Saints had the chance to really press home their advantage at the top, but once again they couldnt win on the road.
Promotion as we found last season is built not only on a great home record but the ability to keep clean sheets and take your chances when they come in the away games, sadly after two great wins in the first weeks of the season on the road, Saints have failed to register a third away win, its not that they have played badly, its just been that they cant keep a clean sheet and they have wasted too many chances.
I can already hear the indignant howls that we are top of the league etc etc, but if we are to stay top then we cant keep relying on winning at home.
Ironically this was probably our worst performance of the lot made worse by a sending off, yet we still managed to get a point and that perhaps is a good thing to come out of a day that on the field at least was a bad day at the office.
Its a real worry when you have a team where so many players are having off days, although just at it looked like we might have ridden the storm and where starting to impose ourselves on the game, came the goal quickly followed by the sending off and things looked dire.
People say I dont give Kelvin enough credit, on Saturday he was superb and he did his job well meaning that we were still in the game to be able to drag something out of it at the death and turn defeat into a point, under normal circumstances this would be a good point well earned in difficult circumstances, the problem is though coming off the back of a four match run that had seen us gain only two points, in the wider picture it was a game that we really needed to get three points out of.
Individually perhaps the biggest worry was the form of Jose Fonte, once again he was out of sorts beeing needlessly booked for hanball after he totally mistimed the flight of the ball and his jump.
Steve De Ridder of course was the late hero, I like De Ridder but I do think that he is an impact player best used off the bench in the final twenty minutes rahter than a player who will give you 90 minutes, on Saturdat thats what we needed him to do, make an impact and he showed that he is the man for the job.
It was a bad day at the office, but there were some plus points, we still didnt lose the game for one when we really should have, the team spirit that dragged us back from the brink of a defeat for two and certain players showed that they can step up to the plate when needed.
Lets not get complacent, we do need to start winning away from home now, some will point to the fact that this five game run did include difficult trips to Reading, Derby, Leicester & Cardiff, all promotion rivals, I can accept that to a degree, but the next four away games are all at teams in the bottom half, that excuse is now redundant.
With that in mind I dont want to dwell on this game too much, in the short term it was another game unbeaten, in the bigger picture it might actually be seen as a good point, if and only if, we return a decent number of wins in the upcoming away fixtures between now and Xmas, perhaps we didnt expect to be top of the league with almost a third of the season gone and I read a lot of posts on this site telling me that I should just enjoy it after all we thought tenth would be a good place, I say maybe we didnt expect it, but now having found ourselves in this position, we have a great opportunity, lets seize it with both hands.