Another good win in a difficult game.
Saints took another massive step forward in a hard thought game at Leyton orient where they had to match the home side for enthusiasm and work rate.
For most of the match Saints looked tight and restricted Orient to speculative efforts that rarely troubled the keeper, Kelvin for his part looked confident and seemed to pass this on to his defenders, it was a little strange to see both full backs changed again, but playing Dickson in midfield offered Harding cover, this in itself was a little baffling given that most people assume that Harding is the bettergoing forward so the natural thing should have been to play him in midfield, however Nigel Adkns clearly feels that Dickson is a better crosser of the ball as was shown for the opening goal when Dickson seemed to be hemmed in near the corner flag but then found a yard of space and put in probably one of the best crosses of the season from a Saints player that invited Rickie Lamert to bury it.
Of course you wouldnt plat Dickson ahead of Lallana, but clearly Lambert benefited from having accurate crosses fired in fast allowing hi to shake off his marker.
In the second half Saints seemed to be on the back foot for most of it, however on reflection they coped easily, it just didnt seem like that at the time, especially when bizarrrely we had four central defenders across the back four, both Seabourne and Martin being asked to play full back in the final stages stuck to their tasks and Jaidi and Fonte were solid as a rock in the middle.
The support Saints recieved was magnificent and they kept the team going throughout the whole 90 minutes, anyone who says that supporters make no difference to a team should have been at Brisbane Road, that theory was out the window and the roar when Barnard made the game safe could probably be heard at the galpharm.
With Huddersfield getting a last minute equaliser the day could not have been better for Saints who moved into that second automatic promotion spot and must have decimated both Peterborough and Huddersfield in doing so with two games in hand.
Now the runners up spot is Saints for the taking, we are now ahead of the game with regard to my oft quoted target of 85 points and an average of two points per game, we have now won three in a row and if we can make it four at Rochdale it will be a major blow to our rivals.
If Saints keep up the two point average in the final seven games it will put us on 88 points, given that Peterborough can only now get 86 and Huddersfield 89, Saints just need to stay focused, their task is not needing them to do anything other than they have been doing for most of the season, or to be accurate anything other than they have been doing under Adkins himself, maintain that two point per game average and we will cruise to promotion.
But having put ourselves in this position, we have to guard against complacency, we are probably three wins away from promotion, the sooner we get those wins on the board the quicker we can get promotion secured hopefully without having to go to the final day.