The ACN Match Review – Southampton (a)

Biggest positive

Angus Gunn kept us vaguely in it with some decent shot-stopping on what was a big night for him – the last time he played in a Premier League game for Southampton was their 9-0 defeat to Leicester in October 2019. Tim Krul will probably reclaim his place soon, but Angus has done a reasonably solid job deputising and can take confidence from that.

Biggest problem

We just had nothing about us, really. Nothing in central midfield, nothing down the wings, nothing sticking up front – we really miss Adam Idah – and we never really looked like causing Southampton any problems.

Funniest moment of the game?

Sometimes I scroll the #ncfc hashtag on Twitter and think that Norwich and Ipswich fans are too extensively living rent-free in each other’s heads, but having heard Southampton fans belt out “Are you watching Pompey scum” in the minutes after having gone 1-0 up at home against bottom-of-the-table Norwich and then sing about them for much of the rest of the game, I realise there are levels of insecurity we are yet to reach on both sides of the East Anglian divide.

Did an along come Norwich happen?

Saints were on a long unbeaten home run, so… no.

What was the atmosphere like?

See above for what the home atmosphere mostly consisted of. In the away end we missed the drum that kept everyone going at Watford – a bit of hammering of the back of the stand in the second half helped, but it wasn’t quite the same. The free scarves handed out by the club on the way in were both a Nice Touch (#NiceTouch) and a Good Way To Get Rid Of Stock Before The Badge Changes.

Summary

As Southampton prepared to take their 88th-minute corner I was momentarily distracted by the hoardings behind the goal advertising the “Sportsbet.io Crypto Fan Fund with Matt Le Tissier”. Just as I was pondering the lingering commercial credibility of the tin-foil-hatted one on the south coast, Romeu smashed the ball into the back of the net and another game had passed us by with no points.

With Saints in good form this was always going to be a tricky fixture, but if we’re going to have any chance of staying up we need to start pulling out some unexpected results from somewhere on top of the absolutely-must-win games, like our next two against Brentford and Leeds. Which we now go into (assuming the inevitable in the FA Cup) with absolutely zero momentum. Ah well.