Martin “angry and annoyed” with Rotherham draw
Manager Russell Martin was left “angry and annoyed” that his side failed to come away with all three points against Rotherham, instead being held to a 1-1 draw.
It began in perfect fashion for Saints when Stuart Armstrong scored his second goal in as many games after just two minutes.
A dominant performance from the hosts suggested more goals would come, but St Mary’s was stunned on 74 minutes when Jordan Hugill levelled for the Millers.
Unable to respond and find a late winner, Saints’ boss was left to reflect on a frustrating afternoon, despite moving three unbeaten in the Sky Bet Championship.
“I’m just not sure how we’ve not won the game,” he began. “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."
After halting a run of four straight defeats with victories over Leeds and Stoke, Martin admitted the biggest frustration was missing out on a position in the top six.
“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."
