Saints hung on in there and were good for a point at the end of a game that was crucial not just for the result but the morale boost of showing we can get a point on the road.
Nigel Adkins put his funny turn of the weekend behind him and went back to the players who have dragged us out of the relegation zone, Mayuka went back to the bench and his normal role of seemingly only making up the numbers on it, whilst Steve De Ridder disapeared back to the fringe squad as quickly as he had inexplicably arrived on the picth against Sunderland.
But the game could not got off to a worst start as Saints once again conceded a trade mark goal, I have been harping on about this side of the field all season, for good reason, Luke Shaw found himself on the back foot with two players bearing down on him and absolutely no one tracking back to cover him, in truth the cross that came in was poor and should have been dealt with by Kelvin Davis who fumbled it into the path of Berbatov who didnt look a gift horse in the mouth, at that point you thought that this might be a very bad day at the office.
But Saints rallied and although they had a few pieces of good luck go their way, as the game wore on they got stronger and looked the better side, the heart of the midfield with Jack Cork again working his socks off aided by Schneiderlin and Steve Davis kept the side going and although we were creating very little in the way of decent chances the good thing was we didnt collapse although at times we seemed to be doing our best to gift them a second.
In the second half we came on strong but the lack of a real goal threat was glaringly obvious, Nigel Adkins made the right substitution though bringing on Jay Rodriguez and it was a just reward when we got awarded what was a nailed on handball although just why Chris Baird stuck his hand up and batted it way will never be answered.
A good battling draw which we thouroughly deserved, however we shouldnt overlook the problems that are still glaringly obvious, we cannot afford to keep letting whoever is playing left back getting exposed and we need to be getting the ball into Lambert a lot quicker, yes sometimes the penalty for having to concentrate on defending is that you lose something going forward, but the fact is we just dont get the ball up to Lambert with the speed and precision that we did last year.