Southampton Continue to Be the Masters of Their Own Demise
Saints are in the bottom three, not because they can’t play good football, or challenge their Premier League opponents, but because they can’t keep it together for 90 minutes. If you’ve visited Saints Marching before then you’ve surely seen the tales of a side, who lose focus and make mind-bogglingly bad mistakes. Give it 10 minutes of madness and any good work previously done is swept aside.
Whether it’s been a difficult test or Southampton have found themselves on top, there is more often than not a spell of head scratching defending. The match against Arsenal was no exception.
After squandering an excellent chance to take the lead through Nathan Redmond, SFC are cut through with relative ease as the Gunners use their pace to get at the Saints. As the cross reaches an unmarked Henrikh Mkhitaryan, he has plenty of time to fire the ball back in. The London outfit get a little bit of luck as the ball finds Alexandre Lacazette, who manages a neat little flick past Angus Gunn.
The defending for the first goal could be forgiven as merely a little underpar, if it were not for the defending of the second. The aforementioned poor play from Stephens and Gunn led to Southampton’s downfall just 11 minutes later.
Ralph Hasenhüttl’s men played well both before and after the goals, but a two-goal deficit is a difficult one to overcome, particularly when making basic errors.
The South coast side had several good opportunities, but ultimately the early lead allowed Arsenal a relatively straightforward afternoon.