Wolverhampton Wanderers 0-2 Southampton: Hasenhuttl says Saints want cup

Southampton boss Ralph Hasenhuttl says his team can "go for the FA Cup" after they reached the quarter-finals with a comfortable victory at Wolves.

They now face Bournemouth in the last eight on 20 or 21 March.

"We said when we were more comfortable in the league we can focus on the cup," Hasenhuttl said.

"We haven't had an easy time in the last few weeks so it's important to win and they [Southampton players] have been convinced about what they are doing.

"We want to go for the FA Cup and this is a chance to win something. We have a south coast derby now which is always intense and we will go there trying to win."

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Southampton, who sit 12th in the Premier League, have won the FA Cup once - against Manchester United in 1976 - and were beaten in their last appearance in the final against Arsenal in 2003.

While both managers made significant changes to their weekend line-ups, Saints coped better with the alterations and their greater fluency meant they were deserved winners.

Despite arriving in the Midlands on a poor recent run of form, Hasenhuttl's side exhibited no shortage of early confidence as they took the game to the hosts.

With full-backs Ryan Bertrand and Kyle Walker-Peters both marauding forward at every opportunity, Ings, Armstrong and Moussa Djenepo all went close to breaking the deadlock.

Wolves did improve - seeing a Morgan Gibbs-White penalty appeal turned down after a VAR review - and were left to lament defender Romain Saiss' wayward volley from 10 yards just before the interval.

While Ings' goal which was confirmed by VAR was a little fortuitous - hitting Wolves goalkeeper John Ruddy before deflecting back past him off the England forward - once the visitors went ahead they rarely looked like surrendering their lead.

Substitute Adama Traore was given a rare sight of goal for the hosts but Southampton keeper Fraser Forster blocked his close-range effort before a Ruddy mistake with a clearance allowed Armstrong to seal victory with a cool side-foot finish.

'We had the bigger chances' - what they said

Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo speaking to BT Sport: "It was a tight game - tough, competitive, with few spaces - against a good side. In the second half, the way we conceded the first goal - I'm very disappointed with that, very disappointed.

"We are not producing enough. The final touch is not there and we are not clinical enough. We have problems in the final third of the pitch. It requires improvement. It requires better decisions and it is our job to improve our players. On Sunday we are going to face Southampton again and we need to give them a better fight."

Southampton manager Ralph Hasenhuttl told BT Sport: "It was deserved, I think. We had a good performance. It is a little bit easier when you have more alternatives for the bench and that gives us more chances to pick a strong side.

"Today we had a good side on the pitch and the guys did a good job. We still tried to be patient and find the gaps. The longer the game was going, the more chances we had. We had the bigger chances, so it was absolutely deserved."

Cup delight for Saints - the stats

• Southampton have reached the FA Cup quarter-final in two of the last four seasons (semi-final in 2017-18); they had only done so once in their previous 14 campaigns before this.
• Wolves have now been eliminated from the FA Cup by Premier League opponents in six consecutive seasons.
• Southampton have won three consecutive FA Cup games while also keeping a clean sheet each time for the first time since January 2011, when they were a League One club.
• Wolves have lost six of their 15 matches at Molineux in all competitions this season, more than they did in 29 home matches in the whole of 2019-20 (five).
• This was Wolves' first home defeat to Southampton since March 2007, when they were beaten 6-0 in a Championship encounter (W2 D3 since).
• Since he joined Southampton in 2018, Danny Ings has scored 41 goals in all competitions, at least 23 more than any other player for the Saints since the start of 2018-19.
• Southampton's Fraser Forster hasn't conceded a goal in any of his four appearances in all competitions this season - after not having kept a clean sheet in his previous 12 games for the club beforehand. He's the first Southampton goalkeeper to record a clean sheet in four consecutive starts since he himself did so in October 2016 (five in a row).

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