Dan gives us his view of the win at Watford, a game that gave us several milestones for this season.
After heartbreak in the EFL Cup Final, Southampton showed lots of character to bounce back immediately after winning a thrilling game of football with Watford away at Vicarage Road 4-3.
Despite winning the game, Saints did go behind after just four minutes when an illegal throw-in from Younes Kaboul led to Troy Deeney volleying Watford into the lead. Deeney showed great composure, skill and accuracy to score a clever goal.
However, despite bossing the play and having James Ward-Prowse’s shot saved by Heurelho Gomes, Saints did find their goal through Dusan Tadic after neat build up play lead to the ball being cleared out to Tadic who smartly finished into the bottom right corner from 18 yards.
But the best goal of the game from the away side fell to Nathan Redmond. Great passing, and team play lead to the winger bagging his fifth goal in a red and white shirt. An acute turn from Ward-Prowse found Tadic who passed to Redmond who finished incredibly accurately to give Southampton the lead going into half-time.
There have been plenty of situations this season when Southampton can’t capitalise on a lead and fall short, drawing or losing a game which they should’ve won; this looked to be the case once again. After forcing plenty of saves from Watford keeper Heurelho Gomes, the away side didn’t look like they would be able to put the ball into the back of the net. Once again this was typical as Watford equalised against the run of play through Stefano Okaka. A nice ball in from Success was successful enough (the puns write themselves) to reach the Italian.
Jack Stephens saved the day for Saints however, when he put off Okaka from scoring a second and giving Watford the lead and the challenge lead to Southampton re-taking the lead. After a tame shot from distance from Sofiane Boufal, Gomes, who was brilliant despite conceding four by the end, spilled the shot into the path of our talisman Manolo Gabbiadini. 3-2, six goals in four games. Lovely for the Saints fans.
But we weren’t done there as Nathan Redmond, who had way too much space on the left-wing, produced a rigorous shot that flew past Gomes for the winger to get his much-deserved brace. Nice fact, Redmond has now scored as many goals as he did for Norwich this season with 12 more games to spare!
However, the thriller didn’t stop there as a small proportion of Watford fans saw their side’s third as Doucoure halved the deficit in stoppage time.
Man of the match: Even though Redmond deserves it as well, Dusan Tadic is the man for me. One goal, two assists. Dusan looked like the player we all knew and loved from the last two seasons who has been a shadow of late. He was very much a part of the action and his passes were key to our goal-scoring. He needs to keep it up as we march on to the end of the season.
Next up is Spurs away and once again, we have another two-week break. After scoring three goals per game in our last three league outings, we have no obligation to have confidence going to White Hart Lane. It reminds me of the build-up to last season’s win there: we won our last two league games with four goals (two 4-2 wins over Villa away and Man City at home) before going there and winning 2-1. Yes, they had the disappointment of losing the title but we could cause an upset. Up the Saints!