A bad night at the office for Saints
Strangely enough perhaps the first thing to say is that in the main Saints didnt play badly, but like in several games away from home last season they were undone by individual errors at crucial times.
The match stats showed that we had 555 possession, 6 shots on target compared to their 5 and 7 off against their 4, so why did we lose it ?
The answer is two fold, firstly Cardiff did their homework and made sure that we couldnt get our game together, they pushed on as we played it around at the back, they kept a tight reign on Lallana and they made sure that the supply route to our two forwards was cut off, thats not to say we didnt make chances, we just failed to take them whilst they took theirs.
The second answer can be defined a little more clinically, i know some will say Im banging on about the same things, but why am I banging on about them ? the answer is because they keep happening and keep costing us points, both last season and now this.
1. The goalkeeper is stuggling, again last night he was uncomfortable in distributing the ball and too often played his defenders into trouble and this is about the 4th game running, his dominance of the area was suspect and as cardiff curled balls into our six yard box, he failed to collect them, the defence, particularly Fonte seem to have little confidence in him, on their first goal, he made the wrong decision, came dashing out and didnt get the ball. The Cardiff crowd sensed blood and gave him a hard time everyytime he went to throw the ball out.
2. Options, we have too many players of quality in certain positions, yet in others only one choice, up front with Lambert & Connolly not only not getting much of the ball, but also wasting it when they did, we had no real options to change it, hence a winger in De Ridder was thrown up front to add some pace, although he scored and ran around a lot, the truth was it wasnt the sort of tactical change that a top of the table side should be making, yes we chased every forward on offer, but in the four months of the transfer window, failed to land one, it is starting to cost us.
3 Centre of defence, Hooiveld made some great tackles at times last night, but it was his attrocious attempted pass that gifted possesion to Cardiff and a simple pass through for the second goal, Fonte & Hooiveld dont seem to be able to gel and Im afraid the start reality is that in football quite often you get what you pay for and as in last night you pay for what you get ! The reason that you pay a million for a central defender is that he makes less mistakes than one on a free transfer and conversely slightly more than a 2 million pound player, thats reality and our failure to sign a quality partner for Fonte is now starting to cost us, Hooiveld isnt bad, but he isnt as good as we need.
4. Tactics. We are one dimensional, last night Cardiff had it completely sussed, we cannot change the way we play, our substitutions are predictable in the main and we dont have any real like for like changes if the forwards are being snuffed out, we rely heavily on Lambert, if he is not in the game or misfiring, we have no one to replace him, the nearest option is bringing on Guly, but that means reshuffling half the side to push him up front rather than a straight swap, this could be in the same section as options, as clearly after chasing central defenders and forwards and not getting them, Nigel Adkins can see these same weaknesses and tried to address them, but it is a little bit more than that, clearly at times the side are scared to actually hoof the ball when the occasion merits it, the biggest example being Kelvin who appears to be playing as if the manager will fine him if he doesnt pass it to a teamate but kicks it upfield.
This is a strong condemnaation of last night and there will be many who will say Im being negative and that we arestill top of the league, yes we are still top, but we are top because of the failure of others, if we want to stay top then we have to address these issues.
The fact is that in the last three away games we have only taken one solitary point and conceded six goals, thats not promotion form, yes im sure that some will say we have still only lost two games, however both of these have come against the only two sides we have played in the top half of the table, we have been flat track bullies so far, especially on our home turf, last season I always said that results shouldnt be taken in isolation, that we should look at the last six and the benchmark was an average of two points a game to track whether our form was promotion or not, of our last six games we have played three each home and away and gained ten points, make no mistake last night was not an isolated bad result, but part of a pattern that at the moment is on a downward slope, we can arrest this and get back on track, but lets not pretend that everything is completely rosy.