Saints At Cardiff The Verdict
It was defeat for Ralph Hasenhuttl in his first game in charge but that is not the end of the world and there is enough optimism that we can pull through over the next six months.
It was not an easy first game for our new manager, firstly he was missing arguably our three most impressive strikers this season in Ings, Obafemi& Long, leaving him little options up front.
Then he was missing both of the first choice full backs in Cedric & Bertrand so it was a very weakened team that he put out in key areas.
In short just about everyone who was fit was then on the bench meaning that we had three central defenders, that tells you something about our problems.
Cardiff huffed and puffed as you would have expected them to do, but apart from the last 25 minutes or so of the first half in the main Saints looked comfortable, but the problem was after conceding yet another goal from a defensive error it was always going to be difficult, you just knew that when the chips are down they are down and as the game entered the final 15 minutes and with us starting to dominate play, we shot ourselves in the foot with Vestergaard under hitting what looked a simple back pass.
We had our chances and replays on TV showed we should have had two penalties but ultimately we were toothless up front and that was not the managers fault, this was not to be our day but there is now hope going forward, it's going to be tough but as our new manager said, we all need to get be kicking in the right direction there are no guarantees in football.
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