It was Brentford 2 Positives 0 on a day that Saints will want to forget.
When I give my verdicts on this site I try to tell it how it is, I try to detatch myself from my views purely as a fan and take incidents on a neutral basis, sometimes this means I get cricicised by some who feel I pick on certain individual players, this isnt the case, its usually because these individuals tend to be making the same errors on a regular basis.
In some respects its hard to pick out one individual from Saturday, in truth just about all of them could be chastised to various levels, but in my opinion there were a few areas that cost us more than most.
The obvious starting point on the field is Kelvin Davis, no one can deny that the opening goal for the visitors was an absolute howler from our keeper, it may surprise you then to read that I am not going to go ballistic that he should have done this, in truth every keeper lets in at least one howler like this from time to time and this was just Kelvin's, not great timing for it from a result point of view, but what concerns me more is the second goal, I will reserve judgement a little till I have seen a replay, but about 90% of those who I have spoken to feel that Kelvin was at fault for it, granted the first error was that of Jaidi who failed to deal with an aerial threat and head the ball away cleanly, but the looping ball was in the air long enough for an alert keeper to come off his line and at least punch clear, Kelvin's reactions were slow and the ball dropped to allow their man to prod home.
From then on we were chasing shadows, our problems were right through the centre, from Kelvin in goal, the two centre halves and especially Hammond and Schneiderlin in midfield, up front Guly laboured and Lambert might as well have gone off after his free kick on 26 minutes, he was once again a passenger.
Our side looked poorly lead, poorly motivated and lacking in ideas, we seemed unable to change our tactics which consisted solely of trying to work it out wide and get to the byeline, Brentford in the main contained this easily and prevented us getting in any crosses of note.
We were second to every ball, pedestrian in every situation whilst their men buzzed and harassed and looked like they wanted to win the game.
But perhaps the most stinging criticism must be levelled at the manager, in his defence he was missing four players who would be first choice in Richardson, Fonte, Barnard and Chaplow and in the case of the latter 3 it was their drive that we so much missed through the centre, but truthfully the players that were in their place should be well capable of doing a job and doing it well.
In that starting line up, really the only question would have been should lambert have been given yet another chance, the answer is probably yes given the absence of Barnard, I would say that with the players availlable 99% of Saints supporters would have selected the same team as Adkins, but having put that team on the pitch and watched it fail miserably he then did little to change it, on days like this its the manager who has to earn his corn, he has to motivate the team and make changes to turn things round, their was little evidence of either.
Firstly the lack of substitutions until the 81st minute was a complete mystery, OK Adkins switched Guly and Chamberlain to try something a little different, but this was too little and too late as was the introduction of Connolly for Lambert, this change should have been made by the 60th minute at the latest, by then the pattern of the game had been set and there was no hint that something might change,
Ok there was little choice of the bench, well I dont neccessarly agree with that, why not bring on Gobern who played so well against Cheltenham, he would have certainly have had a desire to try and show the manager that he is worth a game and he has an eye for goal.
Why didnt we take off one of the centre halves and gamble wit three at the back, after all we might as well have lost 3-0 in doing so and at least have had a go than just settle for a 2-0 defeat, why didnt we throw on Harding, Im not a fan of his in general but thats mainly due to his defending, we could have moved Lallana inside and put Harding wide left and finally why didnt we just throw on Doblein the final minutes, with nothing to lose, its times like these when sometimes a player makes his name, if he had notched a goal the game could have suddenle swung.
Im sorry but for me Nigel Adkins was found wanting on Saturday, when the players arent performing its the managers job to change things and he sat on his hands for far too long