A huge wake up call for everyone connected with Southampton Football Club after this big bih home defeat not just in scoreline but in the manner it happened.
The first thing to say about this game is that one bad result doesnt make it the end of the world, but what this comprehensive defeat showed was that Saints are probably in the right position in terms of the squad that they have now and that is somewhere between 13th-16th rather than the fringe of the Champions League places as some would have you believe.
Before we start to make such proclamations we should really seek first to emulate the feats of West Bromwich Albion who have cemented two straight top ten placings and have put togather a squad that can compete, however lately there has been a clamour to proclaim Saints as the next big thing in English football before we have put the foundations in.
However as i said one bad game doesnt make a bad team, however we havent read the warning signs, the 2-0 win at Reading glossed over the fact that we could have gifted the opposition three goals before we even got out of the starting blocks and the result didnt reflect the fact that yes once we took the lead we took control, but before that we were dodgy.
Since then we have played three times and worryingly scored only one goal whilst conceding four, this game highlighted the fact that we are two one dimensional, Rickie Lambert was out of sorts and therefore we didnt have a sniff of goal apart from a couple of speculative efforts.
Im sure the crowd would love to blame Danny Fox for this one, now Im not suggesting that he is the messiah, but Fox took a lot of stick for this one from the crowd and he was far from the worst defender and we need to look at our central defence who were carved open too easily and too often, did anyone scream abuse at our central defenders? or at Ramirex for that matter when he needlessly elbowed Long who had snapped at his heels but had done nothing worse than actually trying to get close to his man and get a tackle in, something half our team should have been taking notes on, Fox himself was dismissed but at least he went down fighting and trying to make a tackle, on the day he was as bad as anyone else, but he showed more heart than most and heart is one of the things we lacked on Saturday.
So what we need to take from this is exactly what we were saying 8 months ago at the start of the season, we do not have good enough central defenders, we do not have any true wide players and we are too one dimensional with little other real options past the first 16 in the squad, thats why we so rarely turn a game round, the victory over Aston Villa back in September remains the only game this season that we have come from behind to win, this for me highlights are one dimensional play, it either works or it doesnt and if it doesnt we havent any other options.
People sometimes call me negative in what I say about Saints, Im not negative i try to be realistic, try to point out other things than how great everything is, thats because i truly want to see us challenge for the Champions League, but over 40 years of supporting Saints have shown me that its easy to make proclamations of ambition, its not so easy to carry them out, Lawrie McMenemy was the most successful Saints manager in our history, one of his strengths was to be quietly confident, you never heard him make bold predictions about what he thought we could do, he under promised and over delivered, if we are not careful by not managing the fans expectations we could do the exact opposite and that can put you on a nasty downward slope when you dont deliver.
This game highlighted that three good wins dont make a season and that having the same squad since the end of August means that you get the same results, Saints can have a good season next year, but a good season will be wrestling with West brom for the top eight and it will mean getting in the right players in the right positions to do that, a late Spurs equaliser will probably mean that Saints wont endure too traumatic end of the season, if that hadnt have gone in we would be looking nervously over our shoulder this morning.