Jose's verdict on Southampton

Jose Mourinho was left to reflect on a disappointing start to 2020 as we suffered a 1-0 loss at St Mary’s on New Year’s Day.

Eric Dier was a late withdrawal due to a virus and Jose lost the services of Tanguy Ndombele after 25 minutes and then Harry Kane with 15 minutes remaining as we chased an equaliser.

It was one of those days on the south coast. Harry was actually injured scoring a goal that was ruled out on a narrow off-side call. Danny Ings won the game with a well-taken goal on 17 minutes. We had chances – most notably Jan Vertonghen firing over and Alex McCarthy’s fine save to deny Harry’s deflected shot – but it wasn’t to be.

Jose said: “We can say everything negative because of the result and we lost players. For me, it was quite a strange game because they didn’t create problems for us defensively, they had two or three shots and scored a goal and we didn’t score.

“We had chances to do it in the first half, we had a couple of good chances in the second half. Again, the off-side is what it is.

“The game was not easy, the second half was not easy. They were winning, they were defending basically with 10 players, fighting hard, being aggressive – good aggressive.

“Then we lose Harry, and without Harry things are more difficult because we don’t have direct replacements, especially without Son (serving the third of his three-match ban), who is a player who can play in his area. It was difficult.”