Southampton will not achieve promotion unless Russell Martin now does one thing
Southampton left it very late to see off ten-man Birmingham City on Saturday.
Joe Aribo came off the bench to score the last of the seven goals in a thrilling contest at St Andrews, with the 96th minute strike securing a much needed 4-3 win for Southampton.
Adam Armstrong ended a run of four games without a goal, whilst loanee David Brooks and former Birmingham striker Che Adams scored the other goals for Russell Martin‘s side.
Once Birmingham went down to ten men with Southampton 3-2 up, many would have thought the result was sewn up. However, this was not the case with the Blues equalising in the 77th minute.
Aribo’s heroics spared the Saints’ blushes, but this further highlighted a key problem that Southampton must address or risk seeing their promotion hopes fizzle out.
Southampton have to improve defensively
Birmingham are a side in decent form and are a difficult side to face in front of their home crowd.
However, if Southampton are to keep their promotion hopes alive they cannot afford to concede goals at the rate they currently are. They may have come out on top on Saturday, but it is not sustainable to require three or four goals to beat your opponents every week.
In the record-breaking run of 22 consecutive league wins, up until the 22nd of those games without defeat Southampton conceded just 13 goals. In the seven games in all competitions since beating Rotherham United 2-0 in the first week of February, Martin’s side have shipped a massive 16 goals.
This is a real worry given it is a problem that Southampton appeared to have addressed, having conceded 19 in the opening eight league games prior to the unbeaten run. Southampton appear to have returned to type in the sense that they look shaky defensively and are making mistakes they simply weren’t making a matter of weeks ago.
Even if the Saints continue to edge high-scoring affairs over their opponents, it could damage their promotion dream given their goal difference is significantly less than both Leicester City and Leeds United above them and is one less than Ipswich Town.
After 35 games, Leicester have a goal difference of 40, with Leeds on 37, Ipswich on 25 and Southampton on 34. With 11 Championship hames to go, there isn’t an endless run of games for Southampton to bridge that gap.
Russell Martin keen to address defensive issues
Martin is a manager who likes to see his side play an attractive brand of football focussed on possession, but his positive ideology does not necessarily need to come at the expense of defensive solidity.
The Southampton manager is very aware of the defensive woes and speaking after the Birmingham thriller, said: “Let’s get the negative out of the way, we concede three rubbish goals so we have to stop that,”
“We have gone from being one of the meanest in terms of giving up chances to giving up too many recently”.
It is an issue Martin and his coaching staff understand the implications of and their promotion chances will significantly increase if they can get back to the solid side they were a month ago.
