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Saints At West Ham United The Verdict

Well guess what I am going to harp on about ! Does anyone have any arguments ? Thought Not !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When the team news came through an hour before kick off our little group in a bar a mile away from the London Stadium were baffled as to the sections made by Ralph Hasenhuttl, two right backs on the bench and our best midfielder at right back, add to that Danny Ings also sitting out the start of the game and all the talk was about why we weren't playing our best team.

In my preview I mentioned that we had to try and dictate the game, but it went just the way I feared, we had the bulk of the possession, but the Hammers kept on catching us on the break.

Time and time again they caught us on the break with our central defenders not knowing where the other was and not knowing who to mark, add to that another goalkeeping mistake and it was a comfortable win for West Ham once we had gifted them the second goal on the stroke of half time.

We have to hope it was a bad day at the office and as I have often said, defensively too often we gift the opposition chances and too often there are individual errors, some games they will get punished and others they won't, it happens in every game and that is not good enough.

At time Stephens and Bednarek have formed a partnership with promise, but the goals against tally does not lie and all the evidence that you need was in this game and this was not a one off, it has been better of late, but it is still far from being good enough or consistent enough.

It was a funny performance, we could have easily have got something out of it, but we kept gifting them goals, if we had gone into the break level pegging you would have felt that we could have pushed on in the second half, but the goalkeeping howler by Alex McCarthy meant that the impetus was now with the home side.

Even when Stephens and Bednarek combined to gift them the third with one failing to get tight and leaving his man with an easy flick on header and the other being totally lost as to where his man was.

But even after that you felt that if Saints could get a second then the Hammers might crumble, but that goal did not come, bizarrely the third substitution with 22 minutes late saw Jannick Vestergaard brought on and a change of formation what it needed was was perhaps the strength of Che Adams given that he was the only attacking option left on the bench at this stage.

Sadly we just have to write this one off as one of the games where we didn't get away with it and come the end of the season we will look up the table and think of what could have been, of how many games like this we have undone a lot of good work by lapses of concentration, poor defending and individual errors.

I'm sure that some will disagree and point to missed chances by our forwards as an excuse, but no team scores every chance it has, that is the nature of the game, but why do our opponents finish their chances far more than ours ? this game answered some of those questions, we don't mark and we get caught on the break.

I would have loved to have written about a great win, how we were now only a point or two from safety, how we might finish in the top 10 etc etc, instead once again it is all about defensive errors, last six league games 12 goals conceded, that tells you whether our defence is good enough or not, not my opinion or otherwise.

But this game is now gone we have to look to the next one and that is vital so that we keep daylight between ourselves and the relegation strugglers.

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