Pep Guardiola paid tribute to plucky Southampton after Manchester City scraped into a fourth successive FA Cup final with a dramatic 2-1 comeback victory at Wembley.
A slow-burner of a semi-final came alive 11 minutes from time when Finn Azaz put the second-tier Saints on course for a shock win by curling home a sublime goal.
Yet that served only to spark City into action and substitute Jeremy Doku quickly equalised with a deflected strike before Nico Gonzalez won it with an 87th-minute piledriver.
“I never thought it would be easy,” said City boss Guardiola, who made eight changes to the team which won 1-0 at Burnley in midweek
“The energy we had second half with Jeremy and Savinho, for example, and other players, if they start from the beginning they would not have this energy.
“The first half was not bad. We didn’t concede much. In the second half we played in the level that we played in Burnley.
“Unfortunately we are not clinical enough and you have to wait. A holding midfielder made an outstanding goal.
“How many times in the second half did Southampton cross halfway? One. And what a goal. Football is unpredictable.
“That is why sometimes it is nice and sometimes it is, ‘oh my God’. Big credit to the way they defended and how they played.
“The team in the second half was really exceptional and created chance after chance. Football is like this. We equalised with a deflection.”
City will face Chelsea or Leeds in the final on May 16 and remain on course for a domestic treble.
Guardiola, whose side slipped back to second place in the Premier League table following Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Newcastle, will not contemplate that prospect until the final game of the season.
The Spaniard has given his players three days off ahead of a trip to Everton a week on Monday.
“It’s far away,” he said of the treble. “Before the Aston Villa game (on May 24), that night I will tell you if there is a chance. Now it’s far, far away.
“Now it’s important we have three days off for the players. I told them don’t think about football, rest.
“Now we start a season for five games, plus the final of the FA Cup.”
Southampton were briefly dreaming of emulating their 1976 FA Cup win on the 50th anniversary of that triumph.
The promotion-chasing Saints, who came into the contest on a 20-match unbeaten run, also had a first-half finish from Leo Scienza disallowed due to offside.
Head coach Tonda Eckert said: “Over big parts of the game, (it was an) outstanding performance from the boys.
“In these games you’re not going to have a lot of moments, you know that you always get a couple. We have a very big one in the first half, it’s a very tight decision and then we had a couple in the second half.
“We had a look how they scored their goals this season and there are not too many goals they scored from outside the box so far. Unfortunately, it was two today.
“I think we’ve done absolutely everything to represent this football club in the best way possible today.
“Obviously we wanted to give the supporters a final here at Wembley. We were very close, so I think it’s quite natural that there is a good sense of disappointment straight after the game.”
