Saints just cannot afford to keep throwing games away due to our inability to hold a lead.
Saints has a dream start to this televised fixture when Jose Fonte headed them into a fourth minute lead and to be honest it could well have been 3 or 4 at half time as a plethora of chances were spurned, Puncheon couldnt force the ball home at close range and Rickie Lambert missed a couple the second of which he hit straight at the keepr when hitting across goal would have been the better choice.
In the second half the old problems started to emerge, Adam Lallana started to drift out of position on too many occasions and it was leaving the left back exposed, it was a similar problem on the right, Jason Puncheon was playing well in the middle third, but in the defensive third he too was getting caught out of position and helping Yoshida who clearly wasnt a natural right back and not comfortable there, in the final third too many times Puncheon got the ball and ran himself into blind alleys causing us problems on the break.
But as the game wore on we were struggling to defend and clear balls,panic was starting to set in and it was no surprise that the equaliser came from an error, with 20 minutes to go you sensed that there would only be one winner and it wouldnt be us, the only surprise is that the next Fulham goal took so long to arrive, what looked like the winner provoked a mass exodus amongst the home fans, those that stayed though saw a barnstorming finish with Jose Fonte netting his second and turning the screw on Fulham who despite a succession of corners hung on for a point.
But once again the spotlight is on Nigel Adkins selections and substitutions, of course he wasnt helped by the unavailability of both Ramirez and Clyne although this did prompt him into playing a 4-4-2 formation which in truth worked despite Lambert and Rodriguez being a little too similar in style, Adkins first substitution was forced upon him, you cant legislate for injury but what you have to have is someone on the bench who can play in every position, the choice of Hooiveld to come on and push Yoshida to right back smacked of desperation, personally I would have preferred to throw Ben Reeves into that position, ok he is left footed but would have had a mobility needed at full back that Yoshida lacked, no reflection on Yoshida here he dug in and put in a good display, but he just wasnt comfortable.
The second substitution though was fairly straight forward, Puncheon as mentioned earlier was struggling for the final ball and not helping Yoshida on the back foot, Chaplow offered some steel and energy needed at the time, but you couldnt legislate for the next change.
Personally I was not surprised that it was Lambert who made way, he had worked hard and he was tiring fast, at this level you cant let sentiment get in the way and carry a player in the hope that he will pull out a wonder goal, Lambert's withdrawal although not completely obvious was probably the right one, the choice of replacement was not.
I as many will know am not a Guly hater like some, I think he is a decent player, but why was he the put on in place of Mayuka, Nigel Adkins has said that with his recent abscence his energy levels were high, personally I think thats codswallop, any of our substitutes should be capable of playing a high tempo game for 20 minutes or so and on the case of energy levels Mayuka's 39 minutes in the three games he has featured in hasnt exactly tired him out I would suspect.
Sorry Nigel this is just a baffling substitution, the only reason I could see to do it was to revert to a 4-5-1 as you appeared to do with Guly seemingly having a free role to float around, but 1-0 up you had better choices, Jamie Ward-Prowse for instance would have been ideal to come into the centre, or even sort out the problem of Lallana drifting out of position on the left by bringing him into that forward central role and bringing on Ben Reeves, Guly didnt play badly, but given that he hadnt played in the league in the last month and that he had actually more minutes on the pitch in that month than Mayuka in that he played against Sheff Weds in the league cup, that sort of blows your energy levels theory out of the water, sadly it was a poor decision and one that could have cost us a lot more dearly than it did, in that it disrupted the team.
Its hard to take too many positives from this game other than that the point took us out of the bottom three again, like the Wigan game, it was a fixture that we had to look to take maximum points from, the spell from hell had all the excuses under the sun why we were getting beaten and conceding soft goals, this was a game when the time for excuses was over, but once again we conceded soft goals.