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Southampton vs Bournemouth: How Kyle Walker-Peters reacted to losing the important clash?

Full-back Kyle Walker-Peters was understandably left disappointed with the defeat to Bournemouth and rued their lack of clinical edge in front of the goal.

By Karthik Raman | Apr 28, 2023 | 3 Min Read

Southampton are in real danger of getting relegated this season after suffering a narrow 1-0 defeat to fellow relegation battlers Bournemouth in the Premier League. This game was of massive importance for both sides for obvious reasons. The Saints were languishing at the foot of the table, while the visitors were not far above the bottom three places before the kick off. Considering Southampton’s difficult situation, this felt like a must-win for them. However, they were not able to build any sort of momentum in the game and lost to Marcus Tavernier’s only goal of the game at the start of the second half.

Full-back Kyle Walker-Peters was understandably left disappointed with the defeat to Bournemouth and rued their lack of clinical edge in front of the goal. “Disappointed. We weren’t good enough at both ends of the field, didn’t cause Bournemouth enough problems, and we’ve conceded a goal that I think is easily preventable, but that’s been the story of the season. I think it was an even game, both teams had chances, but far too often we haven’t been clinical enough,” Walker-Peters was quoted as saying by the club’s website.

“We’ve shown how clinical we can be against Arsenal, and you hope you take that into the game tonight, but we didn’t. It’s something that’s been happening all season. We do really well against a team, I think back to the Chelsea game when we beat Chelsea, played really well, go to Leeds and then lose, so it’s been the story of the season and it’s something we need to rectify fast.”

I don’t want to blame VAR: Kyle Walker-Peters

Southampton almost came away from the match with a point when Che Adams thought he had scored the equaliser in the latter stages of the game. However, the goal was ruled out by VAR for offside. Reacting to it, Walker-Peters said, “Just his toe is offside, I don’t know how much of an advantage that gives him, but those are the rules and we’ve had 90 minutes to score anyway, so I don’t want to blame VAR or talk about how unlucky we are – we didn’t deserve to win because we didn’t take our chances and didn’t create enough.”

With not many games left to play, every point counts for Southampton if they are to stay in the Premier League. He added, “Five games left. We’re not hiding from that – we know the situation we’re in and we need to win every game we play. We try to do that anyway, but it’s crunch time now and every game we go into we need to put on a performance like we did at Arsenal. No excuses, we have to be really clinical.”

Injury concerns for Southampton

Manager Ruben Selles also had to deal with the injury problems they had to face during the 1-0 defeat. He had to withdraw Romain Perraud and captain James Ward-Prowse through fitness issues during the match. “The situation with Ché and this offside, but it is offside. We had a couple of those moments in the last months. It’s the Romain Perraud injury, it’s needing to substitute James Ward-Prowse at half time, so all of those things were going on tonight and none of those things were in our favour,” he explained.

Next up for them is a difficult test against in-form Newcastle United. Speaking about the upcoming games, the manager said, “We prepare the games trying to win the games and that’s what we are going to do when we play Newcastle on Sunday and we need to start to get points right now. We needed to start some weeks ago and right now this situation is starting to get a little bit more points difference with the teams in front of us, but we need to be focusing on what we can do and try to do the very best when we go and play against Newcastle.”