So, which of Saints’ excellent defenders line up with JWP in Garth Crooks’ Team of the Week today then? “What a defensive display by Southampton at Stamford Bridge. For a team that has kept one clean sheet in 20 games, they defended against Chelsea as if their lives depended on it. I could have selected any one of their back five against the Blues, they were that impressive, but ****** was the standout defender for me. The ***** international has had a difficult season, but put his body on the line on more than one occasion, organised his defence brilliantly and weathered everything Chelsea could throw at him. Would I give interim manager Ruben Selles the Southampton job permanently? Well, he can't do any worse than Nathan Jones now, can he?” Still guessing? Yes, that’s right, it’s Jan Bednarek.
Garth Crooks though mate. Who appears to have difficulty counting, if he thinks Bedders was our best defender in a back 5 Unless he’s counting Lavia, who was ****ing immense. Bednarek did cover a lot of ground tbf.
True, in my wine drinking days this was a fav of mine. Simply delicious! https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/prunotto-barolo/696675-733744-733745
Yes I was going to mention the back 5 bit too. Bednarek had an excellent game, don’t get me wrong, and I hope he continues to push for a starting place even when Salisu is fit and the difficulties with DCC have been solved one way or another. However, Maitland-Niles was also (mostly) excellent, as was Bella-Kotchap, but the star of the show in that back line surely had to be Perraud?
Yeah, Perraud's commitment was inspirational. Think JWP got man of the match? I'd have probably given it to Lavia, but for once there were a few candidates.
Yep, Lavia was my MOTM as well. But there wasn't a bad performance from anyone. No one rated lower than a 7 out of 10.
Making the most of watching Lavia because he’s going right to the very top. He would improve most of the top 6 already. I am absolutely baffled that City chose to sign Phillips over him
They haven’t needed to play phillips and so likely wouldn’t have played Lavia that much at all. As we have found - back up DM is usually not a position called upon often unless there is an injury. Hence why we have struggled to find someone prepared to fill that spot The interesting thing is that Chelsea have signed 4 central midfielders since the new owners have come in. Granted I am not sure how many are defensive. And then there will be a high profile clamour for Rice and Bellingham. So if we manage to stay up we might just get another year out of him. Edit: Forgot about Caicedo. There are potentially going to be some very high fee central midfielders moving to top 6 sides this summer and I’m not sure any will be getting two in that bracket - regardless of whether they are particularly defensive or not
That isn’t going to be relevant to most of the teams who pay that fee for him. There won’t be many who pay a nine figure fee and then bid for Lavia as well. Sure Chelsea might. But there has got to be a limit to what they can do
