The Saints manager could be forgiven for not prioritising the cup given their Premier League position but his fighting talk will surely go down a treat with fans.
Ralph Hasenhuttl has spoken out on Southampton’s upcoming FA Cup third-round replay against Derby County and insisted that he is eager to overcome the Rams en route to the next stage of the competition.
In the first encounter between the two, the Saints led through Nathan Redmond’s deflected effort in the fourth minute of the game before the winger added a second with a 25-yard strike not long after the second-half restart.
However, Derby’s Jack Marriott volleyed home from Tom Lawrence’s chipped pass on 58 minutes, before the provider turned goalscorer with a drilled effort from the edge of the box just after the hour, the final score keeping both sides in the cup.
St Mary’s will host the game between Hasenhuttl’s charges and Frank Lampard’s side on Wednesday night, with Southampton boosted by the weekend’s 2-1 win at Leicester City which saw them come out of the Premier League’s bottom three.
Despite having been at the helm for just over a month, the Austrian is already endearing himself massively to the Saints faithful and his latest comments on taking the Derby game seriously and seeking a win, given their still precarious league position, will no doubt be appreciated by them.
“Now we are focusing on a very tough week with a replay against Derby and a very important game against Everton – both games at home and both games we want to win,” Hasenhuttl told the official Southampton website.
“We are facing opponents in our zone [teams around Saints in the Premier League table], so those will be the most important games, six-point games, but first we are focusing on the FA Cup and then on the home game against Everton.”
It would have been easy to forsake the FA Cup and perhaps field a weakened side in a bid to focus all resources on staying in the Premier League, but by saying he wants to beat Derby and make the next round, could he be looking at a cup run – and perhaps even silverware? After all, they were in the League Cup final just two years ago.
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