Interview

‘We could have been 3-0 down after 10 minutes’

We have Petr Cech to thank for keeping Southampton in our sights on Sunday.

The goalkeeper could do nothing to stop Charlie Austin’s goal in the third minute but he made a fantastic save from the same man just moments later.

Cech’s intervention laid the platform for Olivier Giroud to eventually find an equaliser, but the Czech star was still disappointed not to leave St Mary’s with more.

on the game…

I think it’s still a disappointment, but we have to take a point because we were 1-0 down until the 88th minute. We wanted to find the equaliser but we came here to take all three points and we only have one, so we are disappointed with that.

on if it will become a better point with hindsight…

One thing that is really gutting is that we lost the game against Man United in the first 10 minutes. Today we could have been 3-0 down after 10 minutes again, and I think this is something we need to improve because in this league, if you give other teams the advantage in the first five minutes, you make it far more difficult for yourselves. Today, we were lucky to get a point, even if we deserved to get one in the end, because we put them under pressure. But we wanted all three.

on Giroud’s regular contribution from the bench…

I think that’s why we have a large squad and why we have everybody playing in other competitions. You can see that the boss believes in every one of the players and today it’s great to see that the players that came on helped us improve the performance.

on how concerning our away form is…

Today we dropped points and we need to make sure that when we go to West Ham, we get all three.

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