‘He grabbed hold of my hand’: Southampton boss responds to post-match handshake incident with Portsmouth counterpart
The Southampton boss has responded to his post-match exchange with John Mousinho following some lively touchline incidents in the south-coast derby.
Will Still insisted he was perplexed by his post-match handshake with John Mousinho after reacting to their derby exchange.
The Southampton boss stated his Pompey counterpart ‘grabbed hold of my hand’ when coming together at the full-time whistle in the 0-0 draw.
Still on Mousinho: ‘He grabbed hold of my hand’
It proved lively on the touchline from the outset, as the two fierce rivals renewed hostilities at St Mary’s Stadium in their first league clash in 13 years.
It took 60 seconds for an exchange over a throw-in with Mousinho referencing the continuing noise in his direction from the away bench, while recognising his dialogue with the fourth official
Then came the flashpoint between the pair after the game, following a draw against the relegated Premier League side which made a mockery of the bookies having Southampton as heavy favourites.
Still said of the incident to the Southern Daily Echo: 'Yeah, I didn't quite get that. Well, it's just a derby, it's football, isn't it?
'I don't mind it, but I didn't and don't understand why he grabbed hold of my hand, but fair play, he came with a game plan and did what they wanted to do.
'Like I said, he's a good coach, he's a good manager, and he's done really good things with Portsmouth. Fair play to him, it's just part of football, so it's fine.'
Still bemoaned what he felt was a derby low on quality and acknowledged his own side’s display in the first half was weak. He stated he prepared for Pompey to ‘play long’ and but Southampton weren’t at the levels needed to deal with the intensity of Mousinho’s men.
Still on Pompey clash: ‘First-half performance wasn’t good enough’
He told his club’s official site: ‘I thought it was quite a poor derby.
‘I thought our first-half performance wasn’t good enough, it wasn’t up to the standards we wanted to set, and it was quite a bitty, broken up first half – fouls, throw-ins, free-kicks, goal kicks that took forever and ever – so there was no real rhythm to the game, there was no real intensity in it.
‘But we weren’t at the levels we wanted to be, we wanted to stretch them in the first five, 10 minutes and then play through them, but we didn’t get our foot on the ball, didn’t show enough bravery or personality to do that, which we corrected and tweaked at half time. The second half was more positive, we were at least playing forward and totally dominated.
‘We knew they were going to come and play long to their forward players and play off second balls, and we dealt with that better in the second half, but we’ve wasted 40, 45 minutes and then you’re playing catch up on what you really want to do and where you want to be going.’