Southampton manager Russell Martin said he felt ‘sick and frustrated’ after Saints’ 1-1 draw with Rotherham United.
Stuart Armstrong’s opener inside two minutes was cancelled out by an equaliser from Jordan Hugill in the second half, denying Saints of all three points.
Saints’ once again dominated the game, having ten shots on target whilst retaining 80% possession.
Russell Martin ‘just not sure’ how Saints did not win
Martin spoke after the game about how he shares their frustration around the fact that they did not win a game which they should have done, and not for the first time.
“I’m just not sure how we’ve not won the game,” Martin told Hampshire Live. “I feel as sick and frustrated as anyone else watching it. We deserved to win, there’s nothing wrong with the performance, the only thing wrong is we don’t convert our chances and we’re not clinical enough or ruthless enough and then we concede a really rubbish goal.
“If we walked away three or four nil winners today I think everyone would be purring about the performance, but that’s the fine margins in football. We weren’t ruthless enough in front of their goal and we had one moment in front of ours and we didn’t do well enough.
“We’ve made huge strides. But at this moment in time, I feel sick and frustrated we’re not sitting in the top six and haven’t got nine points. So yeah, really frustrated, really annoyed and I hope the players are and I hope they feel that in the pit of their stomach and we come back and use that energy to really drive forward.
“It’s been a big two weeks for us, had a good week this week, on the back of what happened before which is great and we’ll take a lot from that, but we should win today and we should be in the top six right now and really be positive and looking forward, but that’s the difference between us and the teams at the top of the league at the moment.
“Today they would have won three or four nil, four one, but it wasn’t and we weren’t able to do that so although the week’s been good and we made a lot of progress, I think I’m allowed right now to feel really angry and annoyed that we haven’t won today.
“When I take a step back in the next few days and we analyse this last block of games like we did before, I’ll take what’s really important from it and what we need to do better moving forward and what we’ve done really well and just keep improving and working hard and that’s where the work will start and that’s when we’ll get the most from it.”