Redmond and Saints on the rise
ONE winger walked on with two young mascots and behaved like a child. Another had a goal, an assist and delivered the kind of performance that might bring him back into Gareth Southgate’s orbit.
Differing evenings, then, for Wilfried Zaha and Nathan Redmond, two players who can turn matches with their talents but also know all too well what it is to disappear in plain sight.
Redmond was on the good side of the cycle here and Zaha had one of those matches when his most telling act appeared to be a poke in the eye of James Ward-Prowse.
That petulance at the end of the first half went unpunished by Andre Marriner and a VAR check — fortuitously, perhaps, and it could still be reviewed by the FA — but the same cannot be said for the wider Crystal Palace unit. They were ruthlessly slapped out of their unbeaten streak by Southampton, crushed on just about every metric.
The goals that settled it were excellent — the first from Redmond was a delight and the finish from Stuart Armstrong for the second was none too shabby either.
But even in isolation of those moments, it was hardly close. Redmond ran the game and Ryan Bertrand and Ward-Prowse also excelled.
Even with Danny Ings on the bench and Cedric Soares off injured in the opening minutes, Southampton kept Palace from getting a single shot on target. Zaha offered next to nothing.
And so the home side’s five-game stretch without defeat ended. In halting them, Southampton have now won seven of their past 11 league games and after the ninegoal misery of that Leicester drubbing, Ralph Hasenhuttl’s side are closer to Europe than relegation.
Hasenhuttl said: ‘It is not easy to win here but the way we played was excellent.
‘And I think by far it was the best performance from Nathan. But it is not easy to pick a player today.’
Roy Hodgson was downbeat. With six first-team regulars out injured, his Palace side had outdone themselves on their run but this was a poor loss.
He said: ‘We looked tired but we can’t use that as an excuse. I am missing six players and they are not six players who never play.’
When pressed about Zaha’s altercation with Ward-Prowse — the pair have previous from recent fixtures — Hodgson got angry.
He said: ‘I heard VAR looked and decided there was nothing to do. That’s good enough for me.’
His players were anything but. What Palace did create, they wasted, the worst instance of which came in the 18th minute when Jordan Ayew caught Jannik Vestergaard in possession and the loose ball fell for Cenk Tosun, square in front of goal. One on one with Alex McCarthy, he shot over.
From there, Southampton dominated. Redmond opened the scoring with a superb strike, having turned Martin Kelly and shouldered past James McArthur. From the edge of the area he lashed across Vicente Guaita and inside the top left. Superb.
He then teed up Armstrong to finish from a similar range at the start of the second half as Southampton wrapped up a fourth straight away win.