettas being settled. No such excuses
these days but then fixture computer does this. It’s not just us of course
because everybody is playing their Boxing Day opponent.
Swansea have more reason the most for not wanting to play their Boxing Day
opponent because they got beat 5-0 at St Mary’s. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since
then down in Abertawe, with PE Teacher Michael Duff finally being permanently
replaced by Luke Williams. Williams, a former assistant of Russell Martin, is
the latest manager tasked with trying to get a result against Russell Martin,
who is of course returning to his former club in what’s sure to be an emotional
day for him, such is the affection with which he obviously holds his time with
the Swans.
In Swansea’s favour of this time is that Saints are entirely different
proposition at home than they are away. Away
from home, we of course struggle to kill teams off and I’m sure that we
would’ve been working on that this week. This would of course be the ideal time
to start with a run of away games coming up now. Even if we do better than we have in our
recent away games, it’s unlikely to be a runaway win like it was at St Mary’s.
Whenever you play any team with a bit of new manager bounce, then you really
have to score the first goal because the work ethic in these teams is usually
pretty strong and giving them a goal start of course will give them something
to hang onto. Put it this way, the game will be made a lot easier if we score first.
Saints made a first signing of the transfer window with the arrival of Joe
Rothwell on loan from Bournemouth. I’m
not going to lie, part of me is a little bit embarrassed that we are taking
players on-loan from fucking Bournemouth, a club which is an embarrassment to
the Premier League given but they’ve had all that money through all the seasons
in the Premier League and are still playing in a shed. Regardless of all that, Joe Rothwell is here
and adds to the squad in the number eight position primarily. It’s a little bit strange on the face a bit
because it’s not a position that we were obviously weak in, even with Joe Aribo
away and doing his thing for Nigeria in the African Nations Cup. Rothwell is
our fifth loan signing of the season which leaves us with a bit of a problem if
we want to bring in another player because one of the loan signings, assuming
any new signing is a loan, won’t be able to sit on the bench on a match day. So
bye-bye Mason Holgate.
The mighty Aribo hasn’t seen much action in the Afcon as yet, making a twenty
minute substitute appearance in the first game and being an unused sub in the
second. Nigeria have four points from two games so far so they are certain of
getting through the group so both Joe and for that matter, Tall Paul will be
with Nigeria for a while yet. Nathan
Tella is free to play for Leverkusen however.
Team news and no real news as we’re unchanged.
Rothwell is on the bench in place of Meghoma and that’s it. Russell Martin manages to sit in the correct
dugout and here we go. There’s been a lot of talk about which of the two teams
was going to dominate possession and it became apparent very, very quickly that
it was going to be us. Down the left
with Manning and a lovely floated cross over the back of the defence to Adams
who slashes at the volley and it skews of his foot and goes well wide. Yes, it
would’ve been goal of the season if he had connected properly but he really
should’ve got a bit closer than that.
Down the left again through Manning and a ball into Adams, who flicks it round
the corner to Stuart Armstrong. Stu cuts
back past a defender and smashes it goalwards, parried out by Rushworth and
Adams has an open goal at the back post.
He’s missed from closer before but not this time. Brilliant goal and a deserved
1-0 lead after six minutes.
Saints are certainly looking to kill this game off early and Swansea try to play out and we win it back on half-way and Adams once again plays a lovely reserve pass to put Fraser through on the left and his effort is saved by Rushworth, spilled out as far as Adam Armstrong who can only hit the goalkeeper with his follow-up effort.
The next 10 minutes so just a procession with Saints holding onto the ball and looking for openings. THB gets his head up and chips it over the left of the Swansea defence to Stuart Armstrong, who exchanges passes with Fraser before rolling the ball across about 4 yards out and there is the very distinctive Will Smallbone ghosting into the box to knock it into the net. I mean Stuart Armstrong is fucking miles offside when it takes the pass back from Fraser but the flag stayed down and that’s the beauty of the Championship and everyone can go mental. Just twenty minutes and we’ve managed to score the mythical second away goal.
We are still not taking the foot off the gas at all and Adam Armstrong manages to almost ball juggle his way through and brings another save out of Rushworth who is then unceremoniously dumped on his ass by Che Adams, playing and acting like the Big Dog again.
Out of literally nowhere, Swansea that attack with Wood playing a decent ball to Ashby who has made his way over to the Manning Chasm. Fuck knows where Manning is but Bednarek’s over there covering, but Ashby skins him and chucks a ball into the box and an offside looking Jamal Lowe and Baz collide, amidst us shouting for handball and it’s knocked back into the mixer by Cullen and Paterson has a free header from 6 yards. Bollocks, that is virtually the first time they’ve got into our half. A quick glance at a replay proves that Lowe is offside and he’s used his arm inadvertently to flick it on, mainly because he completely shat himself when Bazunu came out. We can’t be happy about us getting away with one of the other end and get pissy about this one however. With a shrug instead of a long drawn out load of bollocks at Stockley Park, 2-1.
Swansea might of known at this point that they had poked the bear and the bear was not gonna be very happy with Stuart Armstrong taking a pass from Fraser before knocking it back to Flynn Downes who took aim from the edge of the box and pings it into the far corner of the net via a slight deflection off of ex-Skate Jamal Lowe. Flynn Downes doesn’t celebrate out of respect for Swansea but I forgive him that because it’s a brilliant goal and now we have the two-goal lead that we deserve, again. Half time.
Celebrate, You Fucker!
The second half starts and it’s almost like Saints are trying to manage the game because we seem content to keep possession and we are not particularly stretching the opposition. Swansea to be fair, are pushed higher at the pitch now. We never look as good when we go passive. On the hour mark, Russell Martin somewhat inexplicably decides to take off THB and replace him with Captain Jack, which left the departing player looking somewhat bemused. Yes he had picked up a yellow card earlier in the game taking one for the team but the chances of him getting a second yellow were nearly zero, bearing in mind he was just cruising through this game.
It looks like it’s going to be 4-1 as Adam Armstrong gets put through by Adams and goes round the keeper like prime Brazilian Ronaldo… but this time the flag does go up. Armstrong then showed his new Pirlo-esque creativity, clipping a lovely ball over everybody to Ryan Fraser coming in from the left but the Wee Man gets it all wrong and half-volley’s it miles over, as if he was wearing those wellies that got put on his car roof last week.
More substitutions with Adams and Stuart Armstrong being replaced with Mara and Rothwell. It was at this moment that it all went to shit with Saints playing the ball around the defence and Baz knocking it to Captain Jack, who tried to find Bednarek and instead of that passed it into open grass in the middle of a penalty area and Paterson picked it up and drilled it across from a narrow angle and somehow, Swansea sub Yates managed to hit the post from about an inch out. Well played Jack for fucks sake.
Captain Jack then compounds this by playing an absolute shit, waist-high ball into Smallbone in midfield and once again we lose it to Patino who gets tackled in the penalty area and Paterson again, hammers in a shot and Bazunu reacts superbly to tip it onto the post. Well played Jack for fucks sake.
Yanick Bolasie has come on and despite being 34 now, he still has some tricks up his sleeve and a cross from our left causes absolute havoc and sees Joe Allen’s shot blocked by Bednarek. How the fuck has it come to this? In comes a cross from our right and Stephens is doing a Harry Maguire and is marking the guy Bednarek is marking, completely leaving Manning with two and Bolasie gets up and Bazunu again does brilliantly to block again.
In keeping with us being shambolic, the referee is completely losing the plot now. Jay Fulton obviously fancies himself as a little bit of an enforcer in the Swansea midfield, a bit like Roy Keane but with no ability, blatantly trips Adams in the penalty area which should give us a spot kick but the ref does nothing despite looking straight at it. He’s also quite happy in allowing Harry Darling and Joe Allen to trash through Ryan Fraser in separate incidents. As injury time ticks down Swansea have one more attack with Bolasie blazing high, wide and handsome and that’s your lot.
Sometimes it’s really hard not to have a memory like a goldfish and literally only remember the last twenty minutes of football that you’ve watched or whatever, and forget everything that’s gone before it. The goldfish memory will only remember Southampton being fucking dreadful, basically inviting a very limited opposition to score by basically, giving the ball away every opportunity and playing like eleven strangers. Luckily for the non-goldfish, we had the first hour of the game where we were quite simply brilliant and having said at the start that it wouldn’t be a repeat of the 5-0 scoreline at St Mary‘s, no one could ‘ve really said it was unjustified if we were 5-0 up at half-time.
Make no mistake, for the first half of this game we absolutely murdered Swansea and the ridiculousness of it was that after 40 minutes, the score was 2-1. Che Adams should’ve scored after about four minutes with a volley that he had a lot of time to set himself up for that he slashed wide but once he tapped in the first, we completely dominated but only had Smallbone’s 20th minute tap-in to show for it. Our offside goal was cancelled out by Swansea’s offside and handball goal and ridiculously, the scoring was completed just before half-time with Flynn Downes effort.
I don’t think Russell Martin covered himself in glory with the substitutions. Bringing on Jack Stephens in the hour mark was the catalyst for everything to go to shit with THB having been immaculate as usual, aside from the yellow card he picked up. Stephens passing was erratic and his marking was of the ball watching variety which invited Swansea onto us and the raggedness that he brought onto the pitch, permeated through the rest of the team. Why did Bednarek move from left centre-back to the right when Stephens naturally plays that side? Though Russell Martin appears to have a bit of a blindspot regarding the man he made club captain, the evidence presented today leaves no doubt that he is a significant downgrade on Bednarek and THB, who are Premier League level centre backs. We are where we are in the league because we got the defence sorted out when the THB and Bednarek partnership came together consistently, so not fucking with it would be my advice.
Joe Rothwell came on for his debut and gave the ball away a few times and didn’t really look like he knew where he was supposed to be playing in the system and that didn’t help either. Sekou Mara came on for Che Adams and it’s difficult for a striker when the team is already playing badly and you’re not the sort to make something happen on your own by being strong and getting us up the park. Mara has been ok recently when the team has been on top but if we're not on top, he isn't the sort to help turn things around.
The bottom line is that we won the game, we scored three goals away from home the first time this season and we have gone second in the league. There is also a small fact that everyone keeps going on about that we are now 21 games unbeaten in all competitions and 20 in the league which is a club record for the professional era. The only club record that remains now it’s 24 games unbeaten from the Invincibles of 1897. Rumour has it that the 1897 team will be doing a lap of honour around St Mary‘s if we break that record.
There were some brilliant performances out there in the first half today. KWP, THB, Downes, Fraser, Adam Armstrong to name but a few but the pick of the bunch for me was Will Smallbone, who had what was probably his best game in the Saints shirt. Having lost his place to Joe Aribo recently and reclaimed it because of the AFCON, it must’ve been slightly galling for him to see Joe Rothwell come in to add more competition to that area of the pitch but though Rothwell didn’t pull up any trees on his debut, his arrival may well have had something to do with Smallbone putting in that performance today. Sky Sports for once got it right and named him man of the match.
We also have to mention Gavin Bazunu who though probably could’ve done better with the Swansea goal by mullering the Skate Bastard, pulled off two outstanding saves in the second half to preserve the win and everyone’s sanity because if we dropped any points today having been that dominant in the first half, I think several people including myself would’ve been having all sorts of anger management issues after the game.
Next up is the FA Cup 4th Round uninspiring trip to Watford where I expect a few players will be rested but with the confidence we are showing at the moment, we should have enough to get ourselves into the hat for Round of 16, as thankfully no one calls it. This team will not want to be beaten in the FA Cup and with no midweek games before or after the Watford game, there’s no real reason to take it easy. Bring it on.
Up the fucking 21 games unbeaten Saints.
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