Not the result many were predicting.
When you are looking at a football season there is an old saying and thats "Its a marathon not a sprint" and thats perhaps a good phrase to bear in mind when assessing this match, Saints started the day with hopes of ending it in top spot, but found themselves dropping to third spot.
Of course with Adam Lallana missing it was always going to be a more difficult task, but Jason Puncheon was a more than adequate replacement, out problems came not from the quality of the squad or our dominance of the game, but the fact that we couldnt alter our game plan.
Like earlier in the season as County dug in deep and defended competently, we didnt change things tactically, Chaplow was withdrawn at half time, but you had to assume that this was due to injury, but inexplicably Nigel Adkins did not make another change till there were only 12 minutes remaining, to be blunt Lee Barnard should have been on a lot sooner, we failed to get a decent effort on target, this was a trait of earlier in the season and is worrying, it could be excused if we were creating chances on target but being thwarted by the keeper, but the relaity was that fo all our possesion and ball into the box, no one was getting on the end of them.
Rickie Lambert was having an off day and could have easily have been replaced, although its understandable why Adkins did make the change he did do and easy to see why he didnt make a third with little attacking options on the bench, but why so late with Barnard Nigel ?
Its not a disaster its a set back, but we have to keep these set backs down to a minimum, we knew that Saints play best against sides that attack them, so we shouldnt be too surprised when the first side to come for a point for a whilse should thwart us.
On the plus side its another game unbeaten and although we dropped points on Brighton we are still in a strong position, is someone had said after the Brentford game that in the next five games we would win four and draw one, we would have taken that, this run has brought the points ratio per game needed for automatic promotion down to two per game, over our last 12 games we have got 26 points, so our form is good going into the next round of games, we just have to keep winning and making sure that the average remains above two points per game, if we do that then automatic promotion will come.