On an afternoon when Southampton aimed to nail their Champions League ambitions to the mast the sense at half-time was that they could win at Old Trafford.
Forget the draw that would be a good result and for which Ronald Koeman’s team appeared lined up to claim. Go for all three points to start a new-year charge for the top-four finish that would be the finest of achievements by the Dutchman in his first season in charge.
Twenty seven years nearly to the day – 16 January, 1988 – had passed since Southampton last left Old Trafford having claimed a league victory, 2-0 then.
At the interval the good news for Southampton was that the contest remained goalless. The adverse auguries were that Manchester United were warming to the task of throttling Saints’ European pretensions. A prime factor in this was the team selected by Koeman that had Graziano Pellè as the lone striker, which meant they failed to grab any initiative.
As the first half wore on the visiting backline of Nathaniel Clyne, Toby Alderweireld (who was replaced by Florin Gardos), José Fonte and Ryan Bertrand were finding the intriguing attack-duo of Robin van Persie and Ángel Di María – Radamel Falcao was dropped from the matchday 18 – difficult to locate. Wayne Rooney, in the reserved midfield role that appears his for the moment, ended a dashing run by slipping in Van Persie and his shot was blocked.
Fonte and his defence were having difficulty picking up the skipping footwork and pace of Di María, who more than once got in behind and who might have opened the scoring if he had been a more practised front man.
These problems derived because Southampton’s nominal 4-2-3-1 that was really a 4-5-1 had apparently been instructed by Koeman to defend deep and not try to turn United.
Clyne roved forward into the area and shot wide of David de Gea’s right post and there was the odd Southampton corner but that was about all to be seen of Saints’ attacking flair.
Perhaps the message changed because Koeman’s men began the second half brightly and 24 minutes in had the lead – and winner – through Dusan Tadic’s cool finish.
Before this Pellè had a fierce effort blocked in the area, Eljero Elia turned Antonio Valencia and raced along the left and Clyne again threatened down his right-back corridor.
Koeman’s team arrived to face a United side unbeaten in 11 games and standing a point ahead of Saints after 20 Premier League games. Arsenal’s emphatic 3-0 win over Stoke City earlier in the day drew them level with Southampton’s 36-point tally so the message was clear: defeat here might begin a slide more fatal than the one arrested five days before Christmas when a 3-0 victory over Everton halted a trot of four league defeats.
On 14 December Saints had been five points behind United and were in fifth place after going down 1-0 at Burnley to register that fourth loss. The third of those had been a 2-1 defeat to United at St Mary’s when a Van Persie double seemed to confirm Saints as early-season high-flyers now on a crash-and-burn trajectory.
But the win over Everton was followed by two further victories – over Crystal Palace and Arsenal – and a notable draw with Chelsea.
Phil Jones, asked to line up on Sunday on the right of United’s rearguard, said before the kick-off: “Southampton have done really well. They started the season well and though they’ve been through a sticky patch where they played a lot of the higher teams in the league and came up against a few problems, they’ve found a bit of form and are doing well again. Today’s game certainly won’t be easy.”
Just over a month ago at St Mary’s United were fortunate to win 2-1 in what was a disjointed display. Jones admitted as much, saying: “They pressed us from the word go and made it difficult for us to play out so it was a nitty-gritty performance, not a pretty one, and we didn’t come off the pitch saying we’d played well. But like always, it’s a results business and we’d taken three points. People can say this and that about the performance but ultimately, we took three points and that’s all you can ask for.”
This, now, can be the sentiment of Koeman and his team. With the three points they took here Southampton leapfrogged United into third place in the Premier League and ensured their quest to play in next season’s European Cup is very much on track.
