Saints won a second consecutive home game 2-0, but it was in a totally different manner to the previous weeks victory.
They say the sign of a good side is the ability to win games when you are totally outplayed, if that old adage is true then Saints have a great chance of winning the league this year as they were out fought, out thought, out passed and out played by a Swansea City side who will be wondering how the hell they lost this one.
In my preview of the game I mentioned that the problem might arise in midfield if we played both Lambert & Osvaldo and this turned out to be the case, effectively our midfield only had four men in it with either Lambert or Osvaldo dropping back to help sometimes, but against a team like Swansea dropping back isn't good enough, you have to be able to compete with them on their own level, after a good start by Saints resulting in a well taken goal by Adam Lallana, Swansea got to work and took control of the game.
As I pointed out in the preview, Swansea like to use wingers and the fact we left Danny Fox constantly exposed down our left side was not helping matters, Im not going to debate whether Fox is good enough or not, but fact is he is a Saints player not only did he not deserve the abuse he got, but if anyone actually thinks by constantly abusing him its going to help our cause, then they bluntly are clueless, I suspect a year ago the same people were hurling the same mindless abuse at Artur Boruc and would have been happy back then to have him hounded out of the club.
If Luke Shaw had played then obviously he was better equipped to handle the pacy Dyer, but truth is even if he had, we had got our tactics wrong and he would have struggled just as much finding himself double teamed, as I said he would have had the pace to deal with it better, but the root problem would have remained.
For the middle part of the game Saints hung on and I mean hung on only the woodwork, some desperate defending and of course a goalkeeping display from Artur Boruc that ranks up there with any I have seen in over 40 years of watching the club, not only was Boruc superb in his shot stopping, but he did everything else that was needed as well, commanding his area in a way I don't think I have seen in a Saints shirt since the days of Peter Shilton, with Saints under constant pressure I was almost relieved when Swansea crossed the ball into the six yard box as you knew that Boruc would get it.
Ironically it took an injury to Osvaldo to change the game back towards Saints, with the Italian going off it enabled Saints to bring on Jamie Ward Prowse and revert to a true five man midfield, this was where Saints were losing the battle and losing it badly, JWP brought balance back to the middle of the park, not only this but it meant that we had a man on the left to protect Fox, Swansea were still bossing the game, but they weren't finding it as easy as they had been and you sensed that Saints might be able to see it through.
But it needed another substitution to truly start to swing it in our favour, Rodriguez coming on for Lambert offered pace and mobility, for the first minutes after his introduction Rodriguez ran around and although seemingly not getting anywhere was harassing the Swansea back line and they didn't look as comfortable on the ball as they had done for the previous hour.
With ten minutes left Wanyama appeared to have wrapped the game up, but as he celebrated over by the corner flag he was strangely not joined by his teammates, it soon became clear why, the goal was disallowed and they were having to deal with Swansea swiftly getting on with the game, but you felt that Saints were now if not stronger than the Swans at least on an equal footing and the second goal was about to arrive, a long kick from Boruc, saw Rodriguez refuse to give up what appeared to be a simple job for the Swansea defence, he battled and battled and got himself into a position where he could volley home to make the game safe.
A satisfying win for Saints, satisfying in the fact that last season we would have perhaps lost this game heavily, indeed we deserved too this time, but we hung on in there with every player and do mean every player doing his job and contributing to the victory, the crowd helped as well at least those who didn't barrack Fox, as the game wore on the Itchen roused and in turn so did the Northam and Kingsland corner, they got behind the team and you could see this helped, respect to those that raised their voices in support of the team, anyone who verbally shouted abuse at our left back should hang their heads in shame.
So 4th in the league and its great to be in these lofty heights, but there is a long way to go and there were a lot of warning signs yesterday that we aren't the complete side that some would have us, we got our tactics wrong yesterday, we took our time to get them right and rode our luck, hopefully we will have learnt, the biggest test so far comes at Old Trafford in the next game, we go there above United in the league and there haven't been many times we have been able to say that since the Premier League started 21 years ago. If we can come through this one with even a point, then we will have made a big statement of intent.