A Marcus Tavernier goal earned Cherries a 1-0 victory at Southampton on Thursday night, a result which moved Gary O’Neil’s men seven points clear of the relegation zone with just five games to play. Many pundits believe the 36 points Cherries have already amassed will be enough to avoid the drop, with O’Neil’s charges now sitting 14th in the table. But the head coach and squad and eyeing victory over another side battling to avoid the drop in Leeds at Vitality Stadium this weekend, to all but rubber-stamp a second consecutive top-flight campaign for Cherries. Discussing the win over Saints being a huge step in Cherries achieving their goal,
Chris Mepham said: “That’s exactly what the manager said at the end of the game. We are so close now. Credit to us, we’ve put ourselves in an unbelievable position. I think that’s our third away win in a row now. We’ve done our bit. We just need to keep pressing, get us over the line on Sunday hopefully. I think the last thing we would want now is complacency. There are still lots of points up for grabs. We want to finish as high as possible and the relegation fight isn’t done yet. We go into Sunday wanting to win and hopefully we can get over the line then. It’s not done yet. Until it’s mathematically impossible for us to go down, we will still be fighting for every point. Sunday is no different. We will approach it like we do every game, which is wanting to win and hopefully we can get a result on Sunday.”
Reflecting on the victory at St Mary’s,
Chris Mepham said: “Massive win. Especially the way the drama was at the end (Che Adams disallowed goal). Obviously panic stations at the end when you think you’ve lost two points. I think we thoroughly deserved the points. First half, complete control. Second half, I think they were always going to come out and put a lot more pressure on us and play higher up the pitch. Sometimes you need a bit of luck, like we got at the end and I felt like we deserved that with the way we applied ourselves in the first half.”
Asked how impressive the win was given Cherries had just suffered a 4-0 home defeat to West Ham United a few days earlier,
Chris Mepham said: “To be honest, Sunday felt like a bit of an anomaly for us. I think the way we’ve performed the last couple of months, that performance on Sunday was very unlike us. We knew we had so much more to offer. Then again (on Thursday) it was a case of bounce back and I thought we did that really well. We started the game well. I think the first 10 minutes they came out quite quick, but once we settled into the game, we had control and it’s a perfect response.”
