Ralph Hasenhuttl admits Southampton rode their luck at times against Manchester City, but praised his side for taking risks and putting on a brave performance to stop the Blues' winning run in the Premier League.
Southampton took the lead early on through Kyle Walker-Peters and were the better side in a first half where City were under-par. Pep Guardiola's men improved after the break and equalised through Aymeric Laporte, but Saints stood firm as City pressed for a winner, and took a deserved point from the encounter.
After the game, Hasenhuttl went into detail over why Southampton persisted with two strikers throughout the game, and how his side made it difficult for City to control the game as they wished by urging them to rush their actions in the penalty area.
Speaking to Match of the Day, he said disrupting City was the primary target.
"I’m tired. They are so good, they are so unbelievably good. If you want to press them they always find solutions and I must say we were amazing defensively," he said.
"I think we had to do more deep defending than in the whole season together. Around the box, balls are flying in. Unbelievable saves from Fraser [Forster] today.
"It was a simple situation with the goal for us and then there was good chances in the second half, we had the chance for a second goal from [Armando] Broja. He was a big problem for us. We are super proud of what we did today against an amazing good team. Pep doesn’t like to draw against a team like us and we did a good job today.
"We are not always good organised but it is tough against them because they always finds solutions and we tried to make them quick finish their actions, that they have no time to play us around but in the second half in the first 20 minutes, you could not release the pressure.
"We deserved to get something because of our passion, because of our intense way of throwing ourselves at every shot. You need a bit of luck in some moments, I think the foul on [Kevin] de Bruyne was right on the edge [of the penalty area].
"When you are fighting like we have done today then you deserve to get something. I’m super proud. It was a hard week to prepare for the toughest challenge of the season but we did a good job and it’s good to see that the team is resilient against this quality."
Expanding on his comments, Hasenhuttl told his post-match press conference: "You need to have moments where you make them run and we tried to do it but you could see that it was getting tougher, we were getting more tired and making mistakes.
"You saw during the second half how hard it is to defend when you're only defending. They are too good, they find solutions. They do not have a real number nine but they are entering the box with so many players it is so tough to defend it.
"We had to do it during the second half but our two strikers did a fantastic job. They had to work so hard, maybe that is why Broja did not finish that big chance because he had so much work to do against the ball but they did it in a fantastic way.
"This is how you have to fight for your club and I am proud of them. I have the highest respect for their manager. He is the best in the world and to go unbeaten against them means so much to my staff.
"When you see how hungry Man City are, they do not want to drop points. They're eleven points ahead and they could just take the point, no they hate that, that hate to drop points.
"We changed the shape at one stage but that did not work so we went back to the 4-2-2-2 and with a few adaptations to the positions we want to bring them in - but it was super tough."
