Saints battled and battled and snatched a point in the final minute just as it looked like they might leave with nothing.
This was a strange game of football, yes Saints had the lions share of possession, yes Saints had more chances on target and yes it could be said that Saints dominated the game for long periods, but the fact of the matter was that it was United who created the real chances and who looked the more dangerous.
In these reviews I try to tell it like I saw it, of course its hard to be anything else but happy after this result, a creditable draw and still sitting in the top 6 after the weekend round of matches are over, yet like the Swansea game, something is not quite right and it needed a lot of heroic defending and another couple of World Class saves from Boruc to keep us in the game, we had 18 attempts on goal according to the statistics, they had 12, yet Boruc had to be at his best, not to mention the cross bar on another couple of occasions, whereas De Gea had little that troubled him, going forward we still struggled to create genuine chances.
I think that Mauricio Pochettino got it absolutely right in team selection and substitutions, what we need to work on is getting the best out of our players and that is about tactics, Osvaldo worked hard but did very little in terms of causing United problems, similarly Lambert when he arrived on the scene, but I think the problem is two fold, the first is that we are just not playing to their strengths, the second that neither is in any real form.
Although we got the selections right, we still didn't seem to revert to our previos solid block of 5 across midfield, Rodriguez came in and offered pace, yet we didn't use him out wide, again we seemed to have him floating in the midfield and up front, although due to his mobility he offered more than Lambert would have, we lack a lot of width in the way we are now playing, not just in going forward but in defending.
Prior to the game some thought that we would walk this game, my pre match prediction was proved right though, you don't become a bad team overnight and any team with Rooney & Van Persie in it are going to be a handful not to mention their new wonderkid.
We enjoyed plenty of possession, but the truth is we did little with it, United were content to sit back and attack us quickly on the break, to be blunt they could easily have had four and we could be talking about a rout now, the reason that we aren't and this truly would have been last season can be summed up in three words, Boruc, Lovren, Wanyama, we now have a spine of a team and that kept us intact when United threatened to run riot, Boruc again pulled off at least two saves he had no right to make plus several more that where top drawer, Lovren stayed strong and Wanyama never stopped working in the centre.
This enabled us to be still in the game in the last knockings and be in the position to get an equaliser, times are changing, it wasn't long ago that Fergie Time was a big fear factor for teams playing United, now its the opposite, the crowd were nervous and in the away end there was a feeling that we weren't dead and buried yet, Lallana's scrambled last minute goal was the third time we have earned points withy goals at the death and our opponents are starting to realise that and perhaps United did on Saturday.
Indeed after the equaliser you felt that there was only one team that felt they could win it and it wasn't United, Saints didn't throw caution to the wind, after all they had come a long way, but Adam Lallana almost won it in injury time but his shot lacked the power to beat De Gea.
Strange thing for me though was that when Wanyama was taken off with 7 minutes to go, probably from a combination of tiredness and the fact that he was only one mistimed tackle away from a second yellow, that it was Guly who came on, Cork would have been the obvious choice for me, the only reason I can think is that Pochettino felt that Guly was more likely to create something than anyone else on the bench.
Its a measure of how Saints have improved that there is a little bit of disappointment that we only came home with a point, but we shouldn't rest on our laurels and this is why I always try to give a balanced view of games, highlight the bad points as well as the good, this has been a great start to the season, but we are still only sixth and with United still only four points behind us I don't think that will stay like that for much longer, this shows just how tough our task is in this league, we talk of Champions League spots etc, but we are still not in them.
Saturday highlights the need to get a stronger squad if we want to build, a look at United's bench compared to ours makes sobering reading, crucial for us will be improving the squad in January.
But after dissecting the good and bad points, lets just enjoy the result, there will always be some fixtures where even just a point will give you satisfaction and this was one of them, for those of us lucky to be there on Saturday the unbridled joy at the equaliser and the celebrating players in the corner after it went in will be one of my highlights of the year.