Pelle rediscovers his goalscoring touch to keep sinning Saints dreaming of Europe
GRAZIANO PELLE ended his goal drought to lift Southampton closer to a European place, which was just as well because they won’t be qualifying through the Fair Play League.
Substitute Sadio Mane’s sendingoff in added time was his second of the season and Southampton’s sixth, more than any other Premier League club.
It seemed a harsh decision by referee Lee Mason following Mane’s clash of heads with Stoke defender Erik Pieters, and Saints boss Ronald Koeman confirmed they will appeal.
‘The red card was a big mistake by the referee or maybe the fourth official or the linesman,’ said Koeman. ‘Sadio’s putting his head towards the ball, so is Pieters. Pieters told me it was nothing. We will appeal against the red card.
‘If there referee thinks it was an elbow then he needs glasses.’
Koeman was delighted with his team’s performance – and Pelle in particular – as they moved into seventh place, leapfrogging Stoke in the race for a Europa League place. Pelle had waited more than 14 hours, spanning 13 games and four months, for a goal — and then scored two inside the opening half an hour at the Britannia Stadium.
The first came after goalkeeper Jack Butland had tipped over his header from Shane Long’s cross. Steven Davis swung in the corner, and Pelle rose above Glenn Whelan at the near post to beat Butland from close range.
The second owed much to Pelle’s desire to retrieve the ball after Cuco Martina overhit a cross to the back post.
He exchanged passes with Dusan Tadic as Geoff Cameron failed to track his run into the box, and Butland was even more sloppy in allowing the Italy striker’s curling effort to squeeze through his grasp.
‘It was a great response from Graziano,’ said Koeman. ‘I understand you can’t score two goals every week, but as a striker you need to be important.
‘He knows he’s a big personality and he had a great game. With strikers, if they don’t score they are really unhappy and start to be nervous.
‘We would like to keep fighting for European football. We need the front players in good shape and scoring goals.’
Koeman was less impressed with Tadic, who wasted a great opportunity to put the game out of reach in added time at the end of the first half.
Southampton intercepted another lazy Stoke pass and broke away, two on one. Long fed Tadic whose dummy left Ryan Shawcross and Butland on their backsides, but the Serbia midfielder tried to take an extra touch before slotting into an empty net, and that gave Cameron enough time to get back to make a crucial tackle. No wonder Koeman was apoplectic on the touchline. ‘We expected a different Stoke in the second half,’ he admitted later, and so it proved.
Only seven minutes after the restart, Marko Arnautovic brought the home side back into the game, stealing in ahead of Virgil van Dijk to turn Ibrahim Afellay’s low cross into the roof of the net.
Suddenly Stoke were on the front foot and a crowd of 27,833, the biggest ever league attendance at the Britannia Stadium, came alive.
Still, it was Saints who came closest to scoring again. Butland was fortunate not to concede a penalty when Tadic went down under his challenge, and substitute James Ward-Prowse rattled the bar with a late free kick.
Defeat was a body blow for Stoke, who had taken 10 points from their last four games.
‘Southampton are undoubtedly a good team, and you can’t give a good team the start that we gave them,’ said Stoke boss Mark Hughes.
‘They’re on our shirt tails, and you want to take points away from them so they don’t catch us, but we’ve missed out on doing that.
‘Given the way we performed in the second half, I thought we at least deserved a draw out of it, but it wasn’t to be.’