{"id":11277,"date":"2025-05-24T09:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T08:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11277"},"modified":"2025-05-26T17:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T16:30:09","slug":"we-should-beat-this-shower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11277","title":{"rendered":"We Should Beat This Shower!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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And so, a strange season littered with a series of serious injuries to key players that required surgery, compounded by a litany of bizarre and punitive referee and VAR decisions, comes to an end with a final match against Southampton at St Mary\u2019s. A place in next season\u2019s Champions League has been secured by the hard fought victory over the Barcodes last Sunday at home and a hat-trick of second place finishes is almost certain unless we lose this game and the Abu Dhabi Creative Accountants FC can rattle in enough goals to make up their goal difference deficit. We absolutely don\u2019t want to see either of those scenarios. We should beat this shower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Southampton have had a truly terrible season – record breaking in the wrong way. Last season they gained the \u2018prize\u2019 of promotion to the top tier by finishing fourth in the Championship, ten points behind \u2018champions\u2019 Leicester and nine behind second-placed Ipswich, and by beating third-placed Leeds United 1-0 in the play-off final. Frankly it is hardly surprising that they have struggled in nearly every game. We should beat this shower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saints have dispensed with two managers during the season. First to walk the plank was Russell Martin who had taken them up but refused to change his playing \u2018principles\u2019 despite one thrashing after another. He was sacked in December after a 5-0 home defeat by the Marshdwellers – surely no-one could survive such an embarrassment! Next for the chop was Ivan Juri\u0107 who reminded me of Harry Worth, both in appearance and interview style (ask your dad!) and the fecklessness of his team, who lasted just over 3 months. He too was sacked after another defeat by the Marshdwellers (just too embarrassing!) – this time 1-3 at the Toilet Bowl. That result confirmed Southampton\u2019s relegation on 6 April, after 31 games, thus breaking Derby County\u2019s 2007-8 and Huddersfield Town\u2019s 2018-19 joint record for the earliest relegation in Premier League history. We should beat this shower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Juri\u0107 has been replaced by Simon Rusk who had been first team coach for under 6 weeks. Despite his relative inexperience, Rusk delivered the Saints\u2019 high water mark of the season with a 1-1 draw against West Ham which helped them reach 11 points to avoid breaking Derby County\u2019s 2007-8 record for the lowest points tally in Premier League history. Over his two spells as interim coach (2 matches between Martin and Juri\u0107 and 6 matches after Juri\u0107 so far), Rusk\u2019s record is played 8, won 0, drawn 3, lost 5. On 10 May, Rusk delivered another high for Southampton with a 0-0 draw against Abu Dhabi Creative Accountants FC that surprised everyone, not least Pep the Perp. We don\u2019t want the Saints to have another highpoint this season. We should beat this shower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 37 games, Southampton sit bottom of the Premier League on 12 points with just 2 wins (1-0 at home over Everton in November and 2-1 away to Ipswich in February – not company we want to keep), and 6 draws. They have scored 25 goals and conceded 84 yielding averages of 0.68 goals scored per game and 2.27 goals conceded per game. We should beat this shower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no idea how Rusk will set up his team to face the Arsenal. Nor can I be arsed to find out. I\u2019m confident that Mikel Arteta has studied them and come up with a plan. Their most familiar player is of course, Aaron Ramsdale. He\u2019s a good goalkeeper and I liked the man but David Raya is clearly an upgrade and I hope we stick 5 past him and that Aaron ultimately gets a move to a decent club that will not be relegated. Southampton have a few other players whose names I recognise: Bednarek, Harwood-Bellis, Walker-Peters (all three are doubts), Sugawara and Stephens are hard-working but \u2018just OK\u2019 defenders but I’ve never heard of Welington, Wood and Bree; Dibling is their young creative hope in midfield but shows his youthful flaws as well as ample attacking energy; he will likely feature alongside three of Fernandes, Aribo, Kalmadeen, Downes, Ugochukwu or even Lallana (who is doubling up as interim assistant manager); up front they will have one of Sulemana, Archer or Onuachu. The latter is their top scorer in the Premier League with 4 goals followed by Aribo with 3 goals. Dibling and three others have 2 league goals. Expect them to play a low block and attempts to break out at speed in the hope of equalling or bettering their result against Abu Dhabi. We should beat this shower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the home fixture which ended 3-1 to the good guys, the visitors surprisingly scored first through Archer after 55 minutes but goals by Havertz on 58 minutes, Martinelli on 68 minutes and Saka on 88 minutes secured all three points and a better reflection of a match in which we had 29 shots at goal (but only 6 on target – reflecting the season as a whole?) vs 8 (2 on target), 19 corners (vs 1) and 59% possession. We should beat this shower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure that Mikel Arteta wants to finish this season with a victory and an assured second-place finish above Abu Dhabi Creative Accountants FC. We have now added Saliba and Timber to our walking wounded and the latter has had a surgical procedure to his ankle (apparently a problem he has been coping with for several weeks). Apart from last week’s return by Kai Havertz none of our longterm wounded can be expected to be available. I think we will see another vignette from the bench for Kai rather than a starting position. I hope that Calafiori, another recent returnee, is capable of 90 minutes. Merino returns from suspension and may get the centre forward position over Trossard or alternatively he may be held in reserve to reinforce the midfield or central defence later in the game, given that we have few experienced options in the latter department. I expect we will see farewell run outs in an Arsenal shirt from KT3, Jorginho and Zinchenko late in the game – thanks, goodbye and good luck, fellas. Thus I anticipate we will see a starting XI similar to the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White Kiwior Calafiori MLS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00d8degaard Partey Rice<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saka Merino Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although St Mary\u2019s has, for reasons I do not understand, rarely been a happy hunting ground for us, we should be confident that we can secure a hat trick of second places in this game. As many sensible people have observed, given the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that have been flung in their path throughout this season, second place in the Premier League and reaching the semi-final of the Champions League are remarkable achievements for this manager and squad. I expect us to keep a clean sheet and win 5-0. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s finish this difficult season on a high!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoy the game, Holics near and far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should beat this shower!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COYG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And so, a strange season littered with a series of serious injuries to key players that required surgery, compounded by a litany of bizarre and punitive referee and VAR decisions, comes to an end with a final match against Southampton at St Mary\u2019s. A place in next season\u2019s Champions League has been secured by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11277"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11277"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11307,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11277\/revisions\/11307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}