We wanted to exploit Sunderland – Fonte

Southampton captain Jose Fonte has said that Saints were out to exploit the tensions among the Sunderland squad on Saturday as Southampton ended up winning 1-0 at The Stadium Of Light.

Fonte said that he and his team-mates knew that as soon as Sunderland made a mistake, the fans would turn on them; letting Saints apply pressure early on and force the errors from Sunderland that allowed Saints to get on the front foot early on.

Southampton had plenty of chances against the relegation stragglers but they found Pantilimon in good form and the Sunderland defence seemed to be blocking everything they threw at them; until, M’Vila threw himself at Bertrand, giving away a penalty. Dusan Tadic dispatched the penalty fantastically well to give Southampton the lead, and it ended up winning them the game.

The win leaves Saints unbeaten in eight and unbeaten away in the Premier League this season.

Here is what Fonte said after the match:

We came with a philosophy about playing on the emotion of the situation Sunderland are in.

We knew the fans could turn on them and the longer it went on the worse it could get for Sunderland if we kept the ball like we did. Our gameplan was to capitalise on the tensions here. We perhaps should have done better with our final ball but we were patient, switched the play from side to side and in the end we got the penalty.