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Saints At Blackpool The Verdict

The phrase of the moment seems to be "Keep calm and carry on" that has to be very relevant for Saints at the moment as they head into the final six games.

I said in the pre match articles that in many respects the Blackpool game was a free hit for Saints and with West ham getting beat by Reading that is very much the case with the gap between us and third still being six points and in truth West Ham are in far more disarray than ourselves as we speak.

But lets not kid ourselves this was a one off on the road, we might have won at Leeds and Millwall but we were awful and defensively we were bad again on Saturday, the second goal was the killer and Jose Fonte was brushed off the ball with far too much ease, allowing Dobbie to slot the ball past Kelvin Davis.

Saints just didnt look at the races and again made a substitution at half time, this for my mind happens far too often, we should not need to do it, we have either got the selections and tactics wrong or an individual just isnt performing, in a side top of the league this shouldnt be an issue, but it is.

I have been saying this all season about our defensive frailties on the road,often i have been shouted down and told to look at the goals against column, yes we dont concede many, but the problem is we concede goals at the wrong times, just as we need to be tight as at Bloomfield Road we collapse and that has been the story of our away form, our failure to keep tight when pressure is asserted, it happened at Millwall, its happened again on Saturday, indeed it happened at Leeds, it was just that be some miracle they didnt score.

But rant over, we cant change Saturday's defeat, what we can do is win the next six games and that is what we now have to concentrate on, we are good enough to push on and clinch promotion, with six points between us and the Hammers I know what position I would rather be in now, we just have to hold our nerve and win our games, if we win four we will almost certainly go up on goal difference even if the Hammers win all of theirs, so lets get these games ticked off as quickly as possible, good teams get beat and beaten well from time to time, the sign of a good team is the way they respond in the next game.

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