It’s January, everyone’s skint after Christmas and the country is covered in various stages of slush. So where better to head on a Monday night than to the dull hamlet of Southampton tucked away on the south coast, our furthest away game possible.
The armchairs really aren’t going to care too much about being ripped and who can blame them. And anyway, why would anyone want to visit Southampton? But more of that later.
Our recent run came to a bit of a stumble when Swansea got their tactics spot on and smothered the living sh*t out of any sort of competitive game last time out. Fair play to them, it reminded me of an early Moyes team and it’s a good indicator about how teams are sh*tting themselves at the thought of coming to play us.
The top of that table is incredibly tight, no one is wanting to put a consistent run together. That tittish furore you can hear is the kopites moving three points behind us on their unstoppable quest to second place. Until someone crap beats them in the near distance anyway.
In the reverse fixture at Goodison we endured one of the most cringeworthy sets of blerts we’ve have the misfortune to host who soon shut up and sat down as we moved into third gear for twenty minutes and blew them away. Just like that. At least their unconvincing Green Street wannabe fans had the chance to have a look around our quite wonderful city and see why the cruise liners want to jib Southampton off and come to visit Liverpool instead. It’s not much competition is it really? Like choosing Aruba or Astana for your holidays.
It’s our turn for the cultural exchange as we provide some lids for a civic city centre that is good only for imagining what England may have looked like if the Red Army flooded Europe last century. The dull as dishwater “city†is as communist as one can get in its architecture and people. It should be thankful that it neighbours another unfortunate dump in Portsmouth so that some of the attention is taken off it. I can’t help but think what a waste of southern coast and weather.
The football club have f*cked this preview right up. I had planned to rip into the kopite Curly Watts manager before they jibbed him right off a couple of days ago replacing him with some black eyed Argentinian and the promise of intricate systems. It was like letting those pent up frustrations getting the better of you and dropping the plain yet dedicated wife for a Spanish girl with the funky hips who you know will be a volcano in bed. Unfortunately you also know it’s not going to last is it? One cock can’t satisfy her despite your best intentions and it’s only a matter of time before she adds Paco as a friend on Facebook and you just know he’ll going to licking her clean out in ways your Anglicised blood never could.
Back on track, sorry, this has created a backdrop of discontent as Adkins was well liked after successive promotions and recovering from a poor start to stabilise the club and get them out of the relegation positions. Sure the **** did like the sound of his own voice a little too much but his teams did try and take games to the opposition with some success. It’s worth remembering that Adkins did however spend seven million pounds on some plum called Jay Rodriquez like. It will be interesting to see how they come out on Monday in lieu of all this.
A lid called Pochettino has took over and the media are all dead excited because he doesn’t speak good English. The Daily Mail will have a petition to deport him by April latest. It must be weird though when your boss doesn’t speak the same language as you. It reminds me of a Welsh mate of mine who asked me for some linguistic tips for seducing a Spanish girl he’d met on holiday and added him on Facebook. I asked him how he was communicating with her now and he said sometimes he uses google translate and sometimes they just converse in smilies. He’s refused to copy and paste one of these smiley conversations but I crave it more than anything on this planet.
In terms of players they’re not all that. There´s a few who on form could be a pain in the arse but they’re in the process of trying to improve their squad for it to stay in the Premier League and to put it bluntly: we need to shoe them from the first f*cking minute.
Up front they’ve got a fat kopite called Ricky Lambert who’s good in the air and not bad on the ground to be fair to him. He gave Chelsea some problems as a second half sub midweek. Due to the prevalent grock element of his game he’s going to having the sensual scent of Distin all over him on Monday.
Southampton play that three behind a main striker system that’s seems en vogue these days so you can expect to see record signing Gaston Ramirez in there with Rodriguez and Puncheon providing the width.
Schneiderlin gets around the pitch a lot in the middle and will match the workrate of anything we do so we need to use our superior passing and footballing as we did to good effect in the reverse fixture. It will come a game too early for the wasp like Lallana so either Davis or Cork will play in the middle too.
The defence is poor, it’s performing better than what it was early season and it may be boosted by the new 4m signing of that Forren lad who Moyes watched a couple of times. Clyne and Shaw are the full backs and both are not bad at all, the type of full backs you want kept in their own half rather than being allowed to push on in ours. But really we need to get right into them as they’re simply not at all that when the pressure is on. There’ll be goals for both teams in this in all probability. Their keeper is Boruc at the moment, once of Celtic sort of fame.
I can´t see there being too many changes from against Swansea for us. Obviously the two who´d we´d like back most are Mirallas and Gibson but while the former may just make the bench, the former is still some time off.
The chances just aren´t dropping for Jelavic right now. It´s still probable that he´ll click before the season is out, I just hope it´s sooner rather than later. This team with is goals won´t be bettered by many. Good to have Fellaini back as the big brute is a threat is many different ways. Against this defence the pair of them should get some joy.
As said before Mirallas will be on the bench at best so Anichebe will probably continue to play down the right for which many of you will have various opinions on it. On the left will be Pienaar and in the middle I´m not so sure. Neville is still lurking about so it´s him or the German along with Osman. The middle will be a battle and very tight in there so whoever plays will need to have their wits about them.
Heitinga is said to be approaching fitness but it will matter little as Jagielka and Distin will start, fresh from a first clean sheet since September. That would usually mean were troubling the bottom of the table but this is a different Everton beast who have got a few goals in them. Baines will have benefitted from the extra days rest after carrying a knock for the last couple of games and it was delightful to see Seamus Coleman v.3 causing carnage on the right hand side against Swansea. We may have stumbled on a solution to a long standing problem in that position. Howard will play in goal.
So there it is, a Monday evening game with plenty of ingredients. It won´t be easy but it shouldn´t be making us twitch like an oil worker in Northern Africa. This is exactly the type of game we have to turn up for get the job done, no hard luck stories, just a magnificent casual bumming of the opposition and their entire beings.
There´ll be tedious chants for their previous manager and a whole array of sh*te trabs on display but in the middle of it all are an Everton team who can do good things this season if they really want it.