Only one word sums up this game "PREDICTABLE"

Over the past few weeks my reports on games have run along a similar theme, warning of the complacency of a few home wins and a somewhat fortuitous win at Notts County did not a solid team make, I pointed out the failings of certain players, that although adequate against the lower teams, when put under pressure they were found wanting, some agreed, some didnt and some even accused me of having something against those players, I questioned the fact that the manager always seemed to get it wrong with the starting line up, sadly all of these things and more came home to roost on Saturday at Carlisle and with interest.

Firstly the line up was all wrong, why did we immediately offer Carlisle the chance to put us on the back foot by playing 4-5-1, the official website described it as 4-3-3 but I didnt see it that way and neither did anyone I spoke to in the away section,, what they saw was loan striker Rickie Lambert struggling to do anything, he isnt fast enough to run channels so the only other option was to try and get it into his feet, this frequesntly failed with lambert having to drop deeper to pick up the ball and too often all he was getting was balls pumped up to him to try and flick on to no one, if a loan striker is going to be deployed then Im afraid that SRL is not the man to play that role, Barnards workrate makes him a more obvious choice.

But perhaps more worryingly was the defence, all the goals were gifts, the first caught Saints flat at the back and to be blunt although Harding had to offer some cover to Fonte, he left a gap that enabled them to get a spare man to fire across Davis, it would be harsh to blame Harding for this, but you also have to say a good full back would have done better and thats the difference between a goal being scored and not. To be blunt and this has been the case on more than one goal scored against us this season, Harding doesnt get a tackle in, look at the goal on BBC Sport, as the ball is played wide and the Carlisle man shoots, Harding is on his feet and doesnt get a foot in, where is the sliding block tackle ? You can accuse me of having a vendetta against Harding, its nothing of the sort, its merely questioning why a defender cannot tackle.  

But if Harding could be absolved a little on the first goal the second was a nightmare, like the first he was caught ball watching, didnt know where his man was and panciked, in truth the keeper plays a big part in these situations and the ball was in the six yard box, should Davis have collected ? possibly certainly he didnt help Harding and was in no mans land that meant that the ball could loop above him.

But Saints defending in general was dreadful and the second goal was once again a free header, a look at the replay shows the keeper still on his feet and Harding should maybe have cleared off the line, harsh ? maybe.

Sadly this game followed a similar pattern as other games, we make the wrong starting selections, pick up when subs are made but finish it rueing missed chances and poor defending with more shots on & off target than the victorious team and more possession, more to the point though, individually the same players let us down as have done in previous weeks and now need to pay the price, I have always chanted the same mantra in football and that is "you do the same things and you get the same results" and away from home thats been the case fo Nigel Adkins, we are fast becoming a side that wins at home but crumbles on the road, and before someone points out Notts County to me I would counter that for 70 minutes up at Meadow Lane we were awful and it took a penalty and sending off to change the game.

Our record on the road since NA's arrival is played 6, won 2, drew  1, lost 3 , firstly that is poor for a side that fancies itself for promotion and secondly those three defeats all came at clubs who are our rivals for going up, games we really need to be getting something out of, in truth even the draw was a porr result considering it was at Yeovil, a side now second from bottom with a poor home record.

We have played a quarter of a seasons away games since Adkins took over and somethng is not right on the road, the time for excuses is over, we are not good enough and something has to be done.

1. We cant defend set pieces, the opposition know that we have a keeper that doesnt leave his line and play on this, the last two games have seen goals from free headers, if we know the keeper isnt going to get a ball then we have to make sure that we do, Adam Lallana has been the culprit in both of these goals, why do we have him marking up in our own box, he is not that sort of player ? This does go back to my point about the type of keeper needed to get out of this division, in the dying minutes of injury time we pumped a ball into the box and their keeper came and caught it on the penalty spot and took the pressure right off them, would ours have done the same, I think we all know the answer to that one, Carlisle had four shots on target, three of them went in, look back at any game we have lost and its a similar story, we command games for long periods but let in soft goals due to individual errors and lack of concentration.

2. The manager has to make a few strong decisions with regard to the line up, Harding has to go and Ryan Dickson given his chance, up front we seriosly have to consider dropping Lambert, for strikers its all about goals and Lambert is a player who is not scoring from open play, if this was any other forward he would be on the bench, we have three other forwards and to be frank, he is fourth in line at present on form yet is still the first to be picked and that has to change.

We have an important week ahead of us with two home games, we are quite capable of winning them and pushing ourselves back into the promotion frame, but we need to rectify the problems from Saturday and not as we have been doing let a home win gloss over the fact we are fragile on the road for the aforementioned reasons. If we had beaten Carlisle we would have been third with a decent chance of going joint top by next Tuesday, certainly 2nd.

At this point I could say I told you so ! but Im not going to im merely going to point out that its the same problems we have been having all season, football is a harsh game, Nigel Adkins has to now do his job, its not about bad luck or bad starts to the season, its about dropping points now, I dont want to be saying the same things about the same players week in week out, I want to see us beating sides as we should be doing end of !!             

Photo: Action Images

Spot51 added 10:26 - Nov 15 St Abledoors-Bolted (after horse has fooked off!)
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legod7 added 11:25 - Nov 15 Last season we all criticised Alan Pardew for playing 4-5-1 away from home.We always seem to lose playing this way. Nigel Adkins tries this system and loses,then has the audacity to blame the players for the loss. We should stick to 4-4-2 home and away. The players are comfortable with it and beat Notts County away using it. I cannot understand why he dropped Dan Seabourne and played Radhi Jaidi in his place. The Fonte/Jaidi partnership just does not work.Seabourne and Fonte have been the backbone of our good defensive showing in recent games. After his horror showing I think it is time to give Dan Harding a rest and see what Ryan Dickson has to offer

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Verwoodsaint added 11:29 - Nov 15 Your confusion of the word Loan and Lone is.......... confusing !! I could've sworn we bought him ;o)
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eusebio added 12:01 - Nov 15 Hi Ho silver....away
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bstokesaint added 12:45 - Nov 15 There was no way we were playing a 4-3-3. It was definitely 4-5-1. Lambert was isolated upfront and had no support. Either Guly or Barnard should have started alongside him. I was a big fan of Harding last season, but he seems to be struggling at the moment. I fail to see why there is competition for places yet Dickson isn't given a chance. Maybe it will bring out the best in Harding, having to fight for his spot. On the flip side I was unimpressed with Seabourne last season, but this year he has been much imporved and is definitely the better player to partner Fonte.

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ourkid1984 added 14:31 - Nov 15 Now that report is more like gloating then anything else. You seem more pleased with a loss than a win all because you feel you have been proven right! I along with many others who watched the game agreed that although not at a great standard yet we played our best we have played away from home all season apart from the Bristol Rovers game. If you think about it you have too often said about how fortunate we have been to win this game and win that game but at the end of theday for the same reason you say we were fortunate we can say that we were unfortunate against Carlisle. Lets face it we had more shots on goal more shots off target and more possession. We dominated for large periods and all because of 2 defensive errors we lost and one I don't think could of been stopped (Hardings own goal). Scoring 2 away from home as well as having more of the ball and more shots supports the idea to play 4-5-1. We scored 2 goals away from home and you tell me how many away teams scored 2 or more goals away from home and lost this weekend I'll give you a clue in all of league football there was 1 more than 2 and 1 less than 4 and howm many away teams who scored 2 or more goals was there well there were 15 so as you can see most teams who score 2 away from home get at least a point. So where was the blame for the defeat if indeed you can blame any one thing well you could say the defence as apart from Hardings own goal which you couldn't really blame him for you could say defence as the other 2 goals were down to defensive errors. Or if you're a Adkins hater you could say the manager for changing a winning team and playing 4-5-1 I would say that Jaidi should be too good for any forward in this league and many people have been getting on Seabornes back recently so can understand that change. The problem was Jaidi was clearly not match fit and his distribution was awful so if I was to blame anyone I would blame him followed by another poor performance by Harding. I also think after all the people moaning about Puncheon it was clear to see that as good as Oxo is he isn't ready to play a full 90minutes.

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StrasbourgSaint added 15:11 - Nov 15 I was at the match and I have to agree entirely with OurKid1984. Play 4-4-2 or 4-5-1, when the defence makes mistakes, you can't blame the midfield system. The own goal was, as OurKid said, just one of those things, the other two goals were caused by poor defending. If I have a criticism of the starting eleven, it is, as Nick says, that LB (or maybe our LOAN striker Guly!) is the better option for lone striker. I hate to say it but I think it would help RL if he spent a week or two watching from the bench.

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SaintNick added 17:10 - Nov 15 I try and tell it how i see it, I dont blame the formation, I blame individual errors and the fact that it is the same players letting us down every week, I dont think it was our best away performance bar bristol rovers, but i do think we deserved something out of it, but the cold hard facts are that we got nothing, come the end of the season we wont get extra points for being the one of the few teams to score two goals away from home. Cold hard facts are that we lost and that we have only got 7 away points in our last 6 away games and that is not good enough for a promotion chasing side

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ourkid1984 added 17:33 - Nov 15 The old rule and still pretty true is if you win your home games and draw the away games you will be promoted so as it goes we're averaging more than a point a game away from home so we're doing the job there. I don't doubt that our away form needs to pick up so that we haven't got as much pressure on our home form but I can't see us losing too many when we're scoring 2 in games away from home. Our last 6 home games have gave us 13 points if we had done that at the start of the season while averaging 7 points for every 6 away games there wouldn't be so much pressure on us to get more points away from home than we have recently.

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sholingred added 18:44 - Nov 15 Davis is rubbish been saying this since he arrived,how adkins picks him,being an ex goalkeeper,god knows,this cult status fans give him is pathetic,how is mills good enough to play in the championship but not the pub league,baffles me.We will not go up if changes are not made,simple as that.
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felly1 added 20:32 - Nov 15 I was at the game and although Carlisle probably deserved their win on another day the result could have been different.As far as im concerned if you are going to play 1 up front you need to put Lallana in the hole between the 2 other centre mids.Our 3 centre mids were poor.Shneiderlin flatters to deceive and offers very little in terms of attacking threat,Hammond is a grafter who gives his all but is very much a league1 player in terms of his technical skills.Chaplow works very hard and covers a lot of ground and supports the attack but he too lacks the finesse to unlock defences and his passing is at times woeful.Ricardo this season has been at best average and that just isnt good enough for a side going for promotion.Its just like last season where we seem to take 2 steps forward and one back after a poor start to the season,the players just lack grit and concentration which may cost us dearly.

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hortonsaint added 21:47 - Nov 15 Wasn't there but the fact that Adkins has for the first time been outspokenly critical suggests he is losing patience with certain culprits. These performances away from home are, as Nick says, becoming entirely predictable which makes me wonder why you keep stating we have the best side in the league? We are found wanting in too many key positions (LB/one CB/2xCM IMO/even CF with Lambert's woeful form) and the fact we are in touch with the top 2 shows how poor the league is (which is why we can still go up in spite of ourselves). It will be interesting to see what NA is allowed to do in the window as I reckon he'd like to make some serious changes. If he does that will be the time to judge him though I must agree that Saturday's selections of Lambert alone up front and Jhadi for an improved Seabourne were baffling. Re Kelvin, Nick yes I agree he didn't do a lot to help Harding with the OG. Not being at the game I can't say if Carlisle played to Kelvin's weakness though I didn't think the issue with the goal was him staying on the line as the ball swung out away from him but rather rank bad marking yet again.

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