Make no mistake the result did not reflect a game where Saints spent most of it on the back foot and showed little ambition.
Over a week ago I suggested that Nigel Adkins had some thinking to do before the Liverpool game, that he couldnt get away with picking the same XI every week and that Liverpool would offer a pacy attacking threat down our left side that could rip us to shreds, in the first half at Anfield I was thinking of changing my name to Mystic Meg, Adkins did play the same side and time and time again Sterling and Johnson stormed down that wing with Shaw often finding himself completely without cover and not knowing which way to go.
The fact that Liverpool only managed one solitary goal, that itself from a free header with our defenders in a tangle doesnt reflect a half where they hit the woodwork on several occasions with a few more shots narrowly off target or saved by the keeper.
The second half was marginally better in that we seemed to have ordered both Lallana and Ramirez to play much deeper and not attack so much, but the sad facts are that Liverpool had 69% possession, they had 24 shots on goal to our measly 8 and cant remember Reiner being troubled by any of them and on another day we could have been 4 or 5 goals down at half time and another drubbing on our hands.
But perhaps the most disapointing aspect of this game was nigel Adkins failure to lead from the front and be pro active about taking on Liverpool, if I could predict where Liverpool were going to come at us from, then surely the manager should have been able to do the same, they had done their homework on us and knew exactly what they needed to do, where as we just put out the same side and hoped for the best.
But even as the game dragged on, the manager did little to change it, as the second half went on and the home side failed to score a second and kill off the game, you hoped that the game plan would be to keep it at 1-0 and then if we could step up a gear in the final 15 minutes and go for it, the first substitution was nothing more than a like for like change, Davis for Cork on 70 minutes was just putting a bit of fresh legs on, but in truth it wasnt going to change the game.
The second change with 12 minutes left was a little more inspiring, but to be bluunt Puncheon wasnt interested, if Adkins had called me on out of the crowd and thrown be on I would have probably contributed more, it offered a little hope though, Rodriguez clearly wanted to prove a point and perhaps did more in those 12 minutes than Rickie Lambert did in the whole game, however we hardly battered down the door.
But perhaps the strangest thing for me was that as the clock ticked down, Nigel Adkins showed no signs of urgency to win the game, in the final minutes he could have gone for it, what is the point of putting Mayuka on the bench if you arent going to use him in a situation like this, a few minutes left and a goal down, throw him on and see if his pace scares the opposition and might just snatch a late equaliser, Im not Mayuka's greatest fan to be fair, yes he has pace but for me he has yet to show he has much about him, Nigel Adkins must feel the same, if Mayuka cant get on to the field in a situation like this on Saturday, just whenis he going to get on.
I am a fan of Nigel Adkins, I have publicly supported him on here, but on Saturday I was left extremely worried that he is out of his depth and unable to make the right decisions to win us points, in this modern day its a squad game, to not use all the squad you have to hand in a situation like the final few minutes on Saturday is unnacceptable, it was crying out for a Billy Sharp or Tadanari Lee to come on in those final minutes, but even in their absence I would have settled for Mayuka, what I wont settle for though is a manager who just sits and watches the clock run down as we tamely seemed to see holding on to a 1-0 defeat as some sort of moral victory.
A couple of weeks ago we seemed to have turned a corner, in the past two games we seem to have gone backwards because of our inability to do anything other than rely on the same starting XI whatever the opposition's strengths and weaknesses.