Saints missed a great chance to fgain ground on second place.
On the face of it a point at peterborough is not the end of the world, however the manner in which Saints threw away a two goal lead, not once but twice is worrying and more to the point the fact was the goals were conceded sloppily and through defensive errors, sadly the usuall suspects committed those errors. Match stats of 6 Peterborough shots on target and 4 goals are not good, OK two were penalties but 2 conceded out of four is still pretty bad if you remove the pens from the equation.
But the team selection was again baffling Nigle Adkins seems to always want to tinker, I have said previously that at the back after finding a winning combination he just cant seem to keep with it, the only constant being Font, could anyone honestly say with any confidence who he will pick in the other three positions next week, good teams are based on a settled solid defence and we just dont have that at present. Evn in other positions, its puzzling, how could N Guessan be one of our better players on Tuesday but not kick a ball in this game ? puzzling
Peterborough seemed to be content to go very direct and seemed to realise that we couldnt cope with crosses into the box, something that they seemed to be able to do with accuracy, the first goal was a good old up and under, Seaborne should really have dealt with it and to be blunt the keeper should have done a bit better himself.
The second goal was just as bad, we didnt deal with a cross in the six yard box, Harding seemed to think Davis was going to get it and stood and watched whilst Davis just doesnt do that sort of thing, the end result was that there man had a free header when he just shouldnt have, not the first time a ball put into this area has resulted in utter confusion between Davis and Harding.
Saints looked to have ridden their d9odgy spell when they restored their two goal advantage within minutes of the break, however from then on Saints never quite had the same rythym and the hosts seemed to have the advantage, when they pulled one back on 55 minutes, you knew that it would be a long half.
From our point of view it seemd Peterborough were throwing themselves to the ground at every opportunity, the game plan seemd to be to get free kicks and launch balls into oir box, watching a game gives a diffrent perspective that on TV but we did not look like we would defend the again slender lead with calm confidence, we looked shambles defensively
Adkins hauled off Harding on 65 minutes and put in Dickson but now Peterborough had the advantage and kept pouring on the pressure, on 75 Adkins again tried to stem the tide by taking off Guly and putting on a right back in Richardson, this seemd to spur the home side on, they could see Saints were on the ropes. Forte was introduced on 82 minutes to bring fresh legs for Barnard who had run his socks off in an effort to stop them playing from the back, again possibly the wrong substitution.
But just as Saints seemed to have weathered the storm they conceded another soft penalty, jump up with your arms in the air and you are alwways going to increase the chances of the ball hitting them or at least look like its hit them, when the penalty went in, you felt like Saints might not even get a point with four minutes of injury time left.
The problem with Saints is that there appears to be no leadership on or off the pitch, the players hae the quality but when put under pressure they crumble, I honestly dont believe that Adkins knows his best side, perhaps he now has a luxury that he never had at Scunthorpe and that is choice, he has a big squad but seems to be struggling to know how to use it best and quite often he is getting tem selection and substitutions wrong.
Make no bones about it, having got ourselves into a winning position we should have held on and won, we threw this game away ourselves through, indecision, individual error and a lack of leadership, this result could cost us dearly in the long run, a month ago we had dragged ourselves right back into the equation and were looking at cementing our second place, lose to Carlisle and we could find ourself out of even a play off spot, this game was nnot just about the points total, but about making a statement of intent, we finished the day making no ground on the top two, but seeing Huddersfield increase their lead on us and some of the chasing teams also gain ground.
Our last four games have seen us pick up just five points and that is not good enough for a side who should really be winning this division easily with the squad we have on paper,