Walker-Peters frustrated by lack of clinical edge

Saints were beaten by a solitary goal for the tenth time this season, scored by Marcus Tavernier five minutes into the second half.

The defender was honest in his assessment, openly frustrated by the hosts’ struggles in creating chances – despite scoring three at Premier League leaders Arsenal last time out.

“Disappointed. We weren’t good enough at both ends of the field, didn’t cause Bournemouth enough problems, and we’ve conceded a goal that I think is easily preventable, but that’s been the story of the season,” Walker-Peters admitted.

“I think it was an even game, both teams had chances, but far too often we haven’t been clinical enough. We’ve shown how clinical we can be against Arsenal, and you hope you take that into the game tonight, but we didn’t.

“It’s something that’s been happening all season. We do really well against a team, I think back to the Chelsea game when we beat Chelsea, played really well, go to Leeds and then lose, so it’s been the story of the season and it’s something we need to rectify fast.”

Saints thought they had rescued a point when Ché Adams lashed home an 89th-minute equaliser, only for the goal to be cruelly ruled out by VAR.

“Just his toe is offside, I don’t know how much of an advantage that gives him, but those are the rules and we’ve had 90 minutes to score anyway, so I don’t want to blame VAR or talk about how unlucky we are – we didn’t deserve to win because we didn’t take our chances and didn’t create enough,” Walker-Peters added.

“Five games left. We’re not hiding from that – we know the situation we’re in and we need to win every game we play.

“We try to do that anyway, but it’s crunch time now and every game we go into we need to put on a performance like we did at Arsenal. No excuses, we have to be really clinical.”