The stats say it all and i have been saying the same things all season.
A look at the match stats show that Saints had 9 shots on target compared to Rochdales 4, 9 shots off target again only 4 for Rochdale and that we enjoyed 55% possession, so how did we lose it ?
The answer is the same reason why we lost at carlisle & Tranmere to name but two, the same individuals made the same errors that they have been making all season.
Some people accusse me of having an agenda against Dan Harding, but I have only one agenda and that is he is a player who continues to make errors that have cost us far too many ponts and ultimately might ciost us promotion.
Saints had settled down into the game and seemed to have drawn the sting out of early Rochdale bluster, indeed Fon Williams in the home goal had made two decent saves one from a Lambert free kick when Saints paid the price for some appalling defending from Harding, an inncocuos cross to the far post looked a simple job for Harding to deal with, I dont know what he was thinking but he appeared to be trying to block off Thompson rather than deal with the ball, in the end the rochdale man had a free header which he deftly looped into the far corner, no blame can be attached to Davis, who quite rightly had expected his defender to deal with it.
Now we all make mistakes, but Im afraid Harding makes this type of error far too often and I said many months ago, if this thing continues to happen and the manager does not deal with it then the buck stops at Adkins door, im afraid that once again I am left here saying the same things about the same player, dont blame me for saying so, blame the people who are making these errors, both physical and judgemental.
Now i have to confess i didnt see the second goal, due to horrendous traffic on the M6 added to a need for the RAC, we arrived just after kick off not having had anything to eat and drink, just before the break i ventured down to beat the queues, so as of this moment I can only quote the opinions of those who did see it and arrived in the concourse later, some of the accounts varied slightly, but most seemed to think that Harding was brushed off the ball far too easily although most thought he was fouled and the majority seemed to think that Davis should have saved the shot, the general consensus though that it was poor defending again from Saints, we will see when the highlights are shown, but on this goal I can only report what I was told.
In the second half Saints did press Rochdale back for most of the 45 minutes and when you consider that probably three of their shots on target where in the first half and the same for us, it shows our dominance going forward, however they were very dangerous on the break and more than once only some good defending stopped the score being worse.
You could see it was going to be one of those nights when nothing was going to go right, we were disjoined all over the pitch, if one had gone in it would have rocked Dale, but we had to ge tthat one and we didnt.
Once again im afraid poor defending and individual error has cost us valuable points in s season when we really should be home and dry by now, of course all teams lose games, but I cannot remember a season when we have conceded to many sloppy goals, I can barely remember one that has been a great goal and where we could do nothing to stop it.
Perhaps the last word should go to a guy who came up to me on the concourse at half time,
"Lets be straight about this Nick, when you and i where kids this was division 3 and if someone had ever said to us at any time, even 5 years ago that we would be 2-0 down at half time in division 3 to Rochdale we would have laughed in their faces, lets get this right this isnt a great season, this is our second worst season in 50 years with some of the worst players regularly in our team ever to have pulled on a Saints shirt in our lifetimes"
Harsh words, but he does have a point !