John Eustace was proud of Derby County’s work ethic but was fuming about the manner of Southampton’s winner, a goal that has seemingly ended their play-off hopes.
The Rams, missing the ineligible Ben Brereton Diaz and several other injured forwards, also lost Bobby Clark to an early hamstring problem.
But against a team that has not lost in 16 games, they took a lead through Carlton Morris and were leading at the break.
Southampton equalised through Leo Scienza and then scored a set-piece goal from Taylor Harwood-Bellis – one that really irked Eustace as his side fell to a 2-1 defeat.
“First half I thought we were excellent, we took the game to them, pressed very high when they get the ball back on a number of occasions, scored a great goal.
“Obviously, second half we knew we’d be under a bit of pressure, the lad scored a good first goal, and then the second goal was just not acceptable from our point of view really, really soft and something that I’m really disappointed about.
“We’re needed to shuffle across, the whole group, it’s something we work very hard on – for and against and we scored a great goal from a set piece which was worked on yesterday and then we’ve conceded one in which the whole team wasn’t doing their jobs. I don’t think it was a free kick either.
“They’ve scored a second goal from a really cheap, from our point of view. We needed to be better in the final third. First half we were excellent, they’re on a good run, but we’ve given them the second goal today.
“You look at the players that are playing for us today, we lose our left back yesterday, we lose Bobby Clark, we lose Patrick Agyemang, Rhian Brewster, there’s lots of top players that we haven’t got.
“But the effort the boys put in today against the fantastic squad of players, their quality is different class of course it is, but what an effort from my group of players and they’ve done it all season and the most disappointing thing for me is that the second goal just wasn’t good enough.”
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