Saints boss laments mistakes in defeat

Southampton manager Ronald Koeman has blasted first-half mistakes for the Saints 3-1 away defeat to Manchester City today.

Koeman’s men found themselves 2-0 down inside 20 minutes as goals from Kevin De Bruyne and Fabian Delph all but sealed the win for City as the away side looked poor. Shane Long pulled one back just after the interval but all hope of a comeback was quashed when Kolarov fired in Manchester City’s third.

Koeman is blaming first-half mistakes but after the match; the fans are blaming the manager. Koeman bizarrely dropped Cedric from the squad, who has been one of the best players in the Saints side this season, for Maya Yoshida, who has been one of the worst players for Saints this season.

On top of that, he dropped Jordy Clasie and Dusan Tadic, the two best players in Southampton’s last match. It was a move that made Koeman seem naive and has led to a lot of fans questioning him today.

However, here is Koeman’s take on the game:

I think the start of the game was very poor, we had a lot of mistakes in our ball possession.

The first goal, and some other chances for City in the first 20 minutes, we did it by ourselves and that was very disappointing.

Koeman did praise his players for their second half showing, which was much better than the first 45.

“How we played the second half, I expect that from the beginning of the game.

You see the difference between the first and the second half it was too big. The difference was too much.

The second half, much better ball possession and then even by 2-0 down you can get away with a point.

It was a big chance for Dušan at 2-1, but if you see and if you show everybody the clips in the first 20 minutes, you can’t win if you play on that level.

The reaction was positive, but we have to start much better than we did.

They had a strong start in the game, but in the first 20 minutes we lost so many balls and that’s the problem.

Then you don’t have a good organisation and they have fast players and they kill you, and it was 2-0 after 25 minutes but they had chances to score more.