Dan gives us his take on a magical day at St Mary's where Saints not only won but recorded their highest ever Premier League position, points total and oh yes qualified for the Europa League as well.
On the final day of the season it was Southampton’s day as they beat Crystal Palace 4-1 with other results going their way to secure a Europa League spot for next season.
Palace put a good performance in for a good majority of the game and made me nervous, especially in the first half before the 1st goal. The visitors had some good chances but so did the Saints.
Fraser Forster made some key saves to keep the score 0-0, sending a message to Roy Hodgson to say that he should play in the European Championships.
The first goal came just before half-time when a mistake from Palace keeper, Speroni lead to Sadio Mane scoring in possibly his last game for Saints with a possible move to a "bigger” club, personally I think he might stay now with United not qualifying for the Champions League.
In the second half the second goal was needed for Saints to give breathing space. Palace put some pressure on Southampton but substitute, Graziano Pellé headed Saints to a two-goal lead from a Cuco Martina cross.
Only a couple of minutes later Palace gave Southampton fans the worry from earlier before as former Saint, Jason Puncheon scored a spectacular goal, similar to Andros Townsend’s for Newcastle a month ago. I was especially nervous with the news of Stoke equalising against West Ham, rooting for us to hold on.
Goals still came for Saints when Sadio Mane was taken down in the box and Ryan Bertrand converted from the penalty spot to score his first of the season, his last goal in fact was against Crystal Palace on Boxing Day 2014.
The win looked likely now with 15 minutes to go and a two goal lead, all of us fans were just hoping for Stoke to hold on against West Ham.
In quick succession, Southampton’s fourth goal came from the hero of last weekend, Steven Davis scored his fifth of the season in good form for captaining Northern Ireland at Euro 2016. Then the news came from the
Britannia Stadium that Stoke had taken the lead against West Ham meaning it was extremely likely that West Ham wasn’t going to win that game.
At the beginning of January there was no way that I would believe that Southampton would be 2nd in amounts of points received in 2016 and possibly finish 5th. In that nervous period, I would’ve said 12th.
My Man of the Match:
My man of the match was a difficult choice with performances not as great as they have been recently but Virgil van Dijk is my man of the match. This season he’s been very consistent and today he made some key clearances and tackles. He also had three good goal-scoring chances, two headers and a great effort from a free-kick.
My predictions for next year:
I don’t think that the season to come won’t see Saints finish as high as they have this season but I think we have a good shout of reaching the Europa League round of 16, maybe we could win it! With some luck from cup draws I think an FA Cup victory is high on Ronald Koeman’s list as he hasn’t won a trophy with us yet and we haven’t won anything since the J.Paint Trophy.
If we can get some highly rated players in the Summer, possibly Lille’s Sofianne Boufal who we’ve been linked with, then we could have league success as well as European success. For now I think we may finish 8th-10th but we’re only 100/1 to win the league so it could be a fantastic season…