![\"Adam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/skysports-adam-armstrong-southampton_7102880.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAdam Armstrong’s double gave Tonda Eckert the perfect start at permanent manager as Southampton beat Birmingham 3-1 at St Mary’s.<\/p>\n
Eckert won four out of five fixtures as caretaker, after Will Still was dismissed last month, and was given a contract until the end of next season on Friday night.<\/p>\n
In form Finn Azaz, who grew up in Birmingham and played for Aston Villa and West Brom, got the ball rolling before Armstrong struck either side of Demarai Gray’s strike.<\/p>\n
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\n Adam Armstrong scored twice for Southampton<\/p>\n
Southampton are now three points off the play-offs, a point behind the Blues – whose terrible away form now reads as one win in nine.<\/p>\n
The Eckert caretaker era was defined by a copious amount of goals – 15 in five games having scored 14 in the previous 17.<\/p>\n
Paired with the last four times the two teams had met at St Mary’s seeing 19 strikes, there was little chance of a goalless draw.<\/p>\n
It only took seven minutes to confirm that likelihood as Azaz continued his fine form.<\/p>\n
The Republic of Ireland international had not scored for Saints until Eckert’s arrival, but has now notched six times in five matches.<\/p>\n
He received the ball on the edge of the box, and after Birmingham defenders had stood off him, he placed the ball perfectly into the bottom corner with his left foot.<\/p>\n
Leo Scienza was a nuisance for the visitors and forced James Beadle into two near-identical first-half saves when cutting in from the left. Beadle also had to tip over after Scienza tried his luck from a corner.<\/p>\n
Tom Fellows blasted a shot against the crossbar in the 19th minute and five minutes later the hosts had deservedly doubled their lead.<\/p>\n
Armstrong had appeared to have run out of options 25-yards from goal but he dipped his shoulder and was invited to shoot. He did, with a shot that squirmed past Beadle.<\/p>\n
The Blues had ended the first half well, and continued their pressure into the second half and found a route back into the match in the 54th minute when Gray bagged his fifth goal of the season.<\/p>\n
The former Everton winger cut in from the chalk of the left touchline to the box to bend one past Gavin Bazunu.<\/p>\n
But Saint had their two-goal cushion back within four minutes. Scienza’s enterprising run and shot drew a smart save out of Beadle but Armstrong was on hand to tap in his fifth goal in five matches.<\/p>\n
Armstrong should have grabbed a hat-trick a few minutes later, after another Scienza dribble, but Beadle stuck out an arm to deny him from point-blank range. Fellows then blazed the rebound over.<\/p>\n
The Blues were not done at the other end. Tommy Doyle’s inch-perfect cross was met by Phil Neumann but his header bounced off the post, with Kyogo Furuhashi scooping over an open goal<\/p>\n
Kyogo’s next effort was heavily deflected but forced an awkward foot-save for Bazunu, before the Irishman kept out Gray’s long-range effort.<\/p>\n
But the last golden chances of the match fell to Saints. Cam Archer made Beadle make another fine one-on-one save and Jay Robinson drilled wide.<\/p>\n
The managers<\/p>\n
Southampton’s Tonda Eckert:<\/p>\n
“I think Southampton belongs to the Premier League.<\/p>\n
“We need to be ambitious as a football club. We shouldn’t shy away from saying that publicly.<\/p>\n
“We know we are still quite far away but that doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about the ambition. We just have to back that up every single day.<\/p>\n
“I knew I wanted to do everything for this club since the first day, whatever the role. The responsibility has grown now a bit. I feel well prepared and will put the club where it belongs.<\/p>\n
“I decided to come for the project to develop players and my intentions haven’t changed [now I’m manager].<\/p>\n
“I’m very pleased. We played against a good side today. I told the boys not to underestimate the win today.”<\/p>\n
Birmingham’s Chris Davies:<\/p>\n
“We had more of the ball, more territory, more touches and more shots but we haven’t managed to defend well in decisive moments and gave ourselves too much to do.<\/p>\n
“It was always going to be a challenge but the first 20 minute we weren’t strong enough physically or quick enough onto the ball and we paid the price for it as we were 2-0 down against a team with loads of good players away from home.<\/p>\n
“That first 20 minutes is now what we have been talking about or what we wanted to deliver.<\/p>\n
“They had a couple of moments that we have to defend better. We had a lot of Blues shirts back on all the goals, it wasn’t like we were opened up.<\/p>\n
“After that there was a game of a lot of positives. We really took the game to them, there were a lot of things to like about our performance.<\/p>\n
“The absolutely decisive goal is the 3-1. It takes the stuffing out of us when we had a really great chance to win.<\/p>\n
“We went to the very end but it wasn’t enough.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adam Armstrong’s double gave Tonda Eckert the perfect start at permanent manager as Southampton beat Birmingham 3-1 at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-333864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}