Still reflects on "same old" frustrations
Will Still was left with familiar frustrations after Southampton fell to a 2-0 defeat to Preston North End in the Championship at St Mary’s.
Saints went close to taking the lead when Leo Scienza’s curling shot was saved by Daniel Iversen, before Lewis Dobbin opened the scoring with a scrappy close-range goal seven minutes before the interval.
Caspar Jander rattled the crossbar in the second half with a stunning shot that was touched on to the crossbar by a spectacular Iversen stop, before Preston substitute Mads Frøkjær-Jensen made sure of the points with a very late second on the counter-attack as Saints piled forward in search of an equaliser.
“We’ve not done our job on two occasions and conceded two goals. It wasn’t good enough,” Still reflected.
“We tried a lot of different things, put players in different situations to try and create what we could, and it hasn’t paid off.
“The way we’ve defended that first goal is really poor and not good enough from us. Not everyone has done their job on each particular phase of play. We know that if everyone doesn’t do it then we make it difficult for ourselves, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
After dissecting the goals conceded, Still assessed Saints’ efforts in front of goal.
“I think it was same old. We’ve created more than enough situations or opportunities, but we’ve ended up not scoring a goal,” he added.
“I don’t think we’ve reacted badly after we’ve conceded. If anything we’ve come out after half time, made a few changes and got a momentum back in the game, but their keeper tipped it on to the crossbar and it doesn’t go in.
“You keep plugging away and plugging away, throw the kitchen sank at it at the end and get caught on the transition. Even on the transition, we’ve got a two-man overload in our box, but we’re not defending our goal as we should and concede a second.”
