An Alex Pearce goal wasn’t enough for 10-man Saints to get any points from yesterday’s game as Chris Iwelumo and David Jones gave 13-man Wolves the points in a controversial but thoroughly entertaining game at St Mary’s.
Saints made two changes from the side beaten by Bristol City last week, with Jason Euell and Morgan Schneiderlin replacing Jake Thomson and Paul Wotton in midfield. Wolves started with Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Chris Iwelumo up front, leaving fellow strikers Andy Keogh and self-confessed Saints fan Sam Vokes on the bench.
Saints started brightly with Oscar Gobern and Rudi Skacel linking up well on the left and Adam Lallana and Jack Cork doing likewise on the right. The visitors, six points clear at the top of the table before the game, barely had a touch of the ball in the opening exchanges apart from clearances. However, with their first foray into the Saints penalty area, they opened the scoring. Michael Kightly’s far-post cross was cleared to relative safety, but Carlos Edwards worked himself a bit of space and put in a deep curling cross. The defence had stepped up to play for offside, and Iwelumo found himself unmarked 8 yards out to head into the far corner. This is the first of many decisions made (or not) by the officials that could certainly be argued to be “contentious” at best. My spies in the Kingsland stand told me after the game that Iwelumo was “miles” offside, so I’ll be waiting for the highlights later with baited breath…
As I mentioned in my match preview on Friday, Wolves have opened the scoring on 9 occasions this season, and on every occasion they went on to win the game. With the visitors having opened the scoring for a tenth time this season, Saints were obviously going to be facing a battle. However, battle was exactly what they did. David McGoldrick and Jason Euell exchanged a neat one-two which gave McGoldrick a clear sight of goal but Carl Ikeme pulled off a decent save although arguably McGoldrick probably should have done better.
Wolves had a fantastic chance to double their advantage when a flowing move (on reflection, probably their only such move in the entire game) which started with Michael Mancienne at the back and involved Stephen Ward, Ebanks-Blake and Edwards, with the ball finally falling to Kightly who had time and space to pick his spot, but that spot was inexplicably wide of Kelvin Davis’ right-hand post.
The visitors weren’t to be denied a second goal for long, though. Iwelumo flicked a header wide to Edwards whose clever pass found David Jones and after taking a good first touch, he hit a left-foot shot past Davis into the far corner.
Frustration was creeping into the home supporters at this point, with a lot of dissatisfaction and outright abuse being hurled in the direction of the directors’ box. The players, however, appeared to be focussed on their task. Lallana forced a corner and took it himself and found Alex Pearce completely unmarked on the six-yard line to power a header past Ikeme to bring Saints back into the game. Wolves manager Mick McCarthy would have been absolutely livid with the slack marking, particularly given that Pearce had scored an identical headed goal from a corner only two weeks ago at Preston. Chris Perry also scored a similar goal against Birmingham at the start of the season - it makes a pleasant change for us to be scoring rather than conceding such simple goals.
Jones had Wolves’ only other real chance of the first half, hitting a dipping volley from 25 yards which Davis did well to acrobatically tip over the bar. McGoldrick then created a bit of space for himself just outside the area and spotted Ikeme off his line but got the lob attempt completely wrong and the ball flew comfortably over the bar.
The real turning point of the game came two minutes before half-time. Jason Euell and Richard Stearman both slid in for what appeared to be a fair 50/50 challenge, with Stearman coming off worse from the tackle. Referee Lee Mason blew for a free-kick to Wolves but then to the amazement (and considerable anger from the majority of those inside St Mary’s) produced a red card for Euell. From my seat in the Itchen stand it appeared to be an absolutely outrageous decision and if the TV highlights allow people to draw the same conclusion as I did at the time, I’d expect an appeal against the decision.
The half-time whistle blew soon after, to choruses of boos from the Saints fans, not particularly at the scoreline or performance of the players, but because the referee (and, arguably, his assistant on the Kingsland side for Wolves’ first goal) had produced what appeared to have been a wholly unjust red card which seriously diminished the chances of Saints getting anything from the game.
Saints made a change at half-time with Bradley Wright-Phillips replacing Oscar Gobern in a like-for-like swap on the left wing. Wright-Phillips was immediately involved as he danced past two defenders but then scuffed his shot wide from long range.
Jan Poortvliet was forced into a second change almost immediately after Olly Lancashire was on the end of a very late challenge by Carlos Edwards which went unpunished. Lancashire was replaced by the experienced Chris Perry. Arguably, that challenge was actually worse than the one that Euell was sent off for, which only served to increase the level of frustration and anger from the home fans. However, the apparent injustice seemed to galvanise both the fans and the players as they tore into the league leaders for the majority of the second half.
Wright-Phillips had another effort from the edge of the area after good work by Cork and Lallana down the right, but his shot rebounded off the inside of the post and away to safety. The best chance Saints created came shortly after. Wright-Phillips’ cross was met by McGoldrick and Ikeme together, and the ball ran loose to Lallana who attempted to guide the ball over two covering defenders and into the empty net, but somehow he managed to lift the ball over the goal.
Saints were starting to get more and more frustrated with decisions that were going against them. Andrew Surman picked up a booking for disputing a decision by the linesman on the Kingsland side when he had dribbled away from Ward but the flag indicated the ball went out of play. Shortly afterwards, Rudi Skacel also saw yellow when he challenged Kevin Foley by the corner flag. There appeared to be little contact, if any, but Foley went to ground and the referee gave the free-kick. Skacel showed his clear disgust with the decision and found himself in the book.
Lee Mason appeared to be completely losing the plot with 15 minutes to go when he failed to award Saints a free-kick for a blatant trip on Surman on the edge of the area, and seconds later gave Wolves a free-kick for a foul by Schneiderlin, yet somehow Mason produced a yellow card for Wolves captain Karl Henry. Shortly afterwards, he then gave Wolves a free-kick for an identical challenge to the one that wasn’t punished at the other end!
Rudi Skacel then played McGoldrick in through the left channel and his run was abruptly ended by Mancienne in the area. A penalty seemed the obvious decision, but then everyone remembered the complete farce that they were dealing with, and the obvious decision therefore was for the referee to completely bottle making another big decision.
After 4 minutes of injury time, the referee blew the final whistle to more boos, all aimed at him. To their credit, most of the fans stayed behind to applaud the players off the pitch after a gutsy performance, and rightly so. They also stayed to make sure Lee Mason was left in no doubt as to the opinion over his performance.
In summary, I can’t fault the majority of yesterday’s performance. It would have been very easy for the players to crumble both at 2-0 down and also when Euell got sent off. It speaks volumes for the character that the young players appear to be developing that they completely outplayed the league leaders with only ten men for 47 minutes. However, the bare statistics will say that we lost 2-1 and collected no points from the game.
I’ll reserve the final word for today’s referee, Lee Mason. I’ve seen some incompetent performances in the years I’ve been supporting Saints, but I don’t think I’ve witnessed anything quite so inept for a very long time. The FA have made a big deal about their “Respect” campaign, suggesting that a lot of the criticism aimed at the men in black has been unjustified. Unfortunately, yesterday’s “performance” is a perfect case study demonstrating why referees fail to get the respect they want. It’s not a case of players and managers not respecting the referees and the difficult (but well-paid) job they do - when the game starts there is respect, but while some claim respect has to be earned, I would actually argue that respect has to be maintained by the referee. Mason lost the plot yesterday, and his bizarre (to say the least) decision-making lost him the respect of the players.
Things don’t get any easier for Saints as we now face a trip to free-scoring Reading. Backed by nearly 4000 Saints fans, however, who knows what might happen. Perform like we did for most of the game yesterday and I think we’ve got a chance of getting something out of the game.
