Southampton 2-1 Bournemouth: Dusan Tadic helps Saints to vital win
By Chris Hughes
Southampton recorded a famous victory this afternoon, with a Dusan Tadic brace helping to get the Saints within to a point of safety.
The supporters will now anxiously be watching this evening’s fixture between Swansea and Chelsea, desperate for the Blues to do the Saints a favour by dispatching the Welsh side.
Assuming they do, the Swans will remain on 33 points with the Saints on 32, making for a tense three games between now and season’s end.
In front of a near capacity crowd at St. Mary’s, Dusan Tadic enjoyed perhaps his best performance of the campaign, grabbing a brace either side of half-time to tally up his third goal in his last four matches.
Having won more points from losing positions than any other side, the supporters were nervy when Josh King leveled the scores right before the interval, cancelling out Tadic’s goal from around 20 minutes before.
The win is perhaps the Saints’ biggest of the season, handing them a lifeline with Everton their next opponents. The Toffees won themselves today too, dispatching Southampton’s relegation rivals Huddersfield 2-0.
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The game started tensely with Hughes having made a couple of changes from the defeat in the cup to Chelsea, including the controversial decision to replace Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg with Mario Lemina.
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However the Gabonese midfielder helped orchestrate the opening goal to defy his critics, with a superb run on the counter attack before delaying his pass no more and sublimely finding Tadic who stroked home well.
The Saints remained positive but lost their focus right before the interval, with Josh King scoring a tap-in at the far post after the corner was deflected towards the Norwegian.
Whilst Alex McCarthy deserves plenty of praise for some match-saving pieces of goalkeeping, Tadic will take all the headlines as he put the Saints back into the lead not long after the break.
The Serbian’s decision-making has been cause for criticism all campaign, but with an impressive Charlie Austin making a dummy run and Redmond also occupying his defender, Tadic was able to send a sweet strike towards goal which proved too much for the Cherries’ Asmir Begovic.
Despite still being in the relegation zone, the win is absolutely massive for the club and could just be a turning point. As previously mentioned, if Chelsea can beat Swansea tonight and the Saints can equal the Welsh side’s result next weekend, they could leapfrog them when the two teams meet in the penultimate game-week. That’s all a big if at this point however.