Its no coincidence that Saints four match unbeaten run icluding two crucial away draws at our rivals has happened as Nigel Adkins has got back to basics.
In essence footballers are quite simple people, like anyone they are not great fans of constant change, they like things to be crystal clear and whilst they know that managers of football teams have to sometimes make tactical changes from game to game, they like to know that if they play well, then they will keep their place in the line up.
The problem was that we lost this continuity back in November, an injury to David Connolly meant that Guly had to be pushed up front and whilst initially Richard Chaplow did a sterling job, his injury plunged us into a little bit of tactical uncertainty, many would agree that his decisions to play all three of our fit central midfield players in hindsight just didnt work, we lost the width that we needed, it wasnt a real surprise that he tried it, but it was baffling that he persevered with this formation for so long, especially when he did have other options to hand.
In recent weeks though we have stopped the practice and with players now available to play there including Guly himself, Jason Puncheon and the returning Richard Chaplow, we now have tried and tested players for this troublesome right sided position.
Now we have some parity restored to the midfield, we can now start to get back to winning ways and build on these past four games, games where we have once again started to look back to our old selves.
Nigel Adkins can now keep the basis of his side together and more importantly keep it's shape knowing that coming off the bench he has players of the same quality that he has on the pitch, when you look at the bench at West Ham it had options in all areas and there was still no room for Richard Chaplow, I would say that a couple of players may well struggle to even get on the bench now, especially with some of our youngsters coming through, Lee Holmes has already been shipped out on loan and to be blunt I cant see where Steve De Ridder, Dan Harding and Falque will fit into our plans now, except in a real injury crisis.
We now have something to build on again, we have come through a tricky four game period in which we played three of our promotion rivals, two of them away from home and we remained unbeaten, that was a big plus, but it will mean nothing unless we push on and make an unbeaten run a winning streak.