Southampton Suffer Frustrating Loss – Saints 2 Aston Villa 3

Wednesday night saw Southampton lose to Aston Villa 2-3 in a thrilling encounter at St Mary’s.

Having suffered consecutive defeats to Arsenal and Chelsea respectively, Southampton came into the fixture seeking a win, knowing they face the ominous task of Manchester City at the weekend.

It was Southampton who had the better of the play right from the word go and were unlucky to not have taken the lead when Adam Lallana’s cross was deflected past the reach of Brad Guzan, only to bounce off the crossbar.

Villa had set themselves up to place men behind the ball, leaving their two strikers on the half-way line and play on the counter attack. This proved fruitful as Fabian Delph, winning the ball on the edge of his area, fired a hopeful pass to speedster Gabriel Agbonlahor on the half-way line. Southampton centre-back Maya Yoshida failed to intercept the pass which allowed Aston Villa a 2 on 1. Agbonlahor made a nifty move to round the other centre-back Lovren and cooly finished past replacement Southampton ‘keeper, Paulo Gazzaniga.

Due to Villa’s staunch defence, Mauricio Pocchetino opted to replace midfielder James Ward-Prowse with striker Dani Osvaldo mid-way through the first half in an attempt to put more pressure on the visitors. However, despite Southampton having much of the ball, they were unable to pose any real threat to the Aston Villa goal.

Southampton line up a free kick

Just after half-time Southampton drew level as Nathaniel Clyne floated in a cross from the right and Jay Rodriguez fired his header into the bottom corner.

Aston Villa soon took back the lead as Jack Cork lost the ball in his own third which allowed Karim El Ahmadi to put in a defence-splitting cross to Libor Kozak who nodded it in.

Southampton then levelled the game once more as a Dejan Lovren cross found Rickie Lambert who headed back across the face of goal to Dani Osvaldo who could not miss the target.

Aston Villa wrapped up the game on 80 minutes with yet another counter attack. Gabby Agbonlahor once again found the ball on the half-way line and passed it to the on-running Fabian Delph who fired a 25 yard rocket of a shot into the very top corner leaving Gazzaniga no chance.

Despite having a whopping 77% possession, Southampton were unable to deal with the pace at which Aston Villa attacked. For the 3 shots on target that Villa managed, they scored three times, whereas Southampton could only convert 2 of their 21 chances, of which 9 were on target.

Southampton can consider themselves unlucky as on any other given night they would have been clear victors. Manager Pochettino told BBC Sport after the game “It’s the type of game you lose maybe once in 1,000, but tonight we lost it”.

After Southampton’s incredible start to the season, they find themselves having lost their last three games and have the tough fixture of Manchester City at the weekend. A defence which only saw them concede 2 goals in the first 8 games has now conceded 8 goals in their last 3.