Adrian: Little to do and no chance with the goal. Did his best to distribute well and set things up 6
Tomkins: Off injured in the second half. Defended well but still not the answer going forward 6
Reid: Decent afternoon and saw our best chance – a header – well saved 7
Collins: Steady and competent enough. Never seriously under pressure 6
Cresswell: Probably our best performer and the most creative attacking force 8
Noble: Worked hard – as ever – couple of clumsy tackles – better than most in poor team display 6
Song: Awful in first half – pushed forward in second but despite seeing plenty of ball couldn’t make it count 4
Antonio: Certainly not the non stop action we’re used to…all a bit stop/start 5
Payet: Sadly still not at anything like his best but remains a threat at set pieces 5
Moses: Couple of decent runs but no real lasting effect on anything 6
Valencia: Lightweight and must take some responsibility for the goal although a collective problem 5
SUBS: Carroll: Worked hard but no real service 6
Byram: Looks the real deal but picked up yellow for poor challenge 6
Emenike: Hardly fair to judge him on 17 minutes – one decent headed chance went wide and was busy 6
l guess certain players will always garner more favourable ratings than others, regardless of actual perfomance.
Collins didn’t do anything wrong today and was his usual no nonsense self.
On the other hand Reid was responsible for the goal we conceded, since we were playing a back 3. He was out of position to start with, and so failed to snuff out the danger as it developed, and between him and Valencia, should have cleared the ball before it fell to Yoshida.
Noble as usual (because he lacks pace), made late and clumsy challenges which he was lucky to get with. And as usual, (when circumstances dictated that we should take the bull by the horns), he made plenty of ineffective sideways and backward passes in our own half where we could do no harm, which suited Southampton’s game plan perfectly well and played right into their hands.
On the other hand, Song (who made more interceptions defensively than Noble), tried to take the game to Southampton by making forward runs and passes, which is what as the circumstances dictated, was required. He tried to shoot, and tried to set up others. In my book, he Definately made a bigger contribution both defensively and in offence, than the golden child.
And to be fair to Antonio and Moses, they were rendered ineffective by Saint’s 5 man midfield. There was no width and no channels for them to run into. They never got the space that speed merchants need to operate.
I thought Song was ok, I would have given him a 6, I thought Antonio was our player that tried the hardest, once again a slow start, atrocious defending for the first goal, then despite what Slav says about us being better for 3 quarters of the game he is wrong, once they had scored Southampton played a tactical game, they know the only way we can beat them is on the break so they didn’t overcommit unlike other teams we have played against and they exposed the shortcomings of the team in our lack of ability to break down a stubborn defence. With the ball all match we were ponderously slow two many short horizontal passes with no thought in them, in any sport if you want to open a stubborn defence you do it by moving the ball quickly between players that are already on the move and with the goal of changing the shape of the opposition, we seem completely devoid of players that are willing or capable enough to do that. It was far too easy for Southampton to keep their shape and all too often when we did get behind their defence the final ball was not good enough and there were not sufficient numbers in the box to maximise the chance of a goal. It was nearly as poor a performance as we had against Watford, in the second half when they were down to 10 men instead of taking Antonio off he should have taken one of the centre backs off so we had more goal threats on the pitch. If we had won this game or even drawn we would be sitting pretty for a European place, instead we were undone by giving away a soft goal and with our European hopes in the balance. The team better make amends against Liverpool on Tuesday, drop Song or Noble if Kouyate isn’t fit and get Obiang in at least he will make a few challenges or hopefully we might have Lanzini back to play a part. The team looks like team relying on Payet to do it all and Slav better give them a wake up call, they need to up their game and help him out instead of sitting back expecting him to bail them out.
I agree on Song. I think he may be being judged on a different scale to other players. On the others, I can’t remember anything Moses did that hurt Saints. I know he was injured, and that we should give him time to get match fitness back. But he really hasn’t done anything since Man City away..