For 80 minutes Saints fans dared to dream that their team would pull of a surprise victory at Old Trafford, The Theatre of Dreams, but then in the last 10 minutes of the game it turned into a nightmare, but was it all of our own making ?
Southampton roared on by a voiciferous 2,400 fans on a cold Thursday night dominated Manchester United for well over an hour, they hushed the home fans and then shocked them by scoring just before half time.
In the first half and the first phase of the second we were dominant, we played as a team and battled, Big Les Ugochukwu was superb, Kamaldeed Sulemana looked like a weight had been taken off his shoulders and scared the home side defence.
As the hour mark passed we were good value for our 1-0 lead and we looked likely to double it on several occasions, but then the tide of the game slowly turned as United started to try to turn the game around.
But the question has to be our substitutions, Tyler Dibling had been big and strong and lead the line well, but with just over 25 minutes to go we needed fresh legs and it was no surprise that Will Smallbone came on and for a while nothing changed, United huffed and puffed and were creating chances, but we were dealing with them.
On 73 minutes came another change, off went Fernandes, again he had worked his arse off and having already got a yellow card, you could see the sense in not risking him getting a second, on came Adam Armstrong who will work hard both going forward and defending.
But the second sub was strange, Joe Aribo was having a superb game, did he need to come off ? I would have said not, but we were now a team that was lacking the direction that it had for the first 65 minutes.
United’s equaliser was a blow, but we didn’t need to press the panic button, why did we take off Jan Bednarek, an experienced campaigner and a good player to have in the final stages of a game and bring on Nathan Wood who has little experience at this level, but if that was a poor selection by Ivan Juric, what was the point of bringing on Tall Paul Onuachua, perhaps to have him hold up the ball, but that didn’t happen, but we took off perhaps our best player in Big Les Ugochukwu, both he and Bednarek had been big and strong, the manager had changed the dynamic of the team and United sensed it.
Just as we thought we might take away a point, they scored on the cusp of 90 minutes and to rub it in scored again 4 minutes later, we had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory or at least a draw.
But we know that we are’t going to stay up, now if just about getting past 11 points and re building for next season, nothing else, so from that point this game achieved part of that, Saints fans saw that their team can play football, it can take on the best clubs and give them a game, but we are still shooting ourselves in the foot.
After the game in the pubs of Manchester, Saints fans had were not concerned, they had seen their team show spirit, they had restored some of the price to both the players themselves and the fans, there was nothing gained points wise, but we still took some steps forward.
The news that Saints are about to finally appoint a director of football, some 10 months after Jason Wilcox left, is good news, Johannes Spors seems to have the right pedigree, why have we not done this sooner,ok we can’t change the past, but we can change the future and perhaps in a year or so’s time this will be seen as the turning point.