Swans 1 (Salisu o.g.) - Southampton 3 (Tella, Redmond, Armstrong)
Swansea:
Steven Benda, Kyle Naughton, Ryan Bennett (capt) (Scott Butler 89), Ben Cabango, Jake Bidwell (Lincoln McFayden 90); Korey Smith (Ollie Cooper 75), Liam Walsh (Dan Williams 32), Yan Dhanda (Ben Lloyd 84); Morgan Whittaker (Joel Piroe 60), Liam Cullen (Kyle Joseph 84), Jamal Lowe.
Unused subs: Ben Hamer.
Southampton:
Alex McCarthy, Kyle Walker-Peters (Yan Valery 60), Oriol Romeu (capt) (Ibrahima Diallo 46), Shane Long (Michael Obafemi 60), Che Adams (Danny Ings 60), Nathan Redmond (Mohamed Elyounoussi 60), Stuart Armstrong (Ryan Finnigan 73), Moussa Djenepo (Romain Perraud 60), Mohamed Salisu (Jack Stephens 60), Nathan Tella (Theo Walcott 60). Jan Bednarek (Oludare Olufunwa 81).
We were easy meat today for a very good Southampton team.
The match showed how far they’ve advanced since they beat us three seasons ago under Mark Hughes to stay in the PL, and how much we’ve gone backwards with our U.S. owners fire-sales decimating and lowering the quality of the squad each season.
With the squad as it stands we’ll be lucky to stay in this division if today’s performance was anything to go by. We were bettered to every ball and bullied and cajoled into losing possession continuously.
Southampton could have scored many more goals but for some fine saves by Benda, they had so much possession it became boring, whereas all we could do is pass back or sideways or lose the ball, Cooper-esque style.
Russell Martin has a lot of work on his hands next week to get us in shape for the season opener at Blackburn.