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Southampton At Liverpool The Verdict

Anfield has become Saints bogey ground after they made it 5 defeats in a row on Saturday, with 16 goals conceded and none scored along the way, sometimes managers get it wrong and this was one of those days where Ralph Hasenhuttl tinkered too much and caused confusion.

This game had a familiar pattern about it, Saints concede sloppy goals and find themselves on the wrong end of a good beating, but unlike most of the previous 4 defeats on the bounce, in this one they showed spirit to ensure that a drubbing didn't become a rout.

When the team was announced an hour before the game I was a little surprised, Ralph Hasenhuttl had switched from his usual solid 4-4-2 and had a 3--4=3 with 3 up front.

But perhaps his biggest mistake was whom he left out, there was no place for Kyle Walker Peters, nor Diallo or Elyounoussi from the team that lost at Norwich, but the problem was he had dropped players who actually played well at Norwich and switched the back 3 and midfield around too much.

It actually started well for Saints in the first 60 seconds or so we attacked, but the moment Liverpool got the ball you could see we were all at sea, Tino Livramento looked like he didn't know where he was supposed to be and they burst down the wing and crossed the ball, we had plenty of defenders in the box, twice as many as Liverpool had players, but we were ripped apart and no one seemed to know who they were marking.

It was a well worked goal but 1-0 down after 90 seconds was not ideal to say the least.

In fairness Saints never stopped battling and to a degree stopped the tide and also had attacks of their own, Broja creating a good chance for himself but the keeper saved well, but after holding out for another 30 minutes, suddenly we lost our way again.

Again we failed to mark men and block crosses and Jota again had a simple tap in with our men stood watching.

Liverpool got lucky on their 3rd the ball taking a big deflection past McCarthy who could do nothing, the ball would probably have flown wide, but when your luck is out your luck is out.

At half time we changed things, went back to a 4-4-2, bringing on Nathan Redmond & Nathan Tella as wingbacks and restoring Livramento and Perraud to a traditional back four, initially that didn't seem to do the trick, Liverpool had made it 4 on 52 minutes, Virgil Van Dijk completely unmarked and a free shot, which to be blunt should have been saved.

With 40 minutes left it looked like being a long day, but the plus point of the day was that we stuck with the task, kept our heads up and hung on to ensure that it didn't get any worse.

Indeed we could have and should have reduced the arrears when Tella crossed perfectly for Adam Armstrong, his shot lacked conviction and was blocked by a sliding tackle by a defender, the type of defending we needed in the first half, the ball fell to him again but his second effort was also weak and the keeper saved it easily.

The stats don't make good reading, especially the first two of 4 goals to 0 and only 35% possession, but for all their domination Liverpool only had 6 attempts on target and 4 of them went in, we had 3 attempts on target ourselves.

Ultimately though the manager has to take the blame for this one, he changed the side too much and although that might have worked he had too many players in who did not have enough experience in the Premier League to be able to switch the way they had to play and cope with it.

Tino Livramento had his worst game for the club, he was constantly out of position and didn't seem to know who he should be tracking, Salisu was our best defender, but truth be told there was a lack of leadership and organisation, Jan Bednarek was the man with the experience at the back, but he looked a shadow of the player he was last season.

If we are going to change things when we are playing one of the best teams in Europe and by far and away the best attack in the Premier League, you have to have leaders, as i have been saying for a long time, we don't have one at the back and we needed one on Saturday.

But Ralph Hasenhuttl is not the first manager to call it wrongly and certainly greater managers than him have got it wrong in team selections from time to time, all that matters now is putting it right in the next two games.

In these reviews I do call it as I see it, but I also try to take the plus points, no one can be happy by the way we played on Saturday, you cannot gift a team like Liverpool 4 goals and we did gift them each and every one, but we can take some positives from it, we were playing one of the best teams in Europe if not the World, we kept fighting from first to last even though we knew it was a lost cause.

This being the case we can go forward with some confidence, but we have to do so remembering what we do best and not trying to do things that we fall short on, if you are trying a new formation, do it against someone whom it might work on, not the likes of Liverpool.

Now we have played the best three teams in the Premier League away from home, we can move forward, take 4 points from the home games against Leicester and Brighton and we take a big step forward.

It's a marathon not a sprint and I don't just mean this season, but over the past few years where we have been hampered by huge salaries on our wage bill and players that cost us fortunes and contributed little to the club.

This is starting to ease up and we are slowly building a squad, small steps at a time perhaps but we are moving forward.

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