Southampton suffered a heavy and pretty comfortable defeat to Chelsea on Sunday afternoon as we went down 3-0 on the day, but some players definitely came out with more credit than others for their individual efforts.
Whilst disappointment and frustration will be the continuing theme from the 90 minutes as we continue to struggle for wins and even goals under manager Mark Hughes this season, although Chelsea dominated the telling statistics Southampton should take some positives from having exactly the same number of chances on target as the visitors to St Mary’s Stadium managed. Given the scoreline, they just made more of those efforts than we did.
With statistics website WhoScored taking emotion out of their ratings and looking purely at key contributions, the game was quite telling for me as often maligned centre half Wesley Hoedt actually took our top rating on the day with 7.29.
Four tackles, three interceptions, seven clearances, and three blocked shots show he put in a significant shift at the back and if anyone could do with a confidence boost it’s the 24-year-old.
Given Hughes team selections so far this campaign, fans will maybe make their own mental note that our top five performers from the 3-0 defeat were completed by Mario Lemina (7.21), Jan Bednarek (7.02), Nathan Redmond (6.56) and Manolo Gabbiadini (6.28).