Saints show they are capable but not quite there
Previous meetings between Saints and Manchester City have been mostly one-way traffic – our players always putting in a shift but often unable to half the inevitable suffocation of City’s relentless possession football.
There were some moments yesterday that still showed how Pep Guardiola has his team tuned into this style but, for much of the game, Saints stood up and held their own.
According to whoscored.com, Saints had 48% of the ball possession during the 90 minutes at St Mary’s – a big step forward given that City often dominate with three quarters of the time on the ball.
Saints are less of a possession based team of course, but their own style worked really well on the day. It was just that final bit of quality that was not good enough to grab a point.
They attacked using direct passing at times. Jannik Vestergaard was key in this, and he and his teammates know exactly what positions to be in to carry out Ralph Hasenhuttl’s style to near perfection these days.
The hosts pushed City back and made them work so hard for their win that a rare occurrence was seen – Guardiola’s side running down the clock and heading for the corners in the latter stages.
Huge encouragement for Saints, but as the next slide shows, fine margins are brutal…