Saints V Leicester City The Verdict

It was a case of Puel Harbour for Saints as Leicester's Shinji Okazaki lead the way for the Foxes who caught Saints out and destroyed them clinically.

I said after the Arsenal game that the manager had made some strange decision n his selections and then showed no leadership in the final quarter of the game leaving his players to run themselves into the ground and it seems that in doing so he destroyed a team spirit built up after the last four games and Saints looked a tired, leaderless and shell of the side they have been in the previous four games.

This was a return to the performance at Liverpool, after that I felt the players had stopped playing for their manager, since then they turned things round, but ultimately that could only take us so far, I hoped that it was a little more than just professional pride carrying us through, but now it seems it wasn't and the managers determination to always try to be a little bit too clever and a refusal to stick with a winning combination again cost us dearly.

Lemina was back in the starting line up but appeared to be a shadow of the player he was a month ago, Wesley Hoedt was nowhere to be seen and given that the manager had reported a clean bill of health going into this game you have to consider whether Hoedt has had enough of his treatment at the hands of Pellegrino.

So this team selection again lacked a sense of consistency, no place for Pierre Emile Hojbjerg who was arguably man of the match on Sunday and did not get on to the pitch tonight.

Poor substitutions again from Pellegrino who did little to inspire, but worryingly he did little to protect those who needed nursing with a hard programme coming up,Charlie Austin did 90 minutes something his attitude deserved but with the game well out of reach after a brief fightback, he should have been rested with 20 to go, as should perhaps Cedric Soares, back after a couple of weeks out there was no point in risking him tweaking a hamstring again by leaving him on in a game that was dead.

Hard to see a way back for Pellegrino after this performance, he seems to have a team that is not playing for him and he is not leading and after this debacle he has lost the fans in a way that ironically even the man on the opposite bench never did, at the final whistle there was barely 5,000 Saints fans left in the ground, the exodus had started long before that.

Something has to change at St Mary's the supporters need something to inspire them, the team need something to inspire them, I don't think it is Mauricio Pellegrino

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