Southampton 3 - 1 NewcastleNewcastle and Rafael Benítez look lost against showboating Southampton
Home team scorersShane Long 4
Graziano Pelle 38
Victor Wanyama 55
Away team scorersAndros Townsend 65
If this is how Newcastle intend fighting for survival, their days in the Premier League are numbered. They have six matches left to do much better than this but do not seem to have any real clue how to go about it. The only positive they could take from this match, apart from a fine goal by Andros Townsend after Shane Long, Graziano Pellè and Victor Wanyama had scored for Southampton, is that four of their remaining games are at home.
On the road they about as useful as a lazy bunch of truckers, this result taking their haul from 17 away matches this season to seven points.
Rafael Benítez had called on his team to play with the boldness that they showed in the second half of last week’s defeat at Carrow Road – as opposed to the fretfulness of the first half – and he compiled his lineup accordingly, with Alexksandar Mitrovic and Ayoze Pérez deployed up front from the start.
How the Spaniard would like to have been able change Newcastle’s defence, too, but he felt obliged to stick with a ramshackle back four, with Vernun Anita remaining at left-back because Paul Dummett was only fit enough for the bench following injury. Southampton read that team sheet as an invitation to attack and accepted it with glee.
Karl Darlow saved a close-range header from Pellè in the second minute but two minutes later the goalkeeper was beaten by Long after being left to fend for himself again, the defence’s attempt to disrupt a one-two between Long and Pellè in the buildup having consisted of little more than a bemused expression on Steve Taylor’s face.
Newcastle briefly raised their chins, and José Fonte had to make a strong block to turn away a shot by Ayose Pérez in the sixth minute. The visitors did not shoot again until the second half. Newcastle had lost 4-0 here on each of their last two visits and a hat-trick of such haplessness soon looked likely.
Jonjo Shelvey, notionally his team’s quarterback, put Taylor in trouble with a half-baked pass in the 12th minute, and Taylor, in turn, underhit a backpass to Darlow. The goalkeeper, at least, was sharp and hurtled out of his box to clear just before Long pounced again.
Dusan Tadic narrowly missed the far post with a curling freekick in the 21st minute, by which time Benítez looked exhausted from all his hollering and gesticulating. For a manager who craves control, the disjointedness of his team, and an attitude from some players that looked like fecklessness, must have seemed a cruel kind of torment.
The travelling supporters resorted to gallows humour before even half an hour had elapsed, chanting “we’re going down” with mock triumphalism.
The most powerful barrier between Southampton and more goals, at this stage, was a creeping tendency to showboat. Long and Tadic both fired off shots from over 30 yards while well-placed team-mates awaited through-balls.
But in the 38th minute the hosts got the goal they obviously sensed would come, and again the feebleness of Newcastle’s resistance was striking. Bad luck compounded the visitors’ disjointedness, as Darryl Jaanmat slipped while trying to intercept a pass by Wanyama. The Dutchman, adding to Newcastle’s defensive casualties, had to be replaced, but only after Dusan Tadic had helped the ball on to Long, whose gauche first touch turned into a pass to Pellé, who drove the ball into the bottom corner of the net.
Benítez could not tolerate Taylor’s performance so replaced the centreback Jamaal Lascelles at half-time. The visitors stayed awake for 10 whole minutes in the second half before nodding off at a Southampton corner, allowing Sadio Mané to pick out Fonte, whose blocked shot rebound to Wanyama. The Kenyan swept the ball into the net to make it 3-0.
Benítez had to bear some of the blame for his team’s ineffectiveness. These players, at the moment at least, are patently incapable of intricacy so there seemed little point in them trying to piece together cunning moves, yet that is what they persisted in doing, rather than the more direct approach that worked in the second at Carrow Road.
Deprived of service, Mitrovic spent most of the match watching in useless dismay.
In the 65th minute, Townsend scored with a superb solo goal, skedaddling in-field from the right before walloping the ball into the top corner from 20 yards. Too little, too late, a sentiment that Benítez might recognise as he contemplates what to do in the time given to him at Newcastle.
Guardian
