Russell Martin singled out one of his Southampton players for special praise in the wake of Sunday’s 0-0 draw with West Brom.
The draw away from home is arguably a better result for Southampton than it is for West Brom, with the return leg of Friday to be played in front of a sold out St Mary’s Stadium.
The game at The Hawthorns was a cagey affair typical of a play-off first leg and followed the theme of the other semi-final played earlier in the day, with Norwich City and Leeds United also drawing 0-0.
That means that both legs will effectively be decided in one off games, with the first legs having little bearing on which clubs will play out a Wembley final on 26th May.
Chances were few and far between, but Southampton could have easily been heading back to St Mary’s behind in the tie and they have their stand-in goalkeeper Alex McCarthy to thank for that.
Alex McCarthy repaying Russell Martin faith
McCarthy likely thought his chances of making a telling contribution to Southampton’s season was long gone as he was third-choice goalkeeper prior to Gavin Bazunu‘s achilles injury.
Bazunu has been the undisputed first choice goalkeeper this season despite question marks over his shot-stopping, with Joe Lumley taking up a spot on bench for the majority of the season.
With that in mind, it was a real surprise that when Bazunu pulled out of the Preston game in the warm-up last month it was McCarthy that manager Russell Martin decided to throw into the game at short notice even though he was not named in the initial match day squad.
This was bold decision from the 38-year-old manager, with Lumley surely extremely disappointed at being overlooked when he thought he would finally get his chance in the league.
McCarthy has kept the shirt ever since, though, and has been solid although there is a significant drop-off with the ball at his feet compared to Bazunu.
Martin credits McCarthy with West Brom draw
The shutout against West Brom was McCarthy’s second clean sheet in the six games since he stepped in for Bazunu.
The first of those came against Preston, where he faced just one shot on target, but against the Baggies he was much busier.
The experienced ‘keeper was impressive as he dealt with Darnell Furlong’s long throw-ins into his box, catching or punching clear on a number of occasions.
McCarthy also made a late save from a venomous strike just from just inside the area to secure the clean sheet, but it was his save in the first-half from a Grady Diangana header that was most impressive.
Ryan Manning was not able to stop Tom Fellows from finding half a yard of space before standing up a cross to the back post and Diangana managed to squeeze in between Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Kyle Walker-Peters to head at goal from point blank range.
The West Brom attacker did everything right, heading downwards as every player is taught to from a young age, but McCarthy pulled off a fine stop which demonstrated his reactions.
Martin understood the importance of his goalkeeper’s performance and told Sky Sports after the game: “Alex had a really good game for us today, really big, really commanding.”
Southampton will need the 34-year-old to have another solid display in the return leg and he could then be starting in a Wembley final which would have seemed unthinkable just a matter of weeks ago.