Southampton closed out December and 2018 with a disappointing defeat to Manchester City at St Mary’s Stadium on Sunday.
With now mixed form under new head coach Ralph Hasenhuttl, he has had an impact but equally our old flaws are still on show – but most fans will take heart that there are mild improvements and we haven’t just folded completely when things are going against us.
That was somewhat reflected in the player ratings from the 3-1 defeat from statistics website Whoscored.
Despite registering an unfortunate own goal on the day as a Raheem Sterling effort deflected off him, midfielder James Ward-Prowse took a score of 7.03 to give him their Man of the Match rating.
A goal and a sending off for Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg still saw him take second spot with 6.84 and the top five on the day were completed by Oriol Romeu (6.72), goalkeeper Alex McCarthy (6.39) and Jan Bednarek/Nathan Redmond tied on 6.30.
We just have to keep eeking out those improvements and hope the points follow but with a far better idea of what the group are capable of, it’ll be interesting to see what Hasenhuttl wants to do in the January transfer window now.