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Saints V Leicester City The Verdict

It was a case of deja vu for Saints supporters as they saw a lot of good work undone by poor defending and a late goal.

There was a lot of mixed reactions after the defeat against Leicester City verging from blind ranting to measured considered comments, but whatever your own thoughts the general agreement was that we had seen this all before, a game thrown away be a few moments of madness and a late goal.

It all started so well though, Saints were lively in the first half with Shane Long linking up well and Schmeichel having to make a couple of smart saves to ensure that the game was level at half time. Players like Long and Nathan Redmond often the brunt of fans ire looked good and with most Leicester attacks dealt with efficiently the hope was that Saints were looking good.

Shortly after the break Saints were ahead a well worked move seeing a fortuitous slip opening up space for Ryan Bertrand to slam home a powerful shot to give us the lead.

At this point we should have held strong and built on this, but within 4 minutes Leicester were level and it was a soft goal straight out of the annals of last season, Cedric looked set to deal with a fairly standard cross but seemed to get caught in two minds whether to head it out or head it beyond a Leicester player and run on to it, in the end he did neither and sort of headed it straight up in the air.

It could have been one of several players who picked up the loose ball, but it was Gray who fired home under McCarthy and it has to be said that he should have done better.

But Saints picked themselves up and dusted themselves down and although Leicester's tails were up, it was still a winnable game for the home side, then came the game changing moment.

Hojbjerg had been booked in the first half by Referee Jon Moss for a fairly innocuous challenge and he would pay the price with 13 minutes remaining, in fairness Saints should have had two free kicks in the build up to the goal with Moss ignoring protests, but then Hojbjerg found himself taking on the last man.

At the time from afar it was hard to tell but TV replays confirmed that this was an awful dive, no excuses for it, but how many times have we seen no yellow cards for this type of defence, indeed if refs applied the letter of the law as Mr Moss did, then games would finish 8 a side.

But in truth the red card seemed to rally Saints and they dug in and looked to have earned a point up until the 2nd minute of injury time and once again it was all about failing to defend properly, the goal was another soft one from a similar position as the first and it really should have been blocked by a defender.

Bt it wasn't and once again it was a cruel blow for Saints.

But it's still only the third game of the season and overall the result aside we are playing a lot better than we were this time last year, we are attacking and creating chances and look a little bit more like the side we were a few years ago.

Yes there is a long way to go before we reach those levels, but we just need to cut out the mistakes and although perhaps we won't be challenging for Europe we will be comfortable.

The trick as always is to keep calm and let the manager sort things out, there was not a lot wrong with his team selection on Saturday and they seemed to have a motivation lacking in the first half in both of the opening games, but you cannot legislate for personal error and that needs to be sorted.

Hojbjergs dive was awful, but listening to some you would think he was the only person in the history of the club to have ever tried to win a penalty by falling over, Mick Channon is one of the greatest players to have played for the club but he had a certain reputation long before the arrival of the Klinsmann era 25 years ago when suddenly what was seen as an art performed only by Johnny Foreigner became prevalent in England.

So we have to dust ourselves off and go again, this was an entertaining game, it just didn't go our way, hopefully a few more will start to as the season goes on.

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