RALPH Hasenhuttl admitted he thought Saints took a “scary” amount of risks during their 2-1 defeat to Liverpool. The St Mary’s outfit could not send their supporters home happy in the final home match of the 2021-22 season, despite taking an early lead through Nathan Redmond. Former Saints loanee Takumi Minamino levelled the scores in the first-half before Joel Matip’s header sealed all three points and kept their title hopes alive into the last day. And Saints, who Hasenhuttl insisted took too many risks, only registered four shots across the entire match, with just 28 per cent possession.
Ralph Hasenhuttl said: “We lost 2-1. I think we have played against a good team that made a lot of changes but still has a lot of quality up front. You could see it. But the perfect start for our side with the quick goal and the chance for Broja immediately. That was the way we tried it – with the ball we took a lot of risks today. Sometimes a little bit scary to be honest. The goal was what we wanted to do. You have 40 points and nothing to lose, what do you think what you want to do? Against the ball we tried a different way to defend, deeper. Because we were struggling in the last weeks with conceding goals, easy goals. Maybe we were too open.”
FA Cup and EFL Cup winners Liverpool visited Southampton with no fewer than nine changes to their starting lineup from the cup victory over Chelsea on Saturday. Hasenhuttl himself made five changes, including a switch to a five-at-the-back defence to try and stop the opposition like they did to Arsenal – the only Saints win in the last 11 Premier League matches.
Ralph Hasenhuttl added: “It worked okay, not perfect otherwise we wouldn’t concede a goal. The difference with the Arsenal game for example is that we weren’t able to have a clean sheet because we concede the first goal in a way when we are all behind the ball in the box and cannot stop the attacker from scoring. They played it quite well I must say. Especially Firmino in these areas is very strong and Taki had a good deep run.”
