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Saints V Manchester United The Verdict

A great game at St Mary's with action a plenty and Saints having to battle adversity with injury and poor refereeing seemingly all against them.

It felt like a win when the final whistle blew, such was the battle Saints had come through with injury, poor refereeing and to be blunt an off par performance as putting us at a disadvantage.

Saints were missing 4 players with injury, meaning that Ralph Hasenhuttl had to reshuffle his pack and surprisingly also finding time to also drop a player with Yan Valery dropping to the bench and Cedric Soares coming into the side.

It looked a little disjointed starting with a back four with Kevin Danso as left back and a midfield that had no real width and two up top with Che Adams clearly desperately needing to get a goal.

But we started well before United hit us on 10 minutes, it was a very similar goal to the one that Sadio Mane scored a couple of weeks ago, with the defenders failing to close down Daniel James and letting him get in a shot that rocketed into the top corner leaving Gunn with no chance.

For a while Manchester United where on top, Saints lack a leader on field, you could see that there was absolutely no talking and on several occasions United got chances where a simple word telling a player there was someone behind him would have stopped the situation dead.

This is the major problem for Saints, no one talks, when Matic came on for United in the 68th minute he did more organising in his first 30 seconds than any of our players did in 90 minutes.

Mike Dean was also doing us no favours, maybe i'm biased but it seemed to me that United got every decision, his booking of Kevin Danso was farcical in that it was a nothing foul where Danso had barely touched their man and United players had got away with a lot less, this would have big repercussions later.

But we were playing a United side who don't have a lot under the surface, they had plenty of the ball, plenty of shots but few real chances, they looked good in the centre of the park passing it around, but they couldn't hit the killer pass.

As the hour mark approached the game changed, Saints had been in the ascendancy and won a corner, it was met with a superb Danny Ings header that produced a great save from De Gea, the ball fell to Kevin Danso in the corner of the penalty area, he put in a pin point curling cross that JWP would have been proud of and Jannik Vestergaard met it perfectly to bring us level.

Saints now looked most likely to go on and win the game United had no appetite for a fight with the likes of Paul Pogba happy to go through the motions but not break sweat and he was not the only one for the visitors.

But on 73 minutes the game swung again, there is no doubt that Kevin Danso had to make the challenge and no doubt it was a yellow, but Dean's booking of him in the first half meant that he had to go.

Now Saints were on the back foot, but they dug in and fought tooth and nail, United ploughed forward but they lacked passion, they lacked flair, they lacked invention and although they had shots, they had few real chances aside from a couple of fairly straight forward saves for Angus Gunn.

Oriol Romeu was Saints man of the match, he lead by example and encouraged his team mates to match his efforts which they did.

The real difference between this and the first two games of the season was our willingness to get in tackles, we went to ground and blocked shots and crosses, something we failed to do especially against Burnley.

But against United our central defenders blocked and tackled meaning that the shots never reached our goal, pleasing to see and it has made a big difference.

Ralph Hasenhuttl used his subs well bringing on Yoshida to slot in at left back and Stuart Armstrong to replace Boufal, he had already brought on Shane Long for Che Adams a few minutes before the equaliser.

It was a tense finish and for once no one was leaving early even to avoid the queues on the stairs and bridge, the final whistle was received with a huge roar, it felt like a win !

All in all the point means we have made a solid start to the season, it was a tough opening four games and the Burnley game aside we have performed well and a point a game average is good, of course more would have been better, but we would have taken this at the start.

This game told us a lot, it told us that we lack organisation on the pitch, sometimes we get away with it and at others we won't, it told us that we have a squad that doesn't lack heart and fight and will win us points and games over a season.

Things are still far from perfect, but we can move forward with confidence and the hope is we can stabilise our position in mid table in the first half of the season and then perhaps in January bring in the organiser in the back four we clearly need.

The one question it did not tell us though was the one regarding Sofiane Boufal, he had some classy moments, not least early on when he pulled a shot an inch wide, but was his overall performance good enough to suggest that when everyone is fit he would be near the starting line up ? The jury is out !

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