After Southampton’s win against Everton in the Barclays Premier League at St Mary’s, Shane Long, Maya Yoshida, Toby Alderweireld and José Fonte stopped to talk to the media.
Here’s what they had to say on the win:
Shane Long on Harrison Reed’s performance…
He just cleans up in midfield. I was delighted for him because he trains hard. I was really impressed since the first day I came in. He’s been waiting for his chance – it’s hard to get a game with the quality we’ve got in midfield. But two suspensions and Jack Cork’s injury gave him a chance to shine and he took it. I thought he was immense.
Maya Yoshida on his goal and the atmosphere at St Mary’s…
It was the first time for me to score in a home game so it was a great atmosphere. Maybe I’ll try to continue again as well. It was a very nice game.
We still have many games in December so we have to continue and recover quickly and try to get more points. We’ve had some very tough moments over the last couple of weeks so we had to win at our home.
We had many suspended players and also injured players. It gave a few players a great chance today. I’m very satisfied with our performance – we picked up three points so we must just keep going on.
Toby Alderweireld on the confidence from the win and Romelu Lukaku…
It was very important after the defeats, the confidence was a little bit down, we had a lot of suspensions and injuries so we had to work very hard and give everything and we did.
It always starts from the back of course, if you defend good, a team like us most of the time we get good opportunities. The whole team worked very hard and we’re happy with this result.
It was important to get three points now to get our confidence back up and we knew we can play good football. Sometimes it’s a little bit unlucky and we have to work very hard for every game. If we work hard we can play good football.
It was a good battle with Romelu, I think. We had a lot of work, I think Everton played a good game and we defended very well. All the team helped us. It’s my job to keep him quiet so I did my best and we did get the clean sheet.
José Fonte on how important a win it was for Saints…
It’s massive after the results we’ve been having. Not so much the performance because I thought that we deserved more in a couple of games but the fact is we had zero points in four games.
So to have a performance like we had and to get a clean sheet, three points and three goals just puts us on the right track to go on a good run again.
I can’t seem to score at the moment – I don’t know what’s going on. The last couple of games I had some good chances, the keepers have made good saves. But for me the most important thing is the clean sheet and keeping a good record defensively. I’m happy because the team won, hopefully the goal will come.
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