Russell Martin asked Southampton players to beat Stoke
For their final home game of the regular season on Saturday, Southampton welcomed a Stoke City club that is fighting for their relegation to St Mary’s.
Stoke needed to win in order to be certain of their place in the Championship,
but the number of teams separating them from the bottom three made relegation already extremely unlikely.
What happened was that two teams that were struggling to seem
interested played a bad game that had a genuine end-of-season feel to it.
Nonetheless, Stoke were the superior side and rightfully took the lead in the 36th minute thanks to a goal from Tyrese Campbell,
who defied a lethargic Taylor Harwood-Bellis and struck into the far corner.
Despite their best efforts, Southampton was unable to score against a tough Stoke defending in the second half.
Many of his regular starters were watching from the bench
as manager Russell Martin made the alterations. Of the side players,
Samuel Edozie was maybe the only one who took any action to improve his prospects of future inclusion.
Martin was rather dissatisfied with the way things turned out since it was as anti-climatic
as a final home game you could possibly see.
The 1-0 loss to Stoke was the Saints’ third in the previous seven days,
and the mood inside the club has been generally negative over the past week.
It has seriously spoiled what had otherwise been a successful season,
when a total change in play style led to a comfortable play-off finish.
Southampton has also broken their club record for the longest winning streak this season,
going 25 games without a loss between the end of September and the start of February.
However, Southampton supporters can’t help but wonder what may have been after losing to Middlesbrough,
The fact that the teams above the Saints have struggled to advance automatically hasn’t helped either,
so the past few weeks have felt like a squandered chance. After the Stoke match,
Martin expressed his disappointment on the official Southampton website, saying,
“I’m disappointed it’s ended at home in this way.”
Following the game, Southampton’s players and staff performed a lap of honor,
but not many fans braved the weather to watch what transpired after a poor campaign finale.
Few people stayed in their seats, but things might have turned out differently
if the players had performed well in their last St. Mary’s game before the play-offs.
Even if the players and staff may not have deserved this,
Martin is aware that the storyline around his team’s season has somewhat shifted in light of their recent performance.
“We have to get over this week,” the Saints’ manager stated.
It’s quite upsetting because, in my opinion, it will alter people’s perceptions
of the season as a whole and the current mood we’re in since there have been some very outstanding moments.
It was also very unfortunate because Martin, the former Swansea City manager,
had said that this match was a chance to give a devoted fan one more victory.
He had asked his team to win it for one of the club’s club physicians.
Martin summarized the game by saying, “Frustrating for everyone really; the players,
the supporters, [Steve] Baynes the doc who will be leaving us after today after 14 years of service.
” Martin talked about how he tried to utilize this as motivation.
“I feel like we haven’t been able to achieve that, even though I asked
the players to finish it off very nicely for him.
Given how excellent the players have been this season,
I felt that the fans deserved more today and the players themselves deserved more.
Sadly, it was insufficient as Stoke recovered the points with greater vigor.
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