But Van Dijk blasted in Dusan Tadic’s cross to claim a point, leaving Saints boss Ronald Koeman bewildered at his side’s performance.
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Sam Allardyce said he would be “crying into his wine” on Saturday night after his relegation-threatened Sunderland side conceded an injury-time equaliser at Southampton.
“If any of the bottom three had won next week they couldn’t have overtaken us”.
“Now, I am going to be crying into my wine, I am telling you that now”.
Last season the Black Cats were thrashed 8-0 at Saint Mary’s, but they were much tighter in defence under Sam Allardyce this time around.
“How dejected we are and that we have made our job more hard is beyond what I can describe”.
Sunderland were hoping to ease their relegation fears by nicking a win and they received a boost when Jose Fonte was sent off 10 minutes from time for wrestling with Fabio Borini.
Southampton provided a late twist when Virgil Van Dijk scored an equaliser at the death with a powerful strike to deny Sunderland all three points.
He said: “It’s odd that we played our best football in the last five minutes”.
“We shouldn’t have been rescuing a point against Crystal Palace but we did, we shouldn’t have been losing against West Ham but we did”. We’ve only got 25 points from 29 games: that’s not enough.
“This should have been a win but we threw it away and put more pressure on ourselves”.
Over the course of the 90 minutes at St. Mary’s Stadium on Saturday afternoon, hosts Southampton had 65% of the possession, took 16 shots of which five were on target, and earned 12 corners.
“The goal was a great goal but the first 85, I didn’t see the that quality from our side”.
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“It’s hard to explain, but maybe they are unsure about themselves after the last two results. I am thankful for that, as that is really good character, but we had to do better before that”. I think we lack confidence at the moment.
