Southampton At Bristol City The Verdict
Saints unbeaten run ended with a whimper at Ashton Gate last night, but it had to end sometime and now we lick our wounds and start the next one.
It was a strange feeling and one that we have forgotten as we collapsed in the second half agaianst a Bristol City side that quite frankly played with a lot more energy than we had and wanted it far more.
Russell Martin made the changes that he really should have done on Saturday, Bristol City was always going to be a harder game than Huddersfield, but we got the team selection the wrong way round.
City started the livelier of the two sides, but Saints settled in as the game went on and you thought that in the second half we could put our foot on the accelerator.
It looked that was as Saints started well after the break on came Stuart Armstrong and we could have scored not once but twice in the early exchanges, but then came a shock as City played a quick one two on our left and the ball was crossed for Bell who smashed it home.
But surely this was nothing to panic about, there were still nearly 40 minutes left to get back into the game.
But City had the bit between their teeth and weren’t going to give up easily, Mara and Fraser came on after 62 minutes and we hunted for the equaliser, but the next goal would again fall to the home side, a simple goal where City hit a corner to the back post and to be blunt we didn’t mark our man and it was headed home, still no need to panic after all we were two goals down on Saturday and came back.
But it would be 3 goals conceded for the second game in a row as City sealed the game with 8 minutes left, the unbeaten run was now only minutes from ending and the Adam Armstrong penalty in virtually the last minute of injury time was merely a consolation on the night.
But we should not dwell on this defeat, it had to come sometime, what is done is done, Saints have not become a bad side over night, it was just a bad day at the office.
We now have to put this defeat behind us and move forward again, use this to spur us on, certainly in the last two games of the run we have looked like the run is weighing heavily on our shoulders, it was putting pressure on us to keep it up, now we can take that away and concentrate on the man goal and that is promotion.
Russell Martin will hopefully have learn’t a lesson or two from last night and we can use it to our advantage at West Brom on Friday, the past can’t be changed but the future is unwritten.
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