Dan gives us his thoughts and reflections on a great day out at Wembley which was only one thing short of being perfect, a win !
Where do I start? Maybe with the fact that being able to write about Southampton FC being in the final of the League Cup. Or that we lost the game because of the worst decision of the season at the biggest match so far in English football. Either way, I am so proud of my football team and want to share my thoughts on the match and reflect on what has been a memorable journey despite the bump in the road at the very end.
First off, I’d like to summarise my thoughts on the match in general. Let’s put it this way, the best team lost after Jose Mourinho said in his press conference that the best team will win. We were the best team for long spells in the game and our players, fans and club staff (includes Claude Puel) wanted so much more than United and their fans that had made the long journey from Cornwall (if you don’t get the joke, their stands were full of glory-seeking "fans”).
However, the players were at fault at time for lapses in concentration and being hyped up due to the occasion; for example, Oriol Romeu’s unnecessary challenge that led to Ibrahimovic’s free-kick. Fraser Forster is another player who won’t want to look back at the Swede’s two goals as they would’ve been saved by the goalkeeper who ruled over the St.Mary’s faithful a year ago as chants of "England’s number one!” filled the stadium after clean-sheet upon clean-sheet and save upon save. Fraser did make some necessary saves to be fair, but didn’t live up to the expectation needed of the team if they were to come out as winners.
Our pattern of play and performance was simply gorgeous to watch. The formation with Gabbiadini up top worked a treat at Sunderland and at Wembley. Crisp passing, dominating possession, plenty of well-worked chances. We did it all. And to be able to say that we came back from two goals to equalise in a major cup final against the best United team in the last few years deserves unlimited praise. But with a bit more experience in the squad and stronger mentality, we could’ve gone on to get a third (fourth if you count our wrongly disallowed goal) and win the game.
That brings me on to my next point: experience. Half of our players hadn’t featured in a major cup final before and thus were inexperienced in the field whereas United have players as young as nineteen years of age who have played in three.
Their squad is full of players who know these occasions well and how to handle them alongside a manager who has a wide range of titles to his name. When they were tired and we should’ve capitalised, we didn’t make the correct substitutions and allowed them to still be in the game. One moment of a lack of concentration cost us as United’s most experienced player knew that he could get his moment that Monday’s newspapers would all be making headlines about. Hopefully this will act as a learning curve for our players and we won’t have to wait 14 years for another final and can bring home some silverware soon.
Tactics always play a huge part in football, especially cup finals. We were tactically strong up until the point when Puel had to make substitutions. Our substitutions were Boufal for Tadic, Long for Gabbiadini, and Rodriguez for Davis. All of these substitutions came after the 75th minute which, in my opinion, was too late. With a super-sub like Shane Long on the bench with extreme pace, he could’ve bullied an exhausted United defence which had played three games in a week. However, Puel chose to make changes with just 15 minutes to go and paid the price. Boufal did very little and Redmond had no reason to stay on if Gabbiadini, who scored twice, was taken off even though he looked tired.
I don’t want to dwell too much on the negative aspects because as a union we were unbelievable. Every football fan will feel for us as our team played the better football and had more desire to win the game. But our fans stole the show. There are plenty of images which contrast the two sets of fans; United in black without any atmosphere and Saints fans waving their scarves and singing, visibly in red and white. It was a memory I’ll never forget and it’s bitter sweet that I saw my team