Koeman says Saints didn’t deserve to win

Speaking after the match, Southampton manager Ronald Koeman has claimed his side did not deserve to keep hold of their 2-0 lead as Leicester fought back to draw the game 2-2.

First-half goals from captain Jose Fonte and Virgil Van Dijk had given the home side a fairly comfortable half-time lead. However, a spirited comeback from Leicester and a poor showing from Southampton in the second-half led to a Jamie Vardy double that meant Southampton gave up the three points.

Southampton were on-course for a third consecutive Premier League win after 3-1 wins over Swansea and Chelsea in their last two outings.

Speaking after the match, Koeman said this:

To be two-nil up at half time, you don’t expect not to win the game.

I think that finally it’s a deserved point for Leicester because they made it very difficult today.

I think that in the last 30 minutes it looked like they were more fresh and had more belief in [getting] a good result today than Southampton.

Koeman’s men were hit with a late injury in the build-up to the match as first-choice ‘keeper Maarten Stekelenburg was out with a back injury and veteran shot-stopper Kelvin Davis stepped up.

This may have caused disruption among the back-four and Koeman did credit the two Leicester goals to mistakes from Van Dijk and then, from Kelvin Davis.

We scored twice from fantastic set-pieces, but the first 45 minutes were already difficult.

They are a very good opponent – they are strong, they press and they are very aggressive – and that made difficulties for us.

It was good organisation in the team and we played well with good football, and we scored twice out of set-pieces – which is one of the strengths of the team. But it’s 90 or 95 minutes, and the second half was worse than the first.

If you watch the two goals that Leicester scored today, they’re out of our ball possession – the first goal, Virgil lost the ball from an easy pass and the second is out of a goal kick from Kelvin [Davis].

If you build up and you have the ball, you need always good defensive organisation – and, in both goals of Leicester, we didn’t do that well.

You have to know and manage the game. You have to understand that it’s a difficult one. We were two-nil up and defending the result, which is difficult.

Southampton travel to Liverpool next Sunday hoping to put in a better performance for the whole 90 minutes than they did today.