Romeu on bittersweet return
Southampton's Oriol Romeu spoke following his first game for the club in 1,190 games, which ultimately ended in a 3-2 defeat at Millwall.
The last time Romeu featured in a matchday squad for Saints was at the beginning of the 2022/23 season, a 1-0 defeat to Manchester United in the Premier League.
Having built up fitness since his return at the beginning of the month the Spainaird entered the pitch for the first time during his second spell on 77 minutes.
"It's such a nice feeling [to wear the Southampton shirt again]," said the 34-year-old. "It's a shame we didn't get a good result, that what I wanted to do. But such a nice feeling to be back and now I'm looking forward to helping the team to get into the best form and help get consistency out there. Get the wins, help the team do well like we were doing and hopefully fight for nice things towards the end of the season."
The game itself saw Saints take the lead on 55 minutes, Adam Armstrong converting from the penalty spot.
The visitors then responded to a nine-minute spell which saw Millwall turn the game on it's head to go ahead with an 87th minute equaliser through Finn Azaz. But the game was decided seven minutes into stoppage time through Tristan Crama's close-range finish for the hosts.
"Tough one to take, especially getting that equaliser towards the end," said Romeu. "We thought we were going to even have a chance to get a winner, and in the end we didn't get anything. It's tough because we allowed them probably too much in the second half and we didn't control the game well enough.
"We found it harder to find solutions from the back to the front and they stopped us pretty well. That goal [we got] at 1-0 should have helped us but in the end they pushed higher up the pitch and we sat back a little bit too much. That wasn't probably the right reaction.
"As long as we learn from this and as long as we take it as a lesson we can be happy. But right now we're a little bit frustrated."
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