Shane Long believes Saints can take pride in how they reacted to a poor start in their 3-1 defeat at Manchester City.
After falling 2-0 behind in the first 20 minutes, when the hosts were well on top, the visitors responded and nearly mounted a recovery in the second half, with Long heading home as Ronald Koeman’s side put their opponents under significant pressure.
It wasn’t to be, though, as Aleksandar Kolarov’s strike added to Kevin De Bruyne and Fabian Delph’s first-half goals, but Long believes Saints can take some positives from how they fought.
"After 20 minutes they went 2-0 up and it would have been very easy to just roll over and let them get four or five,” he told youtube.com/southamptonfc.
“We were confident in ourselves to get the ball passed again and get around the pitch and cause them problems.
“Kolarov's goal to make it 3-1 kind of killed us off a bit, but I think even after that I thought we caused them a lot of problems, so we can take a lot of positives.
“Obviously, it's not nice to lose a game, but when you lose it playing well it's a little bit more easy to take.”
Long nearly scored again when it was 2-1, but his strike from the edge of the area appeared to divert off Fernandinho’s arm and go behind, after the rebound from Willy Caballero’s one-on-one save from Dušan Tadić had fallen to him.
"I think all the home fans were nervous,” said Long. “You could see our away fans were bouncing as well, expecting a bit more, and Dušan had a great chance and it came back out to me, and a foot either side and it might have gone in and those little things could have changed the game, but we can hold our heads high.
“We gave it a good go. We got right into them and I'm sure they're delighted to come out of that game with three points.”
Share this: