Rovers were on the back foot from the start and were undone by a lovely Saints move midway through the first half.<\/p>\n
Kuryu Matsuki played a clever pass in behind Rovers wing-back Ryan Alebiosu to Archer, who sent a low ball in from the left for Larin to finish from close range – the Canada forward’s fifth league goal since arriving on loan from RCD Mallorca in February.<\/p>\n
The hosts doubled their lead with a fortuitous goal a couple of minutes before half-time, punishing an error by Kristi Montgomery after he had lost possession.<\/p>\n
Shea Charles darted in from the left and played the ball into the six-yard box – and it ended up in the net after Sean McLoughlin’s attempted clearance bounced off Manning and then Rovers’ Yuri Ribeiro.<\/p>\n
Blackburn were much more competitive in the second half and went close to pulling a goal back when Ryoya Morishita fired the loose ball against the crossbar after Yuki Ohashi’s shot had been parried by keeper Daniel Peretz.<\/p>\n
At the other end, Matsuki missed a sitter when he blasted over after being unselfishly teed up by Larin.<\/p>\n
But the excellent Archer made no mistake when similarly set up by Leo Scienza, calmly steering the ball into the far corner of the net.<\/p>\n
Southampton, relegated last season and 21st when Will Still was sacked as manager in November, are now unbeaten in 18 league and cup matches.<\/p>\n
It has been a remarkable turnaround in a season that will include at least one trip to Wembley and could end in a return to the Premier League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rovers were on the back foot from the start and were undone by a lovely Saints move midway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-531070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}