Martin proud of relentless Saints
Russell Martin was full of praise for his Southampton players, who produced a five-star display to blow away the manager’s former club, Swansea, at St Mary’s.
Saints held a 1-0 lead at the interval through Joe Aribo’s first goal of the season, but showed the kind of relentlessness the manager demands with an “amazing” second half to leave Martin feeling proud of his team.
Samuel Edozie doubled Saints’ lead after closing down goalkeeper Carl Rushworth, before substitute Ryan Fraser scored twice and assisted fellow replacement Ché Adams to complete the scoring in stoppage time.
“It was an amazing second-half performance,” Martin reflected. “A good first-half performance, we stole the ball a lot, but we didn't make the most of the opportunities we had in the first half – probably just lacking two or three yards of aggression with and without the ball.
“They (Swansea) are good when you let them play with flow. Grimesy (Matt Grimes), Jamie Paterson, Jay Fulton, these guys can really play football, so they had a couple of moments where they were good. We showed the guys some stuff [at half time] and they carried it out so well, it's just incredible.
“They didn't take their foot off the pedal. I felt at 2-0 it went a little bit flat for five or 10 minutes, and then the subs really gripped the game.
“Charly (Alcaraz) had a brilliant impact, Ché, Ryan Fraser, Will (Smallbone) had a real energy with the ball and helped us move the ball a lot quicker. And then Sékou (Mara) comes on and nearly scores as well.
“So I'm really pleased with all of them and I'm really grateful that when they get on the pitch, they're just desperate to take their opportunity, and the guys who come off are frustrated and disappointed to come off, but also celebrating with their teammates, enjoying watching their team play.
“As much as anything with the ball, we've become a really hard team to play against, I think, because they press, they run – we score a goal off a press today and we should have had a couple more opportunities.
“We just need to keep growing. I absolutely love the feeling we have at the club at the moment, and you just want to hold on to that and try and grow it for as long as possible, because I think everyone would have enjoyed that.
“There were some brilliant performances. The subs came on, had a massive impact, the atmosphere was really brilliant, so I enjoyed it.”
