Saints got a lesson in finishing as Chelsea eventually cruised to victory as Saints run of poor form continues and starts to become worrying.
Recent results are starting to ask one big question and that is " Has our style of play been found out ?"
Earlier in the season our high tempo pressing game earned us much plaudits and caught some teams on the hop, but now most games tend to follow a familiar pattern, we enjoy the lions share of possession, the opposition sit back and watch us pass it around on the half way line, then they strike.
The fixture against Chelsea was no different to the last month or so in that we had 54% of the ball and we had 12 attempts on goal but with only 2 on target and the result was the same as it has been in 6 of the last 9 games, study the stats from all of those games and a familiar pattern starts to emerge and its not encouraging.
Of course meeting an in form Chjelsea side as they start to get into gear isnt what you want as you seek to start to get your own act into gear, but we beat them last year so we should have been capable this.
But perhaps the most worrying aspect of this defeat was that some of our key players did not look at their best and appeared jaded, Lovren, Shaw & Schneiderlin in particular did not look the players they were a month or so ago, in Shaw's case he didnt re appear after the break and it could be he was affected by injury, however it wasnt just that, people tend to forget how young he is, players of that age need to be taken out of the firing line every now and then and Shaw hasnt had that chance, it is perhaps no co incidence that he seems to pick up niggling injuries on a regular basis.
Saints tried hard against the Blues and for periods in the first half it looked like they might take the lead, certainly at half time the home side were good for the 0-0 score line and their supporters had high hopes for the second.
But astute substitutions change matches, Chelsea made two shortly after the break and within 7 minutes of those changes were ahead, ironically Saints were about to make a change of their own as Chelsea took the lead with surprisingly Jack Cork being taken off despite being in my opinion (and that of the player ratings on this site) the best Saints player and on came Lambert.
But Lambert ran on not to try and win the game as Pochettino had hoped, but to try and save it, Torres had just given the visitors the lead having reacted quickly as a deflected cross/shot beat Kelvin Davis and came back off the post.
But after this goal there would be no comeback, Chelsea scored again ten minutes later and their would be no late flurry from Saints who now looked disjointed and more worryingly lacking not only confidence but spirit and fight in themselves.
The third goal was not unexpected and started a mass exodus of Saints supporters.
So where has it all gone wrong for Saints, well as mentioned at the start of the article our way of playing has been found out, too many teams know that if they sit back and let us pass it in areas that arent dangerous to them they can eventually get possession and hit us on the break and unfortunately in this respect we are making far too many errors.
We have to be able to adapt when teams do that and also change tactic and surprise them, unfortunately at the moment we dont seem able to do that, hence we have a string of games where we enjoy well over 50% of the play, have a lot of shots, although most of these are from distance and dont trouble the keeper, but dodnt win games.
It is not a crisis at the moment, although 5 points out of the last 9 games is in no way shape of form good and it cannot be denied that we have had a tough run of games, however we are fast reaching a point where we either start to win games again or we start to slip down the table very fast.
In January we have two crucial games the first at home to West Brom and then away to Sunderland, failure to win at least one of those games could see us looking over our shoulder a little, win both and we can start to think of tenth place again.
What the last six weeks has told us though is that we are still a long way from our stated aim of challenging for the Champions League, that is was folly that we could jump from where we were at last season to that in one huge leap, we now have to sit back re group, lick our wounds and look to the next fixtures to start the fight back.
In a week or two Mauricio Pochettino will have been in charge of Saints for a year, then he took over a side who sat 15th in the table with 22 points from 22 games, at the moment his record reads 36 games played and 46 points, what this tells us is that at the moment we are on course for a top ten finish, however we should be mindful that at the moment we are on a downward slope, what happens in these next two games will go a long way to deciding whether Mauricio Pochettino will keep the fans on side or whether they will get on his back, after the Sunderland game it will be his first anniversary and he will have effectively managed for 38 games, whatever happens he will still have a decent points per game average, but these two games will go a long way to deciding how the second half of the season pans out.