Stoke City 1-1 Southampton: Asmir Begovic scores from 103 yards out

Artur Boruc looks on as Asmir Begovic’s kick from the opposite end goes inside the goal

Stoke City 1 – 1 Southampton

It took Tony Pulis leaving the club for Stoke to truly master the long ball game with goalie Asmir Begovic scoring after just 12 seconds with a wind assisted clearance that bounced over his opposite number, however Jay Rodriguez’s excellent header earned the Saints a point and kept their unbeaten run going.

Key Stats:

It was a fairly even game at the Britannia with both sides pretty much matching each other in all the important areas, although Southampton did have a slight edge in many aspects of today’s match.

The away side had a total of 10 shots with two hitting the target. This means 10% of their shots hit the back of the net. Stoke on the other hand had nine shots with three on target.

The win was a factor and certainly impacted the way both sides wanted to play which is evidenced by both club’s relatively low pass completion. Stoke were poor at 63% while Southampton not at their usual best with 76% finding a team-mate.

On the other hand Southampton were fantastic defensively winning 92% of the 13 tackles contested.

Man of the Match: Asmir Begovic

You have to give it to a goalie if he scores. Even if he did not quite mean to and looked a bit embarrassed about it.

However other than getting anyone who picked him in their Fantasy Football team a huge amount of points Begovic made two excellent saves to deny Southampton a further goal and earned himself a Squawka Performance Score of 59. A full 31 points higher than the second highest scorer, James Ward-Prowse.

Performance Score:

Saints just could not get going in the first half, clearly knocked back by Stoke’s goal just 12 seconds in. After just five minutes Stoke were on a score of 90 and Saints on one of -66. This trend continued more or less up until Jay Rodriguez’s equaliser in the 42nd minute.

The second half was a much more even affair with neither side having a significant Performance Score advantage over the other and it remained that way until full time.

Key Observations:

Two things stood out in this match. Stoke’s continued lack of ability to score goals and Southampton’s ability to dig in and get a result in a match when they were not able to impose their usual game on a team.

Stoke have scored just seven goals in ten games and now one of them has come from the most unlikely of sources, their goalie.

Peter Crouch played up front for Stoke today and did not manage a single shot and did not help the team much in terms of build-up play making just two key passes.

A combination of the wind and Stoke’s own style meant Southampton were unable to really play the way they have this season so far so digging in and battling was vital here, and they did it well. As mentioned earlier they won 92% of tackles and they also won around 50% of headers while making a mammoth 18 interceptions.