 Monday, 26th Sep 2011 10:01 A game that Saints should have won, but didnt. If a club hopes to achieve promotion then it has to set itself high standards, the truth is that at Turf Moor Saints failed to match the level of performance that they have reached in other games, in fairness all teams will have games when they dont play very well and its taken Saints 8 games to have a below par performance of this nature, the question they have to answer now is is this just a blip ? or is it going to happen again ? The real problem lay in that Saints just didnt look comfortable at the back again, once again Jose Fonte did not look in good form and it was Hooiveld holding it together along the line,Kelvin's kicking was awful and in yret another game we put ourselves under pressure because of it, he isnt comfortable at times in geting the ball out to feet in the style that Nigel Adkins clearly wants and something has to give as it wont be long before it costs us a goal. When Burnley scored it had been coming for a while, certainly we were fortunate not to go behind in the first period, Burnley had done their homework werent allowing us to play football and were getting balls into our box and that it was charlie Austin that scored it was no surprise. But despite the home side being on the front foot, Saints really should have equalised three minutes later and dont be follwed by some of the match reports, this was not a glorious header thumped onto the bar by Rickie Lambert, this was an horrendous miss, he met the cross from Richardson at the far post no more than six yards out and with an open goal in front of him, in some respects he did the right thing by heading the ball down, but in doing so it bounced off the ground with such force that it then hit the bar, strikers miss chances and this was one that Rickie wont want to be reminded about. But Saints dug in and as the last 15 minutes approached you had the feeling that Burnley wouldnt be able to keep up their pace and we might just have weathered the storm. Ths proved to be the case when Morgan Schneiderlin scored only his second league goal for Saints and unlike his thundering strike at Bristol Rovers this one was scrappy, but the Saints fans didnt care. Danny Fox got down the left and put in a great cross that went cross the goal a yard or two out, it only needed a toe on it and it was Schneiderlin who put his in and got the goal. There are some who prefer Harding to Fox, certainly Hardings style catches the eye, but its all about results and for the second time in three games Fox has delivered the ball into the right areas and created a goal, this is what he is there to do, and he is doing it on at least three other occasions he found our players in front of goal but this was a day when we were wasing chances not scoring them. Late on Adam Lallana got through, he looked to have been fouled but stayed on his feet, but the effort had used a little too much momentum and he couldnt get a clean strike away and the keeper saved easily. Overall a point was a good result given the performance, but Nigel Adkins will know that we cant afford too many of these over a season and that in the context of the bigger picture this was two point dropped that really should have been gained.
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