Adam on song to end Saints’ top-four bid
Supersub’s late winner leaves Koeman aiming for the Europa League
MARK HUGHES thinks Tom Jones is stopping Stoke City from qualifying for Europe.
But on the green, green grass of home, his side were the ones denting hopes of facing the Continent’s elite teams with this 2-1 victory over Ronald Koeman’s Southampton.
The Stoke manager believes Jones’s hit Delilah, belted out regularly by the Britannia Stadium hordes, is causing his side to be marked down in UEFA’s Fair Play League because of its violent theme and thus affecting their chances of qualifying for the Europa League.
However, after Morgan Schneiderlin prodded Southampton into a deserved lead, a second-half turnaround with goals from Mame Diouf and Charlie Adam damaged the visitors hopes of finishing in the top four — and had the Stoke fans belting out their favourite 60s hit.
Hughes said: ‘We are not going to get too many Fair Play points today.
‘The key was that we got three Premier League points, though.’
The result had Koeman acknowledging that the Saints’ unlikely march to the top four was over.
‘Sometimes I have to answer questions about Champions League football,’ said the Dutchman. ‘I don’t like that because the distance to fourth place is five points and now maybe it is eight. We are fighting for a Europa League place — that’s our Champions League. You have to see it like that.’
Hughes is entitled to be happy, with his side in ninth spot with five matches to play. Survival in the Premier League, always the priority in these parts, was secured as early as March, leaving the manager, with the ink drying on a four-year contract, to set new targets. He wants Stoke to better last year’s points tally of 50 and secure consecutive top-half finishes in the top flight for the first time in 40 years, and this result leaves such feats on the cards.
Victory was unlikely in a one-sided first half. Southampton, who had wasted chances, eventually took one when captain Jose Fonte rose at the near post to divert Steven Davis’s corner goalwards but was denied by a goal-hanging Schneiderlin, who managed to get the final touch before it crossed the line.
Graziano Pelle should have doubled the lead when played in by a lively Sadio Mane but Stoke’s in-demand goalkeeper Asmir Begovic saved well to leave Koeman ruing his side’s profligacy.
‘I think we played very well in the first 45 minutes and were by far better team,’ he said. ‘Maybe we could have been more clinical in the box but in general we played well today, we played at least at our level and it’s important to keep that for rest of the season.’
For all Southampton’s dominance Stoke should have been level when Geoff Cameron flicked on a Marko Arnautovic free-kick only for an unmarked Steven Nzonzi to inexplicably miss from no more than two yards out.
They did go level following the arrival of Adam from the bench, albeit in exceptionally fortunate circumstances. When Nzonzi mis-hit a cross into the sky there were groans. When it landed on the bar and Diouf slammed home the rebound they turned into disbelieving cheers.
The first Delilah of the day duly followed, with Adam urged to shoot wherever he picked up the ball.
With six minutes remaining he did just that, lashing home following a goalmouth scramble to bring that song out again. ‘I think he played the initial ball into the box, followed his ball in and thankfully it has dropped to him,’ said an admiring Hughes, who also took a little dig at a ‘direct’ Southampton.
‘It’s great technique. He knows exactly what he is doing. He has hit it into the ground and that has made it even harder for the keeper to save it.’
Adam’s fellow substitute Peter Crouch could have piled on the agony for Koeman after being teed up by Jonathan Walters but scuffed his shot wide from six yards.
More misery for the Saints arrived in injury time when the sought-after defender Toby Alderweireld went down clutching a shoulder and was carried off on a stretcher, although he is expected to be fit for the remainder of the run-in.
Regardless, Koeman was certainly laughing no more.