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Saints At Arsenal The Verdict

A great battling point at the Emirates as Fraser Forster put in one of the best goalkeeping performances from a Saints keeper in the Premier division since the days of Antti Niemi.

The final whistle at the Emirates saw the Saints support breathe a sigh of relief, although the first half had been fairly even the second was truly backs to the wall stuff for Saints with Fraser Forster magnificent, you don't get many genuine 10/10 performances on a football field but this was one of them.

The first half saw Saints have chances and Arsenal thwarted by Fraser Forster, but overall although the Gunners had the edge, Saints could go in at the break feeling they were in control of the situation and well placed in the second half to do as they had at Old Trafford and snatch the game in the final stages.

But this would be no Old Trafford and Saints had to deal with wave after wave of Arsenal attacks, their supporters may have been critical of their side post match but stats of 67% possession, 21 attempts with 11 on target are not shabby, one man made the difference.

It is easy to feel euphoric after this point, but the reality is that if Saints had been beaten 4-0 they would not have been able to complain, Arsenal had the chances but Fraser Forster was magnificent and his display spurred his team on to put in a heroic rear guard action.

Every player played his part in what resembled the Alamo, you half expected Davey Crocket to come on as sub for Saints when Jose Fonte suffered a cut head such was the Arsenal dominance and that is something that Ronald Koeman will not be happy about.

So what was good about this result is the way we defended as a team, dug in and got a result, it was clear that there was a collective team spirit that carried us through and tis is very pleasing.

What was bad about the result though was the total domination that Arsenal had in the second half, we just could not seem to get out of our own half and when we did we offered little real threat on goal and gave away possession too cheaply.

I am not one that considers Sadio Mane to be some sort of traitor, I have heard all sorts of abuse hurled at him of late, much of which is undeserved, he did not ask to be the subject of a Manchester United pr exercise last August, but the truth is that at the moment he is a shadow of his former self.

He has blistering pace, but last night he could not seem to be able to beat his man, on one occasion he had the chance to get one on one, but he lacked the confidence to take the back man on and was shunted wide eventually getting in a fairly tame 20 yard drive that Cech stopped easily.

But there were always be games in which the manner of a result does not matter and all that does matter is that we left the Emirates with point, prior to our two away trips to Manchester United and Arsenal we would have been almost happy to take one point from the games, to have taken four is excellent and there won't be too many teams who will be able to say that this season.

So let's finish this verdict on a high note, we got a point, we saw a brilliant display from Fraser Forster and we saw a team spirit as good as any seen in a Saints team for a long time, we are in a good position to make a good surge in the final third of the season for not only a top 7 position, but even higher than that.

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