Southampton 2-2 Newcastle United: Match recap
On Sunday afternoon, Southampton and Newcastle shared the points as they played out an entertaining 2-2 draw at St.Mary’s.
Newcastle had a chance to win the game late on, whereas Saints didn’t do enough to win the game late.
The first chance of the game went to the hosts as Dusan Tadic should’ve done better when a corner ball came his way but his headed effort sailed over the crossbar.
Minutes later Saints rued that missed chance as Newcastle took the lead soon after Christian Atsu had gone close.
Atsu saw a second effort blocked after a decent cross from Matt Ritchie only to see his rebounded effort fall to the feet of Isaac Hayden who finished well first-time from 25 yards. Without a doubt Forster should’ve done better as he failed to recover quickly enough after Atsu’s blocked shot to be able to deal with Hayden’s effort.
Newcastle remained solid and reduced Southampton of any clear cut chances but didn’t do much going forward either before the end of the first half. Nowhere near good enough from Saints and so a reaction was necessary.
And that reaction came when Manolo Gabbiadini scored a brilliant goal just four minutes into the second half. After a decent long ball from Redmond found the Italian in the box, Gabbiadini drove around Manquillo to find space where he placed the ball into the back of the net; the perfect start to the second half.
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This perfect start was extremely short-lived as Newcastle went up the other end and scored just 89 seconds after Gabbiadini’s effort, after Fraser Forster spilled an initial shot from Ayoze Perez who tapped in the rebound from a tight angle to restore the Magpies’ lead.
Dominance from Saints started to build and Kevin Friend awarded them a penalty with 15 minutes of the game still to play after Shane Long was clumsily pushed by Florian Lejune. Gabbiadini got his and Southampton’s second of the game with an extremely powerful penalty that erupted in the net.
Lejune had a good chance to make amends for conceding the penalty when he headed a corner ball towards goal in the 89th minute but his effort was cleared well by substitute Steven Davis, meaning that both sides had to settle for a point.
There was also an incident where a tackle on Nathan Redmond from Deandre Yedlin, who already had a yellow card, could’ve seen the American fullback sent off, however, Kevin Friend didn’t have the correct viewpoint to make such a call.
Saints are back at St.Mary’s in just under a week when they host West Brom late on Saturday in a game that will definitely be seen as winnable from the Saints camp!