The Southampton boss Ralph Hasenhuttl felt his team were embarassed by by the high-flying Chelsea side last week, and has warned the Gunners that they will be making sure that they don’t make the same mistakes when Arsenal come down to the South Coast this weekend.
The Saints were beaten 6-0 by Thomas Tuchel’s side which means they have gained just one point from their last six EPL matches, but they are not embroiled in the relegation struggle this season and can relax while Hassenhuttl searches for solutions to their defensive problems.
Obviously Southampton’s defeat will dent their confidence, but the Austrian coach believes that it may just be the wake.up call they needed to get their tactics back to normal. He told Hampshire Live: “No, it doesn’t give confidence,”
“It rings the alarm and this is what we need to see. It is no coincidence that the last clean sheet we had was against Norwich and this was a few weeks ago.
“We have to get back to a better way of defending, maybe if it is not in a high pressing way because we are not so convinced about this at the moment, it is on us, on me, to find the right decisions for this. And you can be sure that next week [against Arsenal] you will see a team defending better, this is for sure.”
Like against Brighton, Arsenal will be very hot favourites on paper to get back to winning ways, but with the Gunners also in a difficult place after successive defeats, Southampton could not be given a better game to try and get their season back on track.
Yes, we should still be favourites, but would you be surprised if the Saints gave us a shock on Saturday?
Darren N.
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Video – Mikel Arteta post-Brighton “It’s time to criticise ourselves”