Saints gave themselves no leeway against Luton Town

A big crowd at St Mary's saw a funny sort of game, in certain respects Saints looked comfortable and dominated, but in others they allowed Luton to look menacing at times.

First real shock was that Alan Pardew chose to put Kelvin Davis back in goal, whether this was just an opportunity to give Davis a comeback game and test his injury or whether Bart Bialkowski was dropped will be found out next week.

In other areas it was pretty much a full strength side apart from the injured Jaidi and Connolly.

In the first half Saints looked quite comfortable and good value for the 1-0 lead from a stunning Lambert free kick, but in the second Luton saw the weak link and went for it, luckily they werent good enough to really exploit it.

The real problem is a lack of pace at the back, especially at left back spot, time and time again Luton rampaged down that side, nothing elaborate just head down and go for the byeline, Dan Harding was left dead by pace orr caught out of position far too many times than he should have been and indeed Luton should really have scored and would have if it hadn't been for one of the worst misses seen at St Mary's ever.

Going forward you wonder just what AP sees in Antonio, in truth he did exactly what Luton were doing at the opposite end, however whereas they were able to rip our left back to shreds, Antonio rarely managed to get past his man and when he did the delivery was poor, this wasnt an off game though, since Bristol Rovers away in the first round of this competition, he has played poorly and Paterson showed when he came on that he is a better bet and his developement is being held up.

Antonio does have a part to play, however its perhaps as a sub, when he can come on with fresh legs and run at a full back, but unless he is used in that role its hard to see why we should keep him, Gobern and Paterson offer much much more.

Another surprising substitution was bringing on Oliver Lancashire in the as injury time beckoned, the game was still in the balance yet we brought on a  player who hasnt been at the club for four months when we had in Paul Wotton a player who can play exactly the holding role that Lancashire was asked to play for the final minutes, given that Lancashire was out on lloan for a reason, that reason being he isnt good enough, just what was the point of putting him on.

One thing that concerns me about Pardew is that he tends to change things round for the sake of being different in several positions at times whether or not a player has played well or not, hence Wotton found himself back on the bench after several good games when Murty returned and James had to be shoehorned into midfield and the way Antonio has been continually preferred to Waigo even after Waigo has produced the goods IE Norwich City etc.  

But at the end of the day in the context of this game, all that matters is that we are in the 4th round draw on Sunday afternoon    

Photo: Action Images via Reuters