I said on Friday I had a sneaking suspicion that we would win this one and luckily I was proved right, sadly I didnt put my money where my mouth was at the bookies.
Saints desperately needed to win this one, a look at this mornings league table shows how much trouble we would be in if we had lost, although we would still have been four points ahead of Wigan, their two games in hand would be crucial, however there is no need to contemplate that further now as we won and we won well.
Selecting a man of the match would be difficult, it would be easier to list those that didnt put in a performance of that standard, in my mind though the players that really did put in that extra % were Jack Cork, Adam Lallana & Jay Rodriguez.
Cork ran the centre of the midfield and I stand by my claim a few weeks ago that he will be the next Saints player to win an England cap and this performance in front of Roy Hodgson will do those chances no harm, Adam Lallana who has already made one England squad will have again boosted his chances, he ran at the Liverpool defence and probed.
A special mention for Jay Rodriguez, here is a player who is out of position, rather than as an out and out striker he has to do a lot of work out wide, but this performance really saw him start to come of age as a Saints player, his header down for the opener was sublime and straight out of the Rickie Lambert drawer and his goal and Saints third that killed off the game was again one that SL would have been proud of, he ran at the Liverpool defence and got his just rewards.
Running at Liverpool was perhaps where we did for them, too many times this season we have had plenty of pretty build up play but its lacked that cutting edge, there were those that would have preferred to see Jason Puncheon in ahead of Rodriguez but it seems that MoPo has seen what I have felt with Puncheon, at times he can be effective but too many times there is no end product, with Rodriguez it seems that the manager is giving him confidence to run at the opposition and thats paying dividencds.
But it wasnt just the forward play that shone, defensively we were in general tight and when we were breached Artur Boruc was in superb form, it wasnt just the vital saves he made, but the way he commanded his area confidently, earlier in the season there would be a lot of those ball into our box causing us trouble, but oruc handles everything in a calm manner.
The two full backs were outstanding, Shaw still lacks a few things in his game, but those things will come in time and he is now starting to have the confidence to get forward, when he makes runs he is fast, he still lacks the final ball, but he can learn that as his confidence grows.
Overall though this was about a great team performance and the manager made the right substitution at the right time, taking off Ramirez who was inneffective and bringing on Davis whose running and tidying up took the sting out of Liverpool's initial second half bluster.
Only strange thing was our bench, for a side playing at home, having two central defenders on it was strange as was the fact that there no forwards on it, and finally the last substitution when Guly came on was one for the conspiracy theorists, now I have been a defender of Guly, but 3-1 up with 5 minutes left, surely Puncheon who has been a regualr or even Ward-Prowse who is a player who can keep the ball would have been a better bet.
But thats only a minor aside, this was a great result that puts us over the 30 points barrier and leaves us with the finishing line in sight, one win and four draws should be enough or two wins and a single draw out of our final eight games, on paper it looks a simple task, but as we have seen in recent weeks although we have the basis of a good side, we are still short in some areas and we shouldnt count our chickens till they are hatched.