Southampton hosted Burnley at St Mary’s Stadium for last weekend’s Premier League opener.
Both sides battled to a scoreless draw on the day, although it’s fair to say Burnley were certainly quicker out of the blocks and few could’ve begrudged them had they taken the lead, but there were positives once we got ourselves in order and with more of a clinical edge by the end of 90 minutes, Southampton could well have nicked it themselves.
One man who shone above everybody else on the pitch was goalkeeper Alex McCarthy.
The 28-year-old continued to flourish between the sticks for us and he started where he left off last season with a number of crucial stops, especially in the opening 45 minutes, between our sticks.
Whoscored gave him a rating of 8.50 for the match following his efforts, and despite Burnley’s more dominant performance, he was one of only two players to rate 8 amongst either side – James Tarkowski polled 8.39 for them.
Two clearances, two aerials won, 32 touches and nine accurate long balls helped him to the rating and the clean sheet certainly didn’t count against him either.
With our newbies settling in and plenty more expected from Jannik Vestergaard, seeing McCarthy start the season in fine form is a massive bonus for us as we look to improve on last year’s performances and results.