Saints shot themselves in the foot defensively as they blew a two goal lead through sloppy defending at White Hart Lane this afternoon.
Morgan Schneiderlin joined the injury list, but Jack Cork returned as Saints travelled to Spurs looking to leapfrog over Newcastle, but by the end of the game it would be a case of two injury time winners going the wrong way for Saints this weekend, If Newcastle hadnt hit their late winner against Palace and Spurs hadnt ruined Saints day at White Hart Lane with an injury time strike then Saints would two points ahead of the Geordies instead of a point behind.
But it all started so well for Saints with first Jay Rodriguez latching on to a long clearance from Artur Boruc that was missed by Naughton and doing his England chances no harm in front of Roy Hodgson to finish with aplomb on 19 minutes.
Ten minutes later and it was Lallana who doubled the lead, Naughton again was the culprit as he miscontrolled a ball into the path of Lambert standing in an off side position who held it up well and found Lallana overlapping.
Saints then looked well in control and should really have seen the game to the break comfortably but they shot themselves in the foot with a lack of concentration, firstly Lovren got caught out near the left touchline and from the resulting cross Nathan Clyne really should have dealt with the ball being under no pressure, he didnt and the deficit was halved. Boruc saved well to keep the scores level and Saints at least held a lead at half time.
But that lead would last barely a minute after the restart, again Lovren tried to shield a ball over near the left touchline, again he was brushed aside and again Saints conceded a soft goal.
Spurs then took the game by the scruff of the neck, however to Saints credit they dug in and chased an harried, however most of their problems were of their own making, Lovren and Fonte did not look comfortable all afternoon and seemed to struggle to win the ball and when they did they struggled to clear it or even pass it to their own players.
This was the difference between the sides in the second half, Spurs central defence dealt with our attacks and built the play from the back, Fonte and Lovren looked dodgy.
But just as Saints looked like they would get a point, they conceded another sloppy goal, with 90 seconds of 4 minutes of injury time left all Saints had to to was stay strong, a hopefull ball into the box was a free header for Fonte, but his header was tame an barely went ten yards and was volleyed home for a winner Spurs did not deserve and Saints didnt deserve to concede either.
Once again Saints failed to beat a top half of the table side and the reason why is clear, again its all about lapses in concentration and making mistakes under no pressure, Spurs 3 goals came out of nowhere in that all three situations should not have dveloped as they did, they could easily have been avoided but they werent.
This result perhaps means that all Saints have to play for now is 8th, I say all because we would have all been happy with that prior to the opening day against West Brom, perhaps now we have to look a the Baggies themselves and how their fortunes have changed this season, we need to identify those players who need to be replaced, we still need a quality central defender to partner Lovren, the Croatian had a bad day at the office today but was clearly not 100%, but Fonte s too error prone and he should not be first choice due to this, it wasnt just that late goal, but throughout the game he failed to get the ball down and use it and that brought pressure on us.
The lessons to be learned are clear, we are of the standard we are but we make too many errors to make that step up at the moment, we are only a player or two short of making that improvement, but it was there to see, at the back we made error after error and too often didnt get the ball down and going forward we had little threat on goal, we were needing to go on the counter attack and we didnt have the pace up front to do so.
There are excuses for this game in respect of injuries, yes we could have done with Schneiderlin and even Wanyama, although Jack Cork had a fine game, but again its about individual error costing us and that is nothing to do with who is available or not.
Onwards and upwards though, lets chase that 8th place starting with the game against Newcastle next week, we can have a fine end to the season and if we can keep this squad together and make two or three quality additions in the summer then there is no reason why we should not continue our progress