Eckert hails players’ desire
Moving up to sixth in the Sky Bet Championship table with a 1-0 win over in-form Norwich at St Mary’s, Tonda Eckert hailed his players for getting over the line.
Saints are now 13 games unbeaten in all competitions, with Finn Azaz’s 10th of the season enough for the latest win.
Reflecting on an important victory, Eckert said: “When they’ve won 10 of their last 11 games, we knew it was going to be a challenge for us today. And I think you could see that we were facing a very good team.
“I spent four years in Italy, every single game is like that. It's for a goal and then you manage to bring it over the line. And then it comes down to belief, comes down to resilience and I just said that to the boys, that game is exclusively on the players today. If you invest so much into winning football games and have that desire to put your body on the line, so that one is exclusively on the players.
“I think that there's a couple of games where we get the pressure higher up on the pitch a little bit better than we did today. But if you know how to defend lower, then it's not a problem. And there's a couple of balls that came into the box. Sometimes you need a goalkeeper that helps you but overall a very resilient team performance.”
After a gruelling run of four consecutive away matches, Saints picked up victory in the first of a St Mary’s double-header, with all eyes now on Oxford’s visit to the south coast on Saturday.
“We make sure that we recover and then we go stronger on Saturday, a big, big game for us coming up and then we have a couple of days of rest.
“One last push, we make sure that we recover now tomorrow, then we prep on Friday, and then there will be a big, big challenge on Saturday, but we make sure that we're ready to go.”
