Southampton’s poor start to the season continued on Saturday as Russell Martin’s side lost 3-0 at home to Manchester United.
The defeat at St Mary’s made it from four losses form four to start the Premier League campaign.
Goals from Matthijs De Ligt, Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho condemned Southampton to the 3-0 loss after a bright start in which Russell Martin saw his team well on top for the first half an hour.
A red card to captain Jack Stephens late on only served to add to the misery and Southampton now face Everton in the Carabao Cup on Tuesday before a huge game away at Ipswich Town next Saturday.
After Martin changed formation and made four changes to the side that lost 3-1 to Brentford prior to the international break, Southampton looked very good up until Cameron Archer missed a penalty won by 18-year-old Tyler Dibling on his first Premier League start.
Cameron Archer penalty miss the turning point for Southampton against Man Utd
Dibling was a standout performer as he started on the right of the front three against United and he caused Diogo Dalot a whole host of problems in the first-half.
This culminated in Dalot mistiming a challenge just inside the box on 30 minutes but there were three minutes between the initial awarding of the penalty and Archer taking the kick.
This certainly would not have helped Archer, but it seemed an odd choice to take the penalty given Archer has not taken a single penalty in his senior career and Ben Brereton Diaz has scored nine from nine to date.
Archer’s weak penalty was easily saved by Andre Onana and the headed rebound from the striker was caught by the United goalkeeper.
Two minutes later and Erik ten Hag’s side took the lead courtesy of a De Ligt header, before Rashford doubled the lead on 41 minutes to effectively end the game as a contest.
Southampton did not have a single shot after Archer miss
The St Mary’s crowd were right behind their side on Saturday lunchtime, with the positive start only enthusing them further.
Southampton smelled blood as United repeatedly struggled to get out their defensive third, but the penalty miss sucked the life out of the stadium.
As soon as Archer’s spot-kick was saved there was an air of inevitability about what would follow such is the low confidence of the side after their poor start to the season.
What will concern Martin most, though, is the fact that his Saints side did not have a single shot after Archer’s penalty miss in the 33rd minute.
That is 57 minutes plus stoppage time without a shot when chasing the game, which shows just how flat Southampton were after the miss.
Players miss penalties, it happens, but what is not acceptable is the way in which Southampton lost their focus immediately after the event and subsequently conceded two poor goals in quick succession which left them with too much to do.