Saints V Aston Villa The Verdict

Sometimes what seems a poor result actually is a turning point in a teams fortunes and that will hopefully be the case for this one.

Saints didn't play badly, they were just unable to break down a resolute Aston Villa side who spent most of the match pegged back in their own final third. The fact that Saints had 64% possession and 23 attempts on goal tells a story, but the fact that only 5 of those attempts was on target tells another. In contrast Villa only had 2 on target, one of which went in.

Saints could easily have been three up inside the first 20 minutes but were not clinical enough in front of goal and that gave Villa impetus to dig in and fight.

On the stroke of half time disaster struck, you could feel it wasn't Saints day with the lead up to Villa's goal, firstly Jose Fonte gave the ball away cheaply, Van Dijk looked to have rescued the situation and his block seemed to be going out for a throw, but it had a spin on it and it went for a corner, from that corner the ball seemed to be missed by everyone bar Lescott at the far post who put it in the net to stun the home crowd.

Second half Saints went at Villa but seemed to have little ingenuity in the final third, they got down the line enough times, but Guzan was superb in coming and catching crosses that on another day he might have left to his defenders.

The game changed through fate and that slice of luck perhaps suggests that Saints might have turned a corner, just after the hour Wanyama went of injured and on came Romeu, he seemed to add a little bit of urgency to Saints going forward and he seemed quicker that Wanyama in getting the ball forward and that helped us get Villa on the back foot.

Ironically the Saints equaliser was almost a carbon copy of the Villa goal, a corner fro the same side was allowed to travel to the far post and Romeu was there to put it in.

It was backs against the wall for Villa now, but Saints huffed and puffed but could not really seem to find a way through a stout Villa back four marshalled by Guzan ho commanded his box.

So as a result a draw was disappointing, we really should have won this well, but given Saints recent run of three straight defeats, any result is better than none and from that point of view, sometimes breaking a bad run is more important than winning, it will give us a mental boost and more confidence going into the game at Palace next week.

So from that viewpoint we should not be too despondent, we have broken the run, we now just need to recapture the form that had taken us up the table a few weeks ago, we are a better side than the last four games have shown, we do not need to panic, we just need to get back to winning ways.

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