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Southampton At Stoke City The Verdict

It wasn't a pretty game to watch and it was scrappy at times, but the important thing was to keep moving forward and our first clean sheet of the season meant that Stuart Armstrong's stunning free kick was enough to take the points.

Saints remained unchanged from the side that beat Leeds on Saturday and although the home side had injury issues, it was never going to be a an easy task to make it two wins in a row as Stoke were full of confidence after a good win of their own at Bristol City.

This was going to be all about the end result, after our bad run of defeats, the performance in many respects was secondary, three points was all that mattered.

Chances in this game were few and far between, Gavin Bazunu apart from one minor hiccup in the first half when his attempted clearance was blocked was solid, but in general his handling and composure was good as was his distribution of the ball and this was the platform on which the side could build on.

Stoke buzzed around, but they were well marshalled by the back four, Taylor Harwood Bellis & Jan Bednarek again continued to build their partnership, indeed either was a candidate for man of the match.

Kyle Walker Peters was again superb, he is a player that can beat a man with ease and he did much of that as he marauded down the right flank, on the left Ryan Manning was digging in and making sure that he did his job.

Russell Martin's system has definitely adapted in the past few weeks, we are not having as much possession percentage wise as we were earlier in the season, but this is because we are getting the ball to the forwards quicker and creating chances.

Stoke had more efforts on goal, but they only had two on target, the second one being deep into injury time in the 2nd half when Gavin Bazunu made a fine save to seal the victory.

We had 4 attempts on target and the best of them was just before half time when Stuart Armstrong stepped up and delivered a free kick that James Ward Prowse would be proud of.

Stoke fans were not happy with the referee, they howled with derision when Stuart Armstrong was brought down on the edge of the box, but TV replays showed that Armstrong's shorts were being tugged by a Stoke player, so the free kick was correct.

The home fans though did have a point though when Jan Bednarek clumsily ran into one of their players in our box, I would have been upset if we had not been awarded one in a similar situation up the other end.

But overall this was a decent performance from Saints, it showed that they can go away from home and win ugly, by getting that elusive clean sheet they showed that the defence is now sorted out and the midfield is now functioning and not giving the ball away and leaving us liable to counter attacks.

This was a team effort, it was hard to pick out an individual who had an outstanding game, but the sum of it's parts meant that we put in a solid performance.

As I said if I had to pick a man of the match it would be from the back four who provided the foundations for the victory.

There may be some who won't be impressed by a scrappy 1-0 win, but it was not the performance that counted in this one it was solely the fact that we won and now have something solid to build on.

Russell Martin seems to have now got the squad he wants, knows the players he trusts and tweaked the system to suit those players, hopefully now we can move forward.

This win means that we will start the weekend only out of the top six on goal difference, that is our first small step, our second on Saturday, will to be in those play off spaces, then we can look upwards on the third step and that is no cut the gap between us and the top two.

There is no reason why this should not happen, we certainly have the squad, we now just need to find that we have the manager in place to do it.

I would say that he has done enough so far this week to show that he could be that man, it is still early days, but in the Championship getting promoted is often about coming up on the rails and building momentum as the season progresses, perhaps last night was not impressive in that it wasn't a 3-0 comprehensive victory, but come the end of the season a scrappy victory on a cold night in Stoke might well not only be seen as a turning point in the season, but the difference between being promoted or not.

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