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Saints At West Bromwich Albion The Verdict

Saints won their first game in months, but had to do it the hard way after going a goal down in the early minutes showing great fighting spirit.

There were a few bemused faces in the away section at the Hawthorns when the Saints team was announed, there was no place for Pierre Emile Hojbjerg who was arguably the man of the match against Brighton and Saints most consistent performer in recent weeks, but Mauricio Pellegrino was at least showing an attacking attitude with Guido Carrillo getting his first start.

But Saints once again made it hard for themselves in a manner which is becoming all too familiar, with West Brom taking the lead after only 4 minutes, Hegazi losing his man and heading home unmarked from close range.

To their credit Saints battled hard and got a grip on the game, but for all their effort they rarely looked like getting back on level terms until suddenly five minutes before the break the game and indeed perhaps Saints season turned on its head.

Firstly Mario Lemina fired home from distance to put Saints level and then Jack Stphens atoned for his early error by heading home for his third goal in three games, Saints went in at the break in a far more buoyant move than they might have expected for most of the half.

After the break Saints clearly had their verve and confidence back and when James Ward Prowse fired home from a free kick, there looked like only being one winner.

However after complete domination of the second half Saints again shot themselves in the foot and it was another case of poor marking in the box.

But unlike at Watford when they surrendered a two goal lead, this wasn't going to happen in this game, Mario Lemina led by example in the centre of the midfield and he was helped by every other player in a Saints shirt.

This was a team performance of the highest order and the manager for once helped with some astute substitutions, with 15 minutes to go on came Long for Carrillo to defend from the front and he should have put the game beyond doubt when firstly he was denied a clear penalty when bundled over in the box and then he headed over from close range.

Then in the final five minutes Pellegrino broke the game up with a couple of changes that stopped any momentum the home side might have hoped to get in an attempt to drum up a flourish in a puzzling five minutes of injury time.

I have been saying for a long time that this is a good Saints side, but it is just poorly lead, this game showed that when they play as a team Saints can win games and can pull away from the bottom three.

This performance still had it's issues, the two goals conceded were sloppy, but the plus points in this afternoon far outweigh the minus's.

Again no one had a bad game out there, but this time we played as a team and Mario Lemina played a big part in that, he was a leader, he seemed to keep the team going not just by his physical presence but his performance, he never gave the ball away cheaply and he had the confidence to hold it and run with it even under pressue and his team mates responded in a similar fashion.

Of course this was a West Brom team who are on a run that was on a par with ours going into this game, but it was always going to be a tough ask to go here and win especially given that it was an emotional day for the Baggies and their supporters, would that atmosphere carry the day for them, the answer was no and now we have something to build on.

Hopefully now Saints can move forward, their is a spirit in the side that wasn't there a few weeks ago and indeed for most of the season, there is still a long way to go that cannot be denied and indeed one swallow doesn't make a summer, but now there is at least some light and maybe it will get the supporters behind the manager and the team so that we can move up the league.

The table looks a lot better this morning Saints up to 14th and a real pity that if we hadn't been cheated out of three points at Watford that we would now be 11th and relegation would be far off, we now need to make sure we don't drop back down.

Saints first need to get out of relegation trouble, maybe they can do something in the FA Cup to end with a flourish, do this and then we can have the post mortems in the summer.

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