A considered opinion on Saturday's game.
This week's Verdict is a little late, the reason why is that rather than indulge in a few knee jerk reactions, I decided to let the dust settle and try and look at the defeat with a little objectivity.
The first observation is that this game followed the same pattern as have the last few games that Saints have played and that has been that Saints have sometimes defended at crucial moments and sometimes havent, in the past two games they havent and have paid the price.
I have also said in the past that Jan Poortvliet is learning with his players as he goes along, the problem is that with some problems he has little options and in other he has made the wrong decisions.
His biggest problem is that we cant defend from set pieces, the entire back four and goalkeeper have to carry the can here, Kelvin Davis has been in fine form and indeed did make a couple of great saves on Saturday, but what cost us the game was that balls were hurled from throw ins and chipped in from corners into the six yard box and neither the keeper of defenders were big strong and defended it, here Poortvliet is stumped, we have no height for him to choose from.
Lancashire to be blunt isnt good enough, he might be in the future, but at this moment in time he isnt and he isnt being helped by those around him being found wanting as well.
But if the defence is an area where Poortvliet is stuck for options heightwise and cant be blamed for the problems we are having then that cant be said for other areas of the team, David McGoldrick for example, McGoldrick is not a midfield player and his body language is saying that here is a man who is not happy in the position and is sulking, the fans are picking up on this and asking if they can see this then why cant the manager.
McGoldrick should have been hauled off in the second half, but wasnt, promptiing many to ask just what has he got to do to be taken off, Poortvliet has many option in midfield, but it seems that McGoldrick aside, the luxury of choice isnt one that he is able to be decisive with.
Going forward, to be honest we are probably one of the best teams in the division, we create a lot of chances, even on Saturday we had double those that Watford themselves have, but we do lack a cutting edge, we are not putting enough of them away.
In our current predicament Saturday will be a typical game, some of them we will win some we lose, a couple of weeks ago i said the same thing and like everything in life making mistakes isnt the problem, its how you react to those mistakes.
On Saturday it was obvious to all what the problem is, its quite simple, a big strong experienced central defender and a couple of full backs who are fast, strong and experienced, the hard thing though is that to rectify the problem we have to spend money, money we havent got, so we as fans have two choices we either abandon the team and club to its fate, or we get behind it.