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Saints At Liverpool The Verdict

A game of two halves, where sadly Saints went back to their chaotic defending at the back from earlier in the season after holding Liverpool at half time.

The one thing that has to be said about this game is that it was not a four nil game, ironically we shipped one more goal than the previous two visits despite playing ten times better than we did do in those two games where we were gutless.

But we were the architects of our own downfall, in the first half we stuck doggedly to our task and went tow to toe with the home side, they had their chances but we also had ours and I doubt whether man sides had caused them this amount of problems in any other game at Anfield this season.

We were not only well drilled and organised, but we went forward with, purpose and at the break it could easily have been 2-1 to either side or even three all.

But before many fans had got out back to their seats after the break the game took a dramatic turn, firstly Danny Ings went down under a clumsy challenge, but the ref waved play on and Liverpool went straight up the other end and scored, we suddenly looked lost a couple of nice flicks from them and ex Saint Alex Oxlade Chamberlain fired home with McCarthy rooted to the spot.

Initially this did not phase Saints and we went back at them but the damage was done and on the hour the game was put out of our reach when Jordan Henderson took advantage of some poor defending to score.

But it got worse and Mo Salah's two goals to make the scoreline look a lot worse than the performance itself where again the result of our failure to read a game at the back, mark a player or make a decent tackle.

This was a Jeckyll and Hyde performance that highlighted what I have been saying all season, in the midfield and going forward we are a top 10 side, at the back we are not even top 10 in the Championship at times.

Hopefully we can put this one behind us and secure the two wins we need to make sure that we don't pay dearly for not buying a central defender in the January transfer window.

The main thing that we can take from this game though is we left with a lot more pride than our previous two visits, the Liverpool supporters were very complimentary after the match we gave them a game, ultimately we got the same result as everyone else who has gone there this season, but we did so taking the game to them.

We had more shots than them, 17 compared to their 16 and I suspect not many teams go to Anfield and have that many, we had 11 corners to their 6 we showed that we can play, but we also showed we are still a work in progress, we still need a central defender.

Hopefully this was a blip, after all we had to play JWP as a stand in right back and although that is likely to happen again at Spurs after that we will see if Kyle Walker Peters can do a job for us there, you felt that we might perhaps have nicked something if we had had Ward Prowse in our team..

Onwards and upwards we lost to the best team in the World at the moment, it was no disgrace, we just need to win two games quickly and banish any lingering thoughts that we might get sucked into a relegation fight.

Meanwhile after Manchester City lost at Tottenham, Liverpool are within 6 wins of a first ever Premier League title and it is fairly likely that they will do it with a record points total and perhaps hit that magic 100 goal mark.

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