Russell Martin made clear there would be no rousing Churchillian team talk to try to transform Southampton’s ailing season and, frankly, maybe there is nothing anyone can do now to preserve their Premier League status. Gift-wrapping chances, giving up cheap goals and failing to work the opposition goalkeeper is a cocktail that looks increasingly likely to end in relegation. Their shortcomings gnawed at the Southampton manager. “It’s madness, really,” he said.
His team again had moments, as they so often do, usually courtesy of the prodigious 18-year-old Tyler Dibling, but emerged empty-handed. Again, gallingly, for Saints, bottom and eight points from safety, an individual error allowed the opposition to strike, Jhon Durán firing in his first league goal since September to earn Aston Villa successive victories. For Villa, suddenly things are not quite so bad. For Southampton, the immediate outlook is considerably bleaker.
The decisive moment arrived midway through the first half. Diego Carlos floated a ball forward towards Durán and while Nathan Wood looked to have it under control, his grip quickly unravelled. Taylor Harwood-Bellis attempted to step in and help out but Durán pounced on the confusion, the striker overpowering Harwood-Bellis and then shaking a floundering Wood, barging him out of view, before applying the finish.
Durán, handed a first league start of the season in place of Ollie Watkins and one of four changes by Unai Emery, seized his chance. “He’s young, he wants everything quick,” the Villa manager said. “Sometimes [things go] faster, sometimes slower but the most important thing was how he worked during the 60 minutes he played.”
Saints’ back three of Wood, Harwood-Bellis and James Bree, who was replaced by Joe Aribo at half-time, were playing in the second tier last season and such lapses usually go punished in this division.
“It’s a poor goal to concede,” Martin said. “If we concede a good one then we can say ‘OK’ but the goals we’re conceding … it’s not good enough.
“We played some good football, twice we’re through on goal and it comes to nothing. The guys are trying, giving everything. The quality of decision-making in the final third is not quite there.”
After going behind, it always felt a big ask for Saints, the lowest scorers in the league, to mount a comeback. Joe Lumley, who began the season as fourth-choice goalkeeper, had some jittery moments, presenting Morgan Rogers with a chance before Durán opened the scoring.
Dibling was the catalyst for most positive glimpses, driving forward midway through the second half with the Villa substitutes Lucas Digne and Jaden Philogene in hot pursuit before freeing the returning former Villa striker Cameron Archer, who joined Saints in the summer, only for Boubacar Kamara to make a smart block.
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over with the same results, what is madness? “We had one [chance] where Flynn [Downes] is in the middle of the goal, [one when] Cam Archer is in the box … I don’t know what more I can give the players to provide that extra spark. When you’re bottom of the league and you’ve had a season’s worth of moments in a quarter of the season – it’s been interesting to say the least – it’s been difficult to deal with.”
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Sam Amo-Ameyaw, another promising Saints 18-year-old introduced off the bench, sent in a devilish left-foot cross from the right flank with his first touch, but Emiliano Martínez smothered the ball after it bounced invitingly on the edge of the six-yard box.
Would Villa rue their failure to kill the game? Ezri Konsa prevented Kyle Walker-Peters’s deep cross reaching Adam Armstrong at the back post with an unconventional backward header and deep into five minutes of stoppage time Aribo squared for Armstrong, but the deputising Saints captain – in the absence of the suspended Jack Stephens who was sent off for pulling Marc Cucurella’s hair in midweek – failed to connect from close range.
After eight games without a victory, Villa have won twice in four days. After holding on in filthy conditions they can focus on attempting to return to winning ways on the continent, with RB Leipzig next up on Tuesday.
