‘Sunday Pub Team’, ‘Beyond Embarrassing’ – Reaction From Southampton Fans and Manager

December 21, 2022 Gary EFL Cup, Lincoln City, Post Match Reaction 0

Credit Jake Tonge

As we know, the Imps fell to a 2-1 defeat at St Mary’s last night, in a game that perhaps could have gone the other way, if we’d got the rub of the green.

The game will net the Imps around £80,000, but it could have been a quarter-final place adding the icing on the cake. Instead, in Nathan Jones’ first game in charge of the club, it was the Premier League side that went through.

Whilst we’re delighted with the outcome, Jones admitted to Hampshire Live that he saw positives in their performance – that’s where we start our post-match roundup.

Nathan Jones

“There were a lot of positives,” he told Hampshire Live. We controlled the game. We came up against a really difficult side, they try and deny space and counter, and we didn’t give ourselves the best start with a catastrophic first minute. But look, we showed real character and we created chances, we were just lacking a bit of sharpness. We got a really good goal and then once we changed shape on the hour and brought the game changers on, I think we really stepped it up then. We could have put the icing on the cake with those late chances, but we didn’t and it was a bit more hairy than we would have liked.”

It’s debatable that they did get a really good goal, with more than a hint of offside, but we’ll come to that. Jones went on to say his could have created lots of chances and lost, rather than grinding out the win.

“We could have been wonderful, created hundreds of chances and lost. If I am honest, we are better off playing like we did, we learn from it, and we are in the hat for the next round. Yes we can be grumbling because we are a Premier League side and look at Lincoln, and think we should be beating them at home. But we did beat them, albeit not in a swashbuckling style. But we created enough chances, we had plenty of possession and we are trying to implement things, and I saw a lot of real positives that will stand us in good stead because we have some big tests coming up.

That’s hoe the boss saw it, but what did their supporters think of the game on Twitter?

Our Goal

There’s no doubt the opener was a shock. The hesitation in the referee’s decision made one or two wonder if there was a foul, but mainly it was anger coming from the home fans.

Che Adams Goal

Sadly, for us at least, they go back on terms, but even that didn’t have the natives dancing for joy. One, in particular, mentioned the fact in was offside, something some repeated after the game.

Penalty Shout

There wasn’t a lot of talk about our possible penalty – both Lincoln and Saints Twitter missed it, and it didn’t pop up on the highlights. One Saints fan did spot it though, respect to him.

The Southampton blog ‘The Ugly Inside‘ went a bit further, saying: “Next came the third dubious incident of the game, the ball was played in towards the left-hand corner of our penalty box, Romain Perraud may have been nudged, but bizarrely he threw up his arm and appeared to have cleared the ball with it, neither the ref nor the linesman, both in good positions close by seemed to notice this.”

The Winner

When Adams got the winner, you’d expect unbridled delight, but by that stage it was obvious there wouldn’t be a four or five goal win, and some fans were subdued despite taking the lead.

Other Reaction

On the whole, they might be through but it is unlikely we’ve gone out to the future winners of the competition. When a Prem team plays a team from the lower divisions, ‘pub team’ is an insult levied at the smaller club. Not last night,