Southampton 2
Davis 31’, Pelle 36’
Bournemouth 0
Red card Victor Wanyama (Southampton)
LONDON // Southampton beat Bournemouth 2-0 on Sunday in the Premier League in a rare meeting of the south-coast rivals.
Ronald Koeman’s Saints dominated the first half against the newly promoted Cherries with Steven Davis opening the scoring in the 31st and Graziano Pelle adding a second goal five minutes later.
Southampton’s Victor Wanyama was sent off with 10 minutes remaining for two yellow cards but Bournemouth failed to take advantage of its numerical advantage.
Southampton is seventh with 17 points from 11 matches to keep in touch with the race for European spots. At the other end of the table, Bournemouth is only a point away from the relegation zone after losing four of its last five league games.
The last meeting between these two teams at St Mary’s Stadium was five years ago in the third tier, with Rickie Lambert getting the goals in another 2-0 win for Southampton.
The hosts took the lead as Pelle played in Ryan Bertrand and his cross was turned home from close range by Davis.
Things got worse for the Cherries moments later as Sadio Mane’s superb ball out to the wing was collected by Dusan Tadic, who crossed for Pelle to power home a second Southampton goal with his head.
Bournemouth boss Eddie Howe brought on Junior Stanislas at the interval, and the substitute came close to his first league goal since August 2014 when he whipped a free-kick inches wide of Maarten Stekelenburg’s left-hand upright.
Wanyama was shown a second yellow card by referee Craig Pawson for a foul on substitute Lee Tomlin, with the Kenya international not learning from his earlier caution for bringing down Adam Smith.
MacDonald revises target for Aston Villa
Kevin MacDonald says Aston Villa’s revival must start immediately if they want to survive relegation.
The caretaker manager takes the Premier League’s bottom side to Tottenham Hotspur tonight aiming to avoid a seventh straight defeat.
Villa sacked Tim Sherwood last week and are keen on appointing former Lyon coach Remi Garde as his replacement.
MacDonald, who was previously caretaker manager in 2010, has acknowledged Garde could be in the crowd at White Hart Lane and knows the struggling side, who are four points from safety, need results quick.
“What we have to do, basically, is get more points than we have so far,” MacDonald said.
“It’s not a case of changing it. It’s a case of changing it to say ‘we start again’. This is our first game of the season. We have 28 games in the season now.
“We need to get possibly 36-40 points. It’s a big ask looking at the stats we have at the moment but we don’t feel it’s impossible to do. It has to start on Monday.”
Villa beat Spurs 1-0 at White Hart Lane last season on their way to successfully avoiding relegation, but Tottenham’s top scorer last season, Harry Kane, rediscovered his scoring touch with a hat-trick against Bournemouth last week and MacDonald is wary of the quality that their hosts, who are sixth in the table, possess.
“Harry Kane and Ryan Mason are two outstanding talents for them,” he said. “Obviously Tim [Sherwood] was involved with them, but they have a hell of a lot of other good players as well.
“You look at their whole squad. Kyle Walker, who was here, is an outstanding talent, Danny Rose has been good as well as (Jan) Vertonghen, (Nacer) Chadli, (Erik) Lamela. They have a lot of big names and they could probably pick a couple of very good sides.”
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