Southampton fought tooth and nail for a point against Manchester City at the Etihad, and while they ultimately came up empty-handed with an early goal from top Premier League marksman Erling Haaland making the difference, Pep Guardiola and Bernardo Silva are right to say that the Saints did some good things in defeat.
At no point did Southampton give up, and while they were overmatched in midfield and without the requisite quality in the attack to break Man City’s world-class defense, they managed to hang in there and keep things interesting until the last kick.
Southampton are no longer one of the more talented teams in the Premier League and will have to keep fighting to the death in matches in order to avoid another demotion, but in this rebuilding squad, they do have a couple of exceptional young talents fitting with their tradition of producing top quality players.
Coming into the season, center back Taylor Harwood-Bellis looked like the most promising of those players, and after an uneven start to the season, the 22-year-old rose to the occasion against the defending champions of English football.
Harwood-Bellis put his body on the line for Southampton in the 1-0 result, preventing it from being 2 or even 3-nil with his interventions. He directly spared Aaron Ramsdale a second goal by making a world-class, goal-line clearance with his head in the second half.
In total, the English central defender blocked four shots for the Saints and made nine clearances while completing 97 percent of his nearly 70 pass attempts, showing vital ball security against a dominant Man City side that loves to smell blood if a young defender isn’t ready enough on the ball.
Southampton and manager Russell Martin do have some positives they can take away from this game, and the biggest will be this big-game performance from their future world-class center back, Harwood-Bellis, who showed he can go toe-to-toe with Haaland and anyone else that the Premier League has to offer.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.