It was a good win, but is it a case of too little too late

Saints crushed Walsall and if they hadnt taken their foot off the gas in the final half hour they could of got a lot more.

Although Walsall shocked the home crowwd by scoring with a smartly taken free kick after only 3 minutes, from then on in it was virtually one way trafffic and once Jason Puncheon had brought the scores level five minutes later the result was never in doubt.

Plus points were the poaching power of Lee Barnard who drew level on league goals for the season with Rickie Lambert before the Saints number 7 netted himself to edge himself back in front in the SMS scoring stakes.

As Saints cruised to victory Alan Pardew made a strange substitution, with a lot of games coming up the manager chose not to rest Rickie Lambert for the final half hour, but Lee Barnard who not only had out shone Lambert, but would surely have been confident of netting his third for a hat trick.

Barnard went off  to a standing ovation from the crowd, but most would have agreed, that for several reasons it should have been his strike partner taking a break.

Other than that Saints looked slick and confident, ramming home the fact that the reason they have dropped out of the promotion chase, is not because of quality of the squad, but for other reasons, how can a side play so badly in midweek, yet so well four days later, it is not just the state of the pitch, after all as we hear so many times, a visit to St Mary's is the oppositions cup final and they raise their game, Walsall had no such chance to do so, they were put to the sword from the kick off, so why werent Wycombe tackled with such confidence on Tuesday.

Saints supporters went away from the ground with a smile on their faces, they had seen a good game with plenty of goals, promotion is a tall order now and their is a feeling that the cup run has cost Saints in the facct that they have played so few home games, if they had played these games when scheduled and won, then peerhaps the gap would have closed enough to enable the manager to have focused the players on winning the away games. 

Photo: Action Images

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