A big week for Saints as they face the first of two promotion rivals at home.
The defeat at Carisle has put big pressure on Saints as they face the Posh, a win or even a draw up in Cumbria would have kept Saints unbeaten run going, but the loss has meant that nothing less than a win on Saturday or indeed six points from the two home games would be a set back,
If we set the automatic promotion bar for around 85 points as it usually is then Saints need to maintain an average of two points per game, if we look for a play off spot then to be sure we probably need about 78 points and even that is an average of 1.8 points per game from here on in, this being the case then we certainy need a big improvement on the 1.5 averaged so far, of course there are those who will point to the early poor form, but under Nigel Adins we have only averaged the 1.8 required for the play offs and that needs to get better.
We need to start where we mean to go on on Saturday and that means winning, Nigel Adkins has hinted that he has given a few players the chance to improve their form and that his patience is now worn out, his problem though is in his post match interview last week he set a rod for his own back, he now needs to make changes or he can have no excuses other than his own failing to deal with a woeful lack of forrm in certain players at least three games ago.
Peterborough come here with a high scoring record, thats counter balanced by a tendency to let goals in meaning that they have a goal difference of 0, Saints have the firepower to outscore them but its essential we are tight at the back, NA has to drop Harding and bring in Dickson to shore up a position that has been a problem all season.
Most Saints fans would like to see a return to 4-4-2 and that would certainly spell out attacking intent, if he does that it will almost certainly see Lee barnard recalled to the team, but who will partner him ? for the first time Lambert is not an automatic choice, however two up front would mean a reprieve although he would almost certainly be in last chance saloon so to speak, if he is still firing blanks then Adkins has to be prepared to bring on either Guly or Connolly to replace him, a the moment SRL's only use is to take penalties and there are others who could take them in the side.
I would expect Saints to line up
Davis
Richardson Jaidi/Seaborne Fonte Dickson
Oxo Hammond Chaplow Lallana
Barnard Lambert
Bench Bialkowski, Guly, Connolly, Schneiderlin, Jaidi/Seaborne, Holmes, Harding
I think with this line up Adkins will have shown he has made a little change to freshen things up and to show the rest of the squad he is prepared to make harsh decisions, without going mad, to be blunt Saints are not that far off a side capable of automatic promotion, they have just been let down week in week out by several players, usually the same culprits, OXO showed what we had been missing when he replaced Puncheon, that should have shown the manager something and that something is that although wholesale changes dont need to be made the team has to be fine tuned and freshened up, if we see the same starting line up as at Carlisle and we fail to win the game, as i said there is only one place the buck will stop.