At the end of an emotionally sapping week Cardiff City showed enormous heart to snatch a stoppage-time victory, moments after Southampton had seemingly rescued a point. It was not pretty but this was about as precious a win as it gets. It was a result that hoists Cardiff above Saints in the table and left Ralph Hasenhüttl questioning whether his squad are capable of staying in the Premier League after they again activated self-destruct, collapsing after pulling level in the first of five added second-half minutes through Jack Stephens.
But Kenneth Zohore’s winner from close range earned consecutive top-flight wins for the first time since 1962, helping Cardiff, who led through Sol Bamba, clamber a point above the relegation zone. Burnley’s win at Brighton in the evening game means Southampton are in the bottom three.
“The opponents shot three times on our goal and we conceded two goals,” an irate Hasenhüttl said. “With this, we have no chance to stay in the Premier League, that’s for sure. If you don’t stop conceding goals at the end and giving points away it will be very, very difficult. You can speak about development, tactical and everything else but I think the way that we have given four points away this week. We have rolled a very big stone in our way now and it will take a lot of work to remove it mentally and physically. We have two weeks now with no game, so for two weeks now we have this result in our mind and it’s the most horrible situation you can imagine. It’s a disaster.
“We have to sleep on it. At the moment it feels horrible. Maybe when we wake up tomorrow, it won’t feel better, it will feel worse. I don’t want to make drama. But we have to be very, very honest with ourselves. Otherwise I can’t look in the mirror. It’s nothing new that we have to fight until the last game. That was clear for me in December. It does not change in February. But we could have made a big step forward. The way we lost this was the most horrible thing.”
The game was bookended by Cardiff supporters singing the name of Emiliano Sala, the club’s £15m record signing whose death was confirmed by police on Friday. Before kick-off there was an impeccable minute’s silence, while Cardiff players again wore shirts printed with a yellow daffodil – the Welsh flower and a symbol also of significance to his former club Nantes, nicknamed Les Canaris. In the away end, a few Argentina flags took prominence among the travelling supporters. But a match that had, at times, veered into the realms of slapstick it was so painfully short of quality came to a preposterous finale.
By the time Zohore, a substitute, wheeled away with seconds remaining, a turgid first half an hour punctuated by a series of stray passes, wayward goal-kicks and hopeful punts forward had been long forgotten about. For so long, the final ball eluded Saints so badly it was almost comical. Cardiff, meanwhile, displayed plenty of endeavour but lacked any real elegance, with Oumar Niasse repeatedly guilty of failing to make the ball stick, though Joe Ralls – described by Neil Warnock as a “manager’s player” – again impressed.
A trio of billboards outside St Mary’s have been given a makeover, with the words “Welcome to Ralphampton” greeting supporters these days, though for Saints this was a case of the same old story; they have surrendered a league-high of nine points in the final 10 minutes of games this season. As for Cardiff, this victory alters the immediate outlook at the foot of the table.
Asked about the psychological impact of leaping above the dotted line with 12 games to play, Warnock said: “It will make me sleep so much better in the next 10 days than I have for a long time. The pundits will still have us down but I think we have a good group of lads that don’t know when they are beaten. It’s a great quality to have at any level, even in the Premier League.”
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