Southampton 0 v Newcastle 1 January 24th, 2023. League Cup semi-final 1st leg

Wiltshire Mags present:

Dafs and Veitchy

Report by Dafs

With Browner now unavailable to attend, Veitchy accompanied me down to Southampton in the car instead straight after work. The two tickets purchased in a pub at Palace a few days earlier were in separate seats. I picked the ticket a few rows back behind the goal and Veitchy was up at the back left enjoying the banter with the home fans

West Quay Shopping centre car park is the place to park, £2 for the evening and a half hour walk to the ground was perfect. We parked up at 7pm for a 8pm kick off, so straight to the ground for a pre-match beer. By the sounds of it Yates’ was ridiculously busy and we wouldn’t have got served, besides there was a good gathering of fans making their way to the ground for 7.30pm ish anyway. Some of which looked a little worse for wear having probably been on the drink all day on coaches etc.

We were getting nervous now, a semi-final, so close to Wembley, please god don’t go and do Newcastley things like before and mess it up. A Positive start by Newcastle in the first half which we thought led to a Joelinton goal, only for it to be ruled out for handball. Looked very hard done by when watching the replays in the concourse at half time.

Southampton looked more up for it in the second half and had a 20 minute spell where they pressed high and forced Newcastle into lots of sloppy passes and basic errors, whilst creating decent chances for themselves in the process. We had Nick Pope to thank once again with a string of fine saves. During this period Joelinton ballooned the ball high over the bar from only 6 yards. Everyone in the away end couldn’t believe what they had seen, Was it going to one of them nights?

Then suddenly, with a couple of substitute changes (Isak for Wilson & ASM for Willock) the game changed. Isak worked superbly down the right to turn the Saints left back and cross for Joelinton (3rd time lucky!) to tap home the winner to ignite the limbs in the away end.

Within two minutes, Southampton had equalised (or so they thought), Ex-mag Adam Armstrong giving it the biggun as he bundled home from a few yards, however VAR ruled that Armstrong had used his hand. Phew! still one nil. Southampton seemed to lose their heads after this with a series of yellow cards, one in particular resulted in a red card for Southampton’s centre back after a great run by ASM resulted in him being hacked down on the edge of the box.. Jacob Murphy amusingly waving bye bye to him as his left the pitch. We held on to the 1-0 scoreline and on balance of play probably just about deserved the one goal lead going into next weeks 2nd leg home tie. Only one Wiltshire Mag in attendance for that game so far (Ahem!)

A Slow car journey home followed, heavy traffic going out of Southampton, coupled with the thickest fog ever seen meant eventually arriving back home in Wiltshire at around 1am. Totally worth it though.

90 minutes away from Wembley and the nerves are kicking in already, let’s hope I have a happy report to write this time next week after the second leg. I can already taste that first pre-match pint in the Strawberry next week.