Our regulat columnist Dan runs the rule over Saints win over the Hammers and sees plenty of plus points to give us hope going into a busy week.
After a disappointing draw last weekend with Swansea, it was important to go into the game with West Ham with determination to record three points, especially after being gifted with two home games to start the season! Oh, did we do just that! The players were determined from the first minute to get a result, especially as the home goal drought has gone on for too long!
The opponents started well and so did Saints but there was little to split the two sides up until a clever through ball from Nathan Redmond found Gabbiadini who slotted past Joe Hart after just 11 minutes to give Southampton a dream start!
West Ham could’ve equalised through Michail Antonio, who was returning from injury, but his header was comfortably caught by Fraser Forster who, in my opinion, is starting to look a bit more like himself.
The referee had a lot of important decisions to make and I feel like he got most of them right, however, Mark Noble should’ve been sent off for a naughty lunge into the leg of debutant Mario Lemina but the foul was given in the West Ham captain’s favour!
However, West Ham did go down to ten men soon after when record-signing Marco Arnautovic stupidly elbowed Jack Stephens in front of the referee and caused his team to have to play with ten men for more than an hour of the game!
It did go from bad to worse for Southampton’s opponents after domination from the Saints led to ex-skipper Jose Fonte comically pulling down current-skipper Steven Davis in the box to give away a clear penalty! Dusan Tadic converted it and Saints were flying!
The score-line could’ve been greater when West Ham pulled a goal back just before half-time as both Steven Davis and Cedric had decent chances but they couldn’t find the back of the net. A goal out of nothing came for West Ham when Antonio turned and shot and Forster who saved but the rebound fell to Javier Hernandez who tucked the ball away. Whether Forster should’ve done better or not I’m not sure but suddenly what was a comfortable advantage became cautious.
Southampton did attempt to restore their two-goal advantage but their efforts weren’t enough to make the score-line 3-1 and soon enough West Ham, with 10 men, came from two goals down to equalise after a perfect cross found the head of Diafra Sakho who’s attempt was well saved by Forster but again, the rebound fell to Hernandez who got his second of the match.
Home fans could complain about throwing away a two-goal cushion with a man advantage but the important thing was that the manager showed intent by bringing on both Charlie Austin and Shane Long and so did the players who kept the ball in West Ham’s half but were struggling to create good chances even though both Gabbiadini and Redmond had seen second-half efforts from outside of the box hit the crossbar.
But then, a stupid push from Zabaletta on the back of Yoshida deep in added time earned Southampton their second penalty of the match. Substitute Austin stepped up to take it and slotted past Hart to earn Saints their first three points of the season right at the death!
Overall, I think the performance was good but not necessarily as good as last weekend which is obviously strange as we drew last weekend and won this weekend. There were some sloppy passes.
At times it was nerve racking but shooting accuracy and shot conversion was much better and at times we really made it difficult for West Ham. Bertrand didn’t seem his usual self and Stephens didn’t have his best of games in my opinion but Lemina showed that he could be a really good partner for Romeu and Steven Davis also played well further up the pitch. However, my man of the match was Maya Yoshida. The man tackled, passed and intercepted well alongside winning the last-gasp penalty for Saints!
Now we need to look ahead to Wednesday’s cup game and, even though the team will look very different, we should go into the game with confidence and hope to have a similar run in the competition like last season!
Relying on Huddersfield’s result against Newcastle to tell me what to expect next weekend, I think that we will have a very good chance to have an unbeaten start with a potential seven points from nine before the international break; happy days