Armstrong: Only ourselves to blame
Stuart Armstrong described Southampton’s 3-0 defeat at West Brom as a missed opportunity to climb towards the top half of the Premier League table.
Victory would’ve lifted Ralph Hasenhüttl’s side to 12th, only for strikes from Matheus Pereira, Matt Phillips and Callum Robinson to leave Saints in 14th.
Commenting after full-time, Armstrong said: “They caught us a little bit sleepy at the start of the game and are obviously playing for a lot of big points, but so are we.
“We want to gain positions and two were up for grabs tonight which we didn’t take, so there’s a big feeling of disappointment, but I think with this one we’ve only got ourselves to blame.
“The first half was poor and we didn’t really get to grips. The first 15-20 we barely had the ball, playing quite direct and they were mopping that up and attacking and seemed to get some chances off the back of that.
“We lost two goals where we feel we could’ve done a lot better. Second half we were a lot brighter, controlled the game and created a number of half chances, nothing clear-cut, and couldn’t get our goal and when the third one went in it was very much an uphill climb from there.
"I think our start last week was very similar to tonight, but we finished the game very strongly, and probably in our minds we wanted to carry that on into tonight’s game, but it was a different style of game tonight. They were very direct, very physical and got the better of us, for certainly the first part of the game."
