MANAGER Ralph Hasenhuttl admitted he thought Saints were a “little bit further” along being ready for this season’s Premier League challenge than apparent after defeat to Aston Villa. Jacob Ramsey scored the only goal of the game from a corner-kick scramble after Gavin Bazunu was left exposed at his back-post and bailed his team out. Saints registered just one shot on target in the entire contest, and that was a tame header from substitute forward Sekou Mara. Aston Villa picked up only their second win of the season, with the first coming on August 13 versus Everton.
Ralph Hasenhuttl said: “I think we have seen better football games in the Premier League this season, not only from us. Congrats to Aston Villa, they were the one team to score and we didn’t have one. So if you want, it was a deserved win for them. The rest today, I think was far away from Premier League level, from both sides. But I only want to speak for us, not for them. They have been aggressive, they have tried to break us down, we haven’t been good enough on the ball to create something seriously. This is a little bit similar to the Wolves where I must say we had in the end chances to score, today we didn’t have chances and this is for me, the very frustrating thing. It is so easy to break us down and it shouldn’t be.”
Hasenhuttl was asked why his team fell flat and were unable to create versus an opponent who had previously been struggling, with manager Steven Gerrard under pressure.
Ralph hasenhuttl responded: “After the game, it’s hard to say what it was. We will definitely speak to them and analyse it. It seemed to me that after the first two or three duals we were a little bit anxious and didn’t want to or were not brave enough to keep on going. As I said, it wasn’t much needed to let us struggle today and when you have no power to play through the lines then it is not enough for the Premier League.”
Ralph Hasenhuttl continued: “Especially our game with the ball today was not sharp enough, not quick enough, not good enough. They are physically very strong and we were bouncing away with every dual so you have to play quicker and let the ball run quicker but at the moment we are not on this level. You have to be very, very honest. We are not on this level footballing-wise and the players need to adapt to this level. This will take time and it’s also not surprising but in the end, I thought we were a little bit further and could compete a little bit more but today we were, from both teams, the worse one.”
