Saints At Aston Villa The Verdict Sunday, 24th Apr 2016 10:34 It was a stroll in the park at Villa Park, in a game that Saints never really got into top gear they should really have buried Villa, but gave the home side hope by conceding a couple of sloppy goals. A year ago Saints gave Aston Villa a real pasting at St Mary's and is should really have been deja vu for the Villa as once again Shane Long was the tormentor both by scoring and laying it on for others. The stats show that Saints had 58% possession and that should really have been capitalised on, but it seemed that it was more of a training game for Saints at times. They should have been ahead after a minute when Shane Long hit the bar but this was only a reprieve for a woeful home side and on 15 minutes the Irishman made no mistake in burying a close range header. That should have opened the floodgates but Villa were just about keeping them closed, but it was Long again who prised the open, latching on to a poor back pass he got one on one with Guzan who managed to push him wide, Long could then have tried to get his shot in from a tight angle but he rolled the ball across the box for Tadic to strike home. That should have sent Saints in 2-0 up at the break, but they switched off and Villa reduced the arrears on the stroke of half time. The second half was pretty much the same as the first, Saints had plenty of the ball, the odd chance or two and seemed to have finished it off with 20 minutes left when Tadic got his second, the visiting supporters hoped then that Villa would collapse as the home support held up their protest cards, but that inspired Villa to keep going and not give in. Another sloppy goal made Saints fans remember what their team had done to Liverpool and wondered whether a Villa comeback was on, it never materialised though and in injury time Soares put in a pin point cross for Mane to head home. All in all a game that we won comfortably despite our lapses in concentration, but Ronald Koeman will be disappointed that we never really went through the gears and put them to the sword as we did a year ago. However this game like all of the remaining ones, is more about getting the job done and three points in the bag in each of them and from that point of view it was a case of job done. Shane Long was man of the match for the way he led the line and brought others into play and Dusan Tadic showed why we bought him in the first place, if he did it more often he would be the first name on the team sheet. There is that nagging feeling that this was only Aston Villa and that we should really have won more convincingly, but we have to forget that look at the areas that we did well in and work on those we didn't, I'm sure Ronald Koeman will address that on the training ground this week. The race for a European place is still on, It will be tough for us to finish 6th which is so far the lowest guaranteed spot for Europe. but we have to aim to finish 7th or 8th and then hope that Manchester United win the FA Cup and Liverpool the Europa League. This win though does now guarantee us a top ten finish and that is our first target for the season achieved, this should not be undervalued, we actually havent done this that often in our history and being the third season in a row now equals our best run of consecutive finishes. We now have to go on and firstly guarantee 8th, Chelsea can get 59 points and Stoke 56, so one more win will mean a definite 9th and two more 8th. Those are our nest two targets and then we can look at whether West Ham and Liverpool can be caught. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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