Southampton’s survival fight ended at Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday after a 3-1 defeat transferred them to a record fashion to the Premier League relegation.
The fate of the club felt inevitable for months, but a 2-1 victory for wolves at the three-three club Ipswich opened a 22-point gap on Saturday for the South Coast Club.
This meant that the Ivan Juric team needed a draw or victory in North London to stay mathematically at least another week, but a first half of Brennan Johnson set the visitors on track for an immediate return to the championship.
Mateus Fernandes seized a late comfort before Mathys counted a penalty for Spurs for Spurs, as the relegation with seven games left Southampton gave a new Premier League record-while Derby and Huddersfield, in March 2008 and 2019, both had only six games.
Three points for Tottenham light up some of the gloom around Ange Postecoglou’s team before Thursday’s European League quarterfinals at home against Eintracht Frankfurt.
Postecoglou conducted a fresh investigation after Thursday’s defeat to Chelsea, but this time a driver with Survival was at stake.
The Tottenham fans only took 60 seconds to make their feelings clear with the call by chairman Daniel Levy to leave after a protest march against him and owners Enic was arranged before the match.
However, Spurs started strongly, with early penalties blown away by Dominic as well before Johnson blocked a shot and Aaron Ramsdale then produced a flying rescue from the head of Cristian Romero.
Southampton led a shock in the twelfth minute when Tyler Dibing carved for Kamalden Sulemana, but his volley was bowed off by Pedro Porro and Spurs on the post.
A minute later and the stalemate was broken with Johnson who first scored at home in 2025.
It was a greasy step when James Maddison found the boy Heung-Min and he was waiting for the overlap of Djed Spence, who cut back for Johnson to go home.
Ramsdale denied Romero again shortly after following a dive head by the Argentina defender before Spurs thought they had a second after 33 minutes, only for a long overview to follow.
Bergvall sat in the bag after another Romero head, but Graham Scott at Stockley Park took almost five minutes to decide that Romero was off guard, which led to Postecoglou days after “killing the technology” on the tangent with a coin-flip-gesture.
When the game resumed in the midst of evil of both sets of fans, Tottenham led it 2-0 with three minutes of the first half left when a Maddison head set up to a Rodrigo Bentancur Cross Johnson to win his 16th of the season.
Son blocked a shot at the beginning of the second half, but it was largely played at a pedestrian pace.
Ramsdale yielded a fine saving to stop as low efforts before being punished for handball outside the area, but the saints began to push when the seconds threw away.
Vicario denied Sulemana before Southampton at least gave their loyal fans something to scream when Fernandes Spence evaded to fire home on the full -time stroke.
That gave the believer short hope, but Tottenham had the final say when Johnson was committed by Wellington in the penalty, but he watched his hope of hope disappeared when Romero, now with the captain’s bracelet, counted the ball, which housed his first Premier League goal.
Full-time followed, but the Southampton players were applauded by their supporters, as the attention was going for them to the next season.
DAD
