Saints did their part of the weekends business, eventually !
One thing that you learn wth Saints is that they never do anything the simple way and once again they made it hard for themselves by gifting MK Dons two goals against the run of play.
Saints started the game well and generally had the visitors on the back foot although in truth they werent really troubling the keeper when on 34 minutes the Dons took an unexpected lead and it was once again one of those set pieces that Saints should really defend better, quite simply a corner across the six yard box wasnt dealt with and a free header was gratefully accepted by McKenzie, how many times are we going to give this sort of goal away.
If the home fans though that they were going to see better things in the second half they were stunned seven minutes after the break, MK Dons broke quickly and you have to ask questions about Kelvin Davis's positioning and the way he allowed himself to be beaten on the near post, after seeing the goal again on TV Butterfield's last gasp lunge deflected the ball, but it didnt change the direction merely loped it slightly.
After ten minutes or so of Saints not getting back into the game something needed to be changed and supporters were relieved to see that Nigel Adkins was not going to sit on his hands, he made two substitutions in the space of a minute, firstly Forte came on for Chaplow and then confusion reigned on the second as it first appeared that Dale Stephens was replacing Lee Barnard, as Barnard headed to the touchline there was an air of booing, but it turned out that the number nine coming off was not Barnard but the visitors striker and after that swap hd been done it was Guly coming off.
Within a minute Saints were back in it when Forte volleyed home a cross from close range, two minutes later and he had doubled his tally when he tapped home as the keeper could only parry a well hit low cross from Harding, the game and the atmosphere was being cranked up a level.
Ten minutes later and Barnard showed why he is probably the one player who should be on for the whole 90 minutes when he took a pass from Lambert and fired home to make it three goals for Saints in eleven minutes and the turnaround was complete.
But Saints being Saints they did not let their fans have an easy time of it in the closing stages, after Lallana had almost put the game beyond doubt with a mazy run that saw his shot just past the post, the visitors threw everything at Saints, in defence the home side were shaky and with three minutes to go they really should have cleared an attack but ended up giving away a silly free kick from which the Dons hit the bar.
When five minutes of injury went up on the board some were surprised, but they forgot that all six subs had been used, there had been a couple of injuries and the time wasting of the Dons keeeper, now Saints fans & players were wishing that they hadnt been berating the ref to stop the watch earlier in the half when the keeper had been blatantly wasting time at goal kicks and the visitors came at Saints as they had nothing to lose, on reflection Saints held out strongly but at the time it was tense, the one moment that the Dons had was when they put the ball in the box and Kelvin came for it but didnt make what looked like being a routine catch but punched instead, it was a goos punch and some would say positive, but at that moment we needed that bit of calm that would have been brought by the keeper getting the ball and giving his defence time to re group.
All in all a good win for Saints and a vital one given that Huddersfield won, but we have to stop giving away silly goals, three efforts on target on our goal and two conceded is not good reading and is sadly not a rare occurrence, we have to tighten up in the run in.
The fans got behind Saints and kept behind them even after they saw the team two down and thats good to see, the gate was higher than it has been recently and thats good, but with four home games left now, it would be good to see a few more starting to come in, yesterdays gate was no better than the numbers we were getting this time last season and back then there was noting to play for.