Hasenhuettl hails ‘dominant’ Southampton after Boxing Day win

Southampton manager Ralph Hasenhuettl praised the team’s dominant and entertaining performance after the south-coast club ended their six-match winless run with a thrilling 3-2 victory at West Ham United in Sunday’s Premier League clash.

James Ward-Prowse scored one and created another as Southampton dug deep to earn the victory which moved them up to 14th in the standings with 20 points from 18 games, eight points behind sixth-placed West Ham.

The Boxing Day win meant Southampton picked up their first Premier League victory over West Ham since August 2017, ending a run of eight games without beating the East London club in the competition.

“We have to entertain the whole world on Boxing Day and I think the Premier League did that today, we saw a lot of goals,” Hasenhuettl said.

“It was a very good start from our side. We were unbelievable. We were so dominant and then scored a fantastic goal. For every threat, they (West Ham) put on the pitch we had an answer. This helped massively to take the three points.

“We’re always talking about how we drop points, which happens but only because we so often take the lead. Today we won, sometimes we lose it.”

The slump continued for West Ham, who have won just one of their last seven matches in the Premier League after a solid start to the season.

Moyes said the hosts were poor in attack in the first half.

“I thought we didn’t have enough energy but I thought that when we did get the ball we gave it away really cheaply and it did not allow us to build any momentum or control of the game,” Moyes said.

“… Like everybody else you can have off days and today was a poor one. I thought we did enough to get ourselves back into the game and turn a bad day into a good one.”