A game where there were only two highlights as Saints struggled to break down a well drilled and well organised Stoke City side at St Mary's Stadium.
It was business as usual for Saints in terms of statistics, domination of possession with 60%, domination of shots on goal with 18 against 5 but with only 5 of those attempts actually on target.
The problem was with injuries and compassionate leave etc once Saints found themselves banging their head against the proverbial parked bus they had very little options open to them to try and change things, although strangely Mauricio Pochettino made only oen substitution, that being the like for like Chambers for Clyne, James Ward Prowse not getting on the field and perhaps being the only true option on the bench to try and bring some guile to the play.
It started well though, Rickie Lambert scored a trademark free kick to give us the lead and that looked enough to send us in at the break in command, but the 7 minutes before half time were bizarre to say the least, first Stoke equalised, the TV pundits pulled Luke Shaw to bits over the goal ane they did have a point, Odemwingie had got goal side of Shaw and made the type of run we were wanting our forwards to make, but perhaps the real culprit was Yoshida who instead of stepping up and leaving the Stoke forward well offside, he chased back and played him on, neither Yoshida or Shaw looked like catching him and that was also worrying.
But then came another bizarre moment with perhaps Begovic getting his pay back for his goal in the away game, the cross from Davis was clever, dont take anything away from him, it was just where he should have put it, but it should never have got that far to put Saints back in front.
The lead lasted 3 minutes, Stoke got a corner and scored, again questions should be asked defensively it was a bog standard corner hit hard and head height, it should have been cleared by the man detailed to protect that area, it wasnt and Crouch did what he does well and bundled it in.
That meant that it was all even at half time and it looked set for a goal feast second half, but Stoke battened down the hatches and we had no answer to them, the trio of Lallana, Lambert and Rodriguez never got going at any point and although we had plenty of battle in midfield we had no one who could hit that killer pass, hence why it was strange that JWP played no part.
A disappointing result and a good chance missed to overtake Newcastle , it does highlight though that we still need to use the squad a little bit better especially with a game coming up on Tuesday, however there is some excuse given that we were short on the bench, although as I type this im already thinking would this have not been the game to blood isgrove, or give Wanyama a chance to get 15 minutes in.
But it is another game unbeaten and increasingly there is little to play for in the league apart from between perhaps 8th- 12th, given that as I wrote in a piece in January, surely we should now be looking at the youngsters a little bit more than we are.