Going to Manchester City was never going to be an easy day out, but its even harder when as a team you prsent chances to them on the plate.
The book Animal Farm by George Orwell is the source of many quotes that are in use today, one of those "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others" could be applied to the many comments I have seen about Saints performance on social network sites when its quite clear that despite far from being the only culprit, Paulo Gazzaniga is clearly the scapegoat for this defeat.
But although Gazzaniga didnt cover himself in glory, nor did some of his more illustrious team mates who followed on from an error ridden defeat at Spurs by continuing their slack marking and lapses of concentration, Gazzaniga didnt play at Spurs but Im sure some people blame him for that one as well.
So lets look at where Saints went wrong, the first error was were Jose Fonte found himself caught out of position after only two minutes, perhaps Im harsh on Fonte on his positional sense but Eden Dzeko turned him inside out, with Fone going one way and Dzeko the other there was absolutely no benefit to Fone throwing up his trailing leg behind him to waist height, it was no where near the ball and never going to stop Dzeko, the only outcome was going to be Dzeko taking the opportunity to throw himself to the ground, he did and the penalty was given and despatched with the game two minutes old, the penalty was harsh but there was contact and contace no where near the ball is a foul, yet another lapse in concentration im afraid.
But Saints did start to get the ball and play well but sadly the next pivotal moment would be game changing in that the loss of Jay Rodriguez who went down clutching his knee after landing awkwardly would in the grand scheme of things severely limit Saints chances of catching City on the break.
On 37 minutes Saints were handed a lifeline, Jack Cork surged into the box and was tripped, Rickie Lambert obliged as he does from the spot.
It looked like Saints would go in level at the break, but as the board for 4 minutes of injury time went up, they went behind, replays showed that the goal was five yards offside, an appalling blunder by the linesman and to a degree the referee who should have spotted the flick that meant that Nasri was way off side.
The third goal has been put down to Gazzaniga and yes it wasnt his best moment, but was he completely at fault ? I would say no in that he had to go for a cross he wasnt positioned for, Dzeko had lost Lovren at the far post and would have headed home te cross, Gazzaniga had to try and get a ball that was a little too far out, the outcome would have been the same had he stayed on his line.
In the second half it was damage limitation for Saints with the slight hope they might snatch a goal back, the truth was they didnt have the pace to do that on the break, and they didnt have the options available on the bench to offer that.
Gazzaniga made several decent saves in the second half, one of which one on one no one questions just how the City player got in that position, the fourth goal was another debacle, but the game was over long before then.
Better teams than Saints have gone to the Etihad this season and come away with far worse, perhaps we should chalk this one down to experience.
But what we need to address is the error prone defence, seven goals conceded in the last two away games plus those two late goals that Norwich were gifted ask questions about certain players.
Gazzaniga is the scapegoat for this one, he seems to be a player that certain elements of our crowd like to get on the back off, the same people who hounded Danny Fox out of the club and ruined Guly's career here, we should win as a team and lose as a team, but for some that is not the case there always has to be a scapegoat and it always has to be the same individuals.
Gazzaniga is a young inexperienced goalkeeper, at this stage of his career he should be out on loan getting experience, yet every so often he suddenly gets thrown into the lions den and on Saturday he was faced with the highest scoring home team in the Premier League, he had the right to be protected by a defence in front of him that would stand strong, lead by example and protect him, the two senior professionals in our defence did not do that on Saturday, add to that the two teenage full backs who played with maturity above their years but are still it should be remembered are also learning their trade, then Gazzaniga was always going to be heading for a fall.
But it wasn't the fault of Gazzaniga for being out there, given that Kelvin Davis has been injured since December and we know Boruc is injury prone, why did those responsible for the squad not bring in some experience for the bench, there are plenty of keepers out there with Premier quality who could have been picked up on loan for the rest of the season, blame has to be placed at not Gazzaniga but for those who have not addressed the bigger issue, our much vaunted transfer committee headed by our ex CEO and Mauricio Pochettino has to take a portion of blame here.
Overall this defeat did us no damage, Manchester United winning at Newcastle meant that they are pulling clear and that win for them kept Newcastle behind us, not only that but Villa & Stoke two teams who could possibly catch us also lost means we are another game down and the gap remains intact.
So what we need to do now is learn our lessons from this game, we need to look at those players making the errors and ask whether they need to be replaced or are just suffering from a temporary lack of form, lets remember though that we have been conceding sloppy goals now for a long time, Gazzaniga has not been playing in those games, so the problem yesterday was not a one off we need to look at the bigger picture not brush in under the carpet and blame our favourite scapegoats, if we do that we can move forward.
What we also need to remember is that we want to hang on to 8th place, next week we can take a big step towards that against Cardiff, if Boruc is still injured then we as supporters need to get behind Gazzaniga not crucify him.
In the preview to this game I warned of our need to cut out the lapses of concentration and errors, we didnt and the problem continues.