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Saints At Swansea The Verdict

Saints put in there worst performance in a while but still made it six games in a row to edge closer to total safety.

The biggest shock of the day for many travelling Saints fans was the fact that Luke Shaw was not preferred by the manager in place of Danny Fox and some of them seemed unable to accept this and spent half of the game slagging off Fox whenever he was near the ball, luckily for Saints as a team this didnt seem to put him off and he played his part in a rare clean sheet for the Saints defence.

In truth both teams seemed to be ready to go on their summer holidays, that probably has a semblance of truth as i think if you asked the supporters of either club they would have been quite happy for the season to have finished at the final whistle on Saturday.

But there was a game to be played and although it wasnt pretty to watch there was the odd chance at both ends, for Saints Lambert had a free kick well saved in the first half as well as a goal disallowed that television has since proved was perfectly legal, the linesman flagged presumably for a hand ball, but whilst Lallana hadnt helped his cause by jumping with his hands in the air, he didnt connect with ball or keeper with them and the goal should have stood.

In the second half Boruc had to spread himself well on a couple of occasions and Yoshida made a goaline clearance that owed as much to his reading of the game as anything else, in the final minute Mayuka thrown on almost won it, but his shot although nearly catching Vorm in the Swans goal wrong footed, lacked any real pace and so was comfortable for the keeper.

All in all a point that most Saints fans would have been happy with, yes it wasnt the greatest performance, but Saints kept going and made sure that although they were struggling to get their attacking side of the game going, defensively they worked hard and made surre the game wasnt thrown away, there are those that would say that when a team plays badly away from home and still doesnt get beat then thats a measure of that team.

It was good to see Pochettino throw on Mayuka in the dying minutes, it would have been a little longer if he didnt have to wait to see if Fox had to come off, but in the final games of this season we really need to find out if players like Mayuka and indeed Vegard Forren actually have what it takes to play in the Premier League or are just expensive mistakes by our transfer committee, as mentioned in Mayuka's case it was a little too short for him to make any sort of real impact, however he did show that as an impact player he might just come on and nick a goal or two in the last minutes of games, sadly from the other games i have seen I think that might be as far as it goes for him.   

Its a point that although not exactly putting Saints safe, was a step towards it given results elsewhere at the bottom, yes the likes of Sunderland, Stoke and Norwich all made up ground, but Wigan were beaten, Newcastle drew and hopefully Aston Villa will get beat at Old Trafford tonight, to make it a point gained rather than two dropped.   

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