Southampton tasted defeat in our final pre-season friendly of the summer on Saturday.
Suffering a 3-0 defeat as we hosted German Bundesliga side Borussia Monchengladbach at St Mary’s Stadium was certainly not how we’d have liked to enter the final week of training ahead of the big Premier League kick-off next weekend but if there are positives to take from a loss, then nothing was riding on it, players still got extra fitness and minutes under their belts and what we did wrong in the game can be focused on quickly.
FULL TIME: #SaintsFC 0-3 #DieFohlen
It's defeat for Mark Hughes's side as they finish their pre-season campaign at St Mary's. pic.twitter.com/OWdUSZowL4
— Southampton FC (@SouthamptonFC) August 4, 2018
Southampton:
McCarthy, Targett (McQueen 79), Bednarek (Stephens 46), Vestergaard (Yoshida 69), Hoedt (Davis 79), Bertrand, Lemina (Ward-Prowse 62), Hojbjerg (Romeu 62), Armstrong (Elyounoussi 46), Gabbiadini (Long 69), Austin (Redmond 69).
Subs:
Gunn, Lewis, Reed, Gallagher, Sims.
Monchengladbach:
Sommer (Sippel 46), Beyer, Ginter (Cuisance 57), Jantschke (Mayer 65), Wendt (Poulsen 59), Strobl (Egbo 76), Hofmann (Bennetts 76), Traore (Herrmann 10), Neuhaus (Zakaria 46), Johnson (Plea 46), Raffael.
Manager Mark Hughes was certainly taking the positives of identifying weaknesses to work on as he spoke to saintsfc following the game.
“It’s not what we wanted if I’m honest, and that’s clear for everyone to see. Maybe it was the conditions or maybe the fact that we’ve played three games in a week just took the edge off our play. We weren’t bright enough to really impose what we wanted to do on the opposition, but they were able to do that to us.”
The #SaintsFC boss gives his reaction after this afternoon's defeat to #DieFohlen: pic.twitter.com/3BaWs1DxS4
— Southampton FC (@SouthamptonFC) August 4, 2018
Hughes added that clearly we have to be better and individually players need to improve because in one v one situations we aren’t winning our fair share at the moment.
“Collectively, we need a better understanding of what we’ve talked about in the week and then we’ve got to execute it in the games. I think as an exercise it was perfect for us. It’s a good one to get out of the way and a lot of the issues that were raised are things we’ve seen before and talked about. For long periods we made poor decisions, weren’t dynamic enough and, as a consequence, they were able to score quite easily.”