 Thursday, 24th Feb 2011 09:32 If Saints are going to get promoted a lot has to change. Saints missed a great chance to gain ground in the promotion race, but failed to beat Hartlepool in a lacklustre game. Saints fans who made the long trip to the north east were rewarded with a mediocre performance from a team that lacked leadership, guidance and to be frank spirit, although they were comfortable for most of the game and the home side rarely threatened, the plain truth is Saints looked like a side with no spark. But it was Saints who should have looked the fresher side, this was Hartlepool's Third home match in seven days, whereas Saints hadnt played in ten days, if one side should have been fit and raring to go it should have been us. But too often we failed to get the ball down and play, the back four are not good enough to pass their way out of trouble at times and too often we gave away silly free kicks in positions where they could have done us damage. But the main problem was our failure to really trouble Flinders in the hom goal, Rickie lambert had possibly his worst game for the club, he looked disinterested and failed to win any of the balls played into him. At times like these the manager earns his corn, but Nigel Adkins did nothing until the 75th minute and then it was the predictable shuffle around by taking off Chamberlain (in truth a wise choice) but then mixing it around pushing Guly back and playing Barnard alongside Lambert, but bluntly this was not enough there were at least three other moves he could have made, Schneiderlin for Hammond, N Guessan for Chamberlain and Barnard for Lambert were truly what he should have done, we could then have had a go at them in the final 20 minutes, instead what he did do was too little too later, when you have a re shuffle it takes a few minutes for everyone to find their feet and when you make that change so late it leaves little time to take effect. As I keep repeating, this squad should be walking the league, yet too often it is outplayed by sides like Hartlepool who are punching above their weight, but what they lack in quality they make up for in passion and discipline, sadly we had neither on Tuesday night and in truth are too often in that situation. Over the last six games Saints have now picked up only nine points and that quite frankly isnt good enough, but perhaps the more worrying figures are the scoring ones, in those games we have scored only seven times, four of which were at peterborough in one game and two of those penalties, in half of the six we have failed to score and to be blunt in all of that trio didnt look like scoring. The focus is now on tha manager, over the last month we have failed to capitalise on what was a decent run just after Xmas, on Tuesday night he failed to do something that changed the game, he looked a manager scared to deal with certain senior players for fear of upsetting them, both those players and the manager now need to start stepping up to the plate. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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