A ragged Arsenal were dumped out of the FA Cup by Southampton, who secured a 2-1 win at Saint Mary’s thanks to a late goal by Shea Charles.
Ross Stewart put the hosts ahead on 35 minutes, taking advantage of poor defending by Ben White, and even though Viktor Gyokeres came off the bench to grab an equaliser, it was the Championship side who found the energy to snatch the win.
Here’s what the managers, players, pundits and stattos made of the action…
Mikel Arteta on losing in difficult circumstances…
Surprised? No. They are a good side in a really good run, and you have to congratulate them. You have to adapt to the wind, to the injuries, to whatever. You want to be in every competition and win; you have to adapt to any context. You have to adapt to difficult situations and disappointing situations. Now we have to show what we are made of. That team had moments in the game that they should have capitalised on, and we should be at Wembley. We haven’t done it, so that’s our responsibility.
Source: TNT Sports
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Southampton manager Tonda Eckert on his side’s win…
I think we put in a good shift today, it was a challenge, we knew it was going to be a tough game, and that we need to live off moments, and I think we even had some a little bit earlier in the first half. With the substitutions in the second half, the game always has a chance to shift a little bit, and I think we reacted quite well. I think you need to have spells on the ball. We knew that there would be some situations where we need to move a little bit more than we normally do when we do have the ball, to have those moments, and yeah, compliment to the boys.
Source: BBC Sport
Christian Norgaard on where it went wrong for Arsenal…
It was at times a little bit too chaotic a game. They were very sharp in their transitions, which we didn’t manage very well. I still think we had the momentum in the second half, especially when we equalised and we conceded a very stupid goal from a goal kick, which we cannot allow or accept. So, of course, very frustrating for us, a frustrating evening, but already a big game for us on Tuesday, so a time for us to show what we’re made of. There’s no excuses for tonight. It was more the amount of duels we lost and the amount of easy balls in possession we lost. So, it has nothing to do with injuries or availability. We had a really good side on the pitch today that should have been competing on a high level.
Source: TNT Sport
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Southampton matchwinner Shea Charles on his cameo…
I got told to come on and try and get hold of the game, try and keep the ball a bit. We did OK, but to score was just special. I thought just try and place it in the corner. It’s really special. These fans deserve this and you heard how loud they were tonight.
Source: BBC Sport
Southampton’s first scorer, Ross Stewart, on the scenes at full-time…
Incredible night, the celebrations are mad. An unbelievable night for the club. We knew we could hurt them. We were a threat on the counter. We will enjoy tonight. Tomorrow we’ll be back to business. It’s not every day you reach an FA Cup semi-final. We have a lot of tough league fixtures between now and then.
Source: BBC Sport
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Arteta on the injury that forced Gabriel Magalhaes off…
He couldn’t continue, so we’re going to have to assess him and see if he gets better soon. I hope that we can recover some of the players that we are missing. And the quicker we do that, obviously, the stronger we’re going to be.
Source: BBC Sport
Theo Walcott on a deserved win for one of his former clubs…
They have to not let the season run away from them. Everything they have built this season, don’t let it affect them. They have been in this situation before and they don’t want to relive that. Visually watching Mikel on the sidelines, it was elements of previous years where that energy reflected into the team. It was a nervous energy, it was very tense. Not just Mikel but a lot of the staff were out there at times. It was like too many cooks in the kitchen, too many messages. Play your best team was the right thing to do tonight. It’s easy if I say that now, but you want a reaction off the cup final and it wasn’t that tonight, it was worse.
Source: BBC Sport
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Martin Keown’s reaction to Southampton’s win…
They very much deserved that victory tonight, i thought they were immense all over the pitch, nice and compact, great on the counter-attack, they gave Arsenal plenty of warnings that they did not heed.
Source: TNT Sport
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Micah Richards on how the home side surprised Arsenal…
The tactics Southampton used, going direct, they used the energy from the crowd, and they deserved it. It wasn’t one of those fluky wins. They were quality and got the job done.
Source: BBC Sport
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Arteta on whether defeat could be a blessing in disguise…
I don’t know. We are out, so now we still have that pain. When that pain goes, we’re going to have to use that time we have in the best possible manner to maximise every resource that we have to better. That’s it.
Source: Post-game press conference
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Arteta on how he stops this defeat polluting their ambitions elsewhere…
In the same manner that you have to stop [yourselves] when you win, win, win, win like we’ve been doing, that you don’t think that you are better than what you are because you are winning. It’s very clear, we’ve talked about that many, many times. You have to be very stable in any competition that you play, especially with the amount of games that we’ve played and we’ll continue to do that.
Source: Post-game press conference