Saints continued their bad run of results at Ashton Gate, but again its not about results its about the manager finding out about his squad.
Saints rarely seem to do well at Ashton Gate these days, last seasons defeat in November sparking off a poor run of results lasting into the new year, ironically enough, there were almost as many Saints fans at that game than could be bothered to turn up last night in total, a gate of 2,605 including 402 in the away section.
In his penultimate pre season fixture Nigel Adkins could be have said to put out what he considers his first XI, perhaps only Jamie Ward Prowse in for Steven Davis being the only real switch, but this perhaps highlights that despite seemingly being on the verge of capturing several players in key positions a month ago, little progress sems to have been made since and the squad is lacking in key areas, again Adkins played a 4-3-3 formation with Rodriguez and Puncheon as wide players with a central three, but again there are questions whether playing a man who is essentially a striker wide left and Jason Puncheon and whether they have what it takes to play there week in week out in the premier.
But for some good play by Saints it was still the home side who went ahead ten minutes before the break leaving Saints behind at the half way mark.
In the second half Adkins made several changes which Davis apart looked more to be to give people a game, not least Jack Cork back from the Olympics, Saints made six changes in all over the course of the second half, but it was the final one that made the difference, Billy Sharp entering the fray with eight minutes left and deep into stoppage time knocking in an equaliser to show the manager what h does best.
The result doesnt matter, what matters is what the manager saw out there to cement in his mind his plans for the coming season, if he now feels that he has all the central defenders he needs and he truly has the wide players he wants to play the formation that he played at Ashton Gate, then our pre season friendlies are all going to plan, but I suspect, given the players we have been linked to and tried to sign like Alexandra Buttner for one, that the manager does not feel that his squad is complete and i feel that whatever he says publicly, in his own mind he will be more than slightly worried that with barely ten days left before the Premier season kicks off about the lack of incoming players in recent weeks.