Will Smallbone and his Southampton team mates look dejected
Russell Martin, the head coach of Southampton, called his team’s performance against Hull City in the first half “crap.”
After a strong performance against the Saints, City rightly won the match 2-1 and led by two goals at the half thanks to goals from Anass Zaroury and Fabio Carvalho. In actuality, though, the scoreline should have given the away team more credit.
Martin made three substitutions at the beginning of the second half, including the introduction of Joe Aribo, who netted a consolation goal in the 88th minute. Nevertheless, Liam Rosenior’s team managed to win the game on the road for the third time in as many games.
Martin raged, “The first half was rubbish.” “The second half was excellent, but when you’re behind 2-0, it doesn’t really matter. If you play poorly in the first half and trail when you play well in the second, nobody will be interested. We were aware of Hull’s quality from the very first game. We missed a great opportunity to take the game away from (Joe) Rothwell before they could, and for some reason that didn’t motivate us to play more aggressively.
“To let it to happen is complete madness; we worked on their objective in training yesterday since we’ve seen them do it frequently. This week’s lack of bravery led to the loss, whereas last week’s lack of aggression did.
“The two things you need is courage and aggression. Credit to Hull they were really aggressive but we have faced a lot of aggressive teams here and done a lot better. The second half looks very different because Joe Aribo had the courage to take the ball, Che Adams had the courage.
“There was a lot of moans at Gavin (Bazunu) when he did stuff with the ball but it’s not on him and he was outstanding when he actually had people to pass to. I really understand the frustration around the whole place but the crowd were amazing in the second half and really stuck with us.”
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