Saints made it two wins in a week with a dominant display against a poor Sheffield Wednesday side.
It was all change for Saints as they took on the Owl's from Yorkshire at St Mary's, although there wasnt the wholesale 11 changes as predicted with Paulo Gazzaniga and Yoshida keeping their places with Nigel Adkins obviously feeling that they could both do with a little more experience at this level of football.
Other than that it was a mix of fringe players like Richard Chaplow and Jack Cork, alongside those seemingly a long way off a league game like De Ridder & Seaborne with the only youngster on show in the starting line up being Jamie Ward Prowse.
In truth Saints dominated from start to finish and rarely looked like letting the game slip, in some respects it resembled a training game as Saints looked content to pass the ball a lot and get a feel for it.
Steve De Ridder made some impressive runs early on, but showed why he frustrates and has never really forced his way into being a first team regular, he can beat a player and has a good range of trickery, but too many times after doing the hard thing he lacked the final ball and his decision making was poor.
Jay Rodriguez played like a man finally unleashed from his shackles up front, it was a strong confident display with a very well taken goal, talk of him repalcing SRL is premature, certainly Rickie wont relinquish his place without a fight, but J Rod showed that he will be a strong contender to replace him and that if our number 7 suffers a loss of form then our new number 9 is ready and able to step up to the plate, this can only be good for the team as genuine competition for places has to be good, it will also show Nigel Adkins that he now has a genuine like for like replacement for SRL off the bench rather than something different like Mayuka.
Gazzaniga looked confident again and wasnt afraid to come and collect the ball, he had a couple of slippery moments, one in each half when he didnt gather a cross cleanly, but he quickly recovered, more importantly it didnt seem to phase him and after each of the mishaps he came out and caught other crosses straight away, again it seems that he wont be willing to give up his place to either Kelvin or Artur Boruc in a hurry.
Other than that it was pretty much a talk amongst yourselves game for long periods with the only worry that Saints failure to kill the game off with a second might come back to haunt us, with just over ten minutes left, De Ridder was brought down, with the Wednesday man protesting that the initial challenge was outside the box, I have to say after seeing a replay, he has a point, the incident itself was a bit of a Fred Karnos moment, both players falling over and the Wednesday man unfortunately slipping up straight into De Ridder, a foul yes but not intended, J Rod showed that if he is ready to take on the fiht for Rickie's crown then he needs to practise penalties, the keeper almost stopping it.
The youth arrives in the last 20 minutes with Ben Reeves clearly wanting to make the most of his 20 minutes or so and working hard and showing why he will be a decent player.
Perhaps the only worry though about this crop of youngsters is how small they are, someone sat behind me remarked, "Dont we grow them any bigger" and I have to say he had a point, after the third substitution in the 85th minute all that was lacking was Ken Dodd to direct proceedings from midfield.