Saints had the chance to really press home their advantage at the top, but once again they couldnt win on the road.

Promotion as we found last season is built not only on a great home record but the ability to keep clean sheets and take your chances when they come in the away games, sadly after two great wins in the first weeks of the season on the road, Saints have failed to register a third away win, its not that they have played badly, its just been that they cant keep a clean sheet and they have wasted too many chances.

I can already hear the indignant howls that we are top of the league etc etc, but if we are to stay top then we cant keep relying on winning at home.

Ironically this was probably our worst performance of the lot made worse by a sending off, yet we still managed to get a point and that perhaps is a good thing to come out of a day that on the field at least was a bad day at the office.

Its a real worry when you have a team where so many players are having off days, although just at it looked like we might have ridden the storm and where starting to impose ourselves on the game, came the goal quickly followed by the sending off and things looked dire.

People say I dont give Kelvin enough credit, on Saturday he was superb and he did his job well meaning that we were still in the game to be able to drag something out of it at the death and turn defeat into a point, under normal circumstances this would be a good point well earned in difficult circumstances, the problem is though coming off the back of a four match run that had seen us gain only two points, in the wider picture it was a game that we really needed to get three points out of.

Individually perhaps the biggest worry was the form of Jose Fonte, once again he was out of sorts beeing needlessly booked for hanball after he totally mistimed the flight of the ball and his jump.

Steve De Ridder of course was the late hero, I like De Ridder but I do think that he is an impact player best used off the bench in the final twenty minutes rahter than a player who will give you 90 minutes, on Saturdat thats what we needed him to do, make an impact and he showed that he is the man for the job.

It was a bad day at the office, but there were some plus points, we still didnt lose the game for one when we really should have, the team spirit that dragged us back from the brink of a defeat for two and certain players showed that they can step up to the plate when needed.

Lets not get complacent, we do need to start winning away from home now, some will point to the fact that this five game run did include difficult trips to Reading, Derby, Leicester & Cardiff, all promotion rivals, I can accept that to a degree, but the next four away games are all at teams in the bottom half, that excuse is now redundant.

With that in mind I dont want to dwell on this game too much, in the short term it was another game unbeaten, in the bigger picture it might actually be seen as a good point, if and only if, we return a decent number of wins in the upcoming away fixtures between now and Xmas, perhaps we didnt expect to be top of the league with almost a third of the season gone and I read a lot of posts on this site telling me that I should just enjoy it after all we thought tenth would be a good place, I say maybe we didnt expect it, but now having found ourselves in this position, we have a great opportunity, lets seize it with both hands.                

Photo: Action Images

schatfield added 17:28 - Oct 23 I have to say, we did good to get a point here. We could have folded after going 1-0 down and a man sent off, but we came back and got a good draw, despite not playing that well for the whole match. Am happy with that result.
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hortonsaint added 19:07 - Oct 23 Incredibly I agree with everything in your report for once! Re Fonte he is struggling badly, I did disagree that this was down to his partership with Hoooiveld as suggested by you. Whether this was the root of his form I don't know but he is definitely out of sorts and making bad decisions and errors. I feel 2 yrs in Div 1 didn't do him any favours where it was too easy for him and he is seriously struggling with quicker and stronger opponents now. Re away form yes it needs to be addressed but we now hit a run of winnable away games and if after those it remains an issue I'll be concenred. For now I'm going to say the games have been difficult and the positive is that we've salvaged points from losing positions. But yes long term it must improve

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andywelsh added 19:10 - Oct 23 What impressed me about yesterday is that we didn't lose. 18 months ago I think we would have lost that game. Even when we went behind and had Hammond sent off, I was not despondent, in fact I was cautiously optimistic. The team has a belief in themselves these days which has been nurtured by Nigel over the last year. He talks about a winning mentality, yesterday it was a not losing one. We didn't play well, but we didn't lose and have picked up 5 points from three difficult games without Lallana. Sure it now increases pressure to maintain the home form against Middlesborough, but nobody thought this was going to be an easy league and thus far I'm pretty impressed with how we've handled it.

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rjh added 20:09 - Oct 23 If we are to go up we need to start winning away, this is not a brilliant league and this season will be our best chance. I do not think we can sustain winning every single game at home as our safety net. It is only because it is a weak league that we are still top given our poor away record and that Boro are still second following a poor run. On another note - Davis is class - best keeper in this league by a mile.

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tell101 added 20:20 - Oct 23 Fonte is looking shakey, could be the partner change or a loss of confidence. However lets not rule him out, im confident that he will come through this sticky patch. The problem with the Reading game was that they played us with the same sort of tactics that Millwall did. They closed down fast and generally didnt give us enough time on the ball to play our normal flowing football. We are now in the spotlight and should expect more teams to do their homework on how best to play us. As of yet we havent got much of a counter to this. I thought we didnt make enough telling runs or movement off the ball. Many times we all stood around waiting. We need to get quicker at the pass and move bit to nullify this sort of tactic. However you cant fault the teams desire and not losing when you have a bad game is the mark of a team to watch. COYR

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Kiwifiedpom1 added 21:11 - Oct 23 I think a degree of complacency IS creeping into the side. The Reading game is an example as when Hammond was sent off, the remainder buckled down,upped their game and we scored the equaliser. While happy to take a point I am unhappy and disatisfied that we didn't win.
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SaintNick added 21:33 - Oct 23 I think Fonte will recover his form, as they say, form is permanent class is temporary. I also agree we upped our game and I also thought we would get an equaliser, but there is something creeping into our away form thats hard to pinpoint, we are hard to beat but we cant seem to make that step and turn draws into wins
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LostBoys added 04:44 - Oct 24 I agree with all this. While we were so dire to deserve anything from the game there were enough chances at the end for us to win easily - Martin (another header in the 6 yard box missed by us) Chaplow and Fox could have scored and the whole south stand screamed at the en dfor De Ridder to square to Chaplow who was free. The same could be applied at Derby. I am obviously very pleased where we are but we have dropped a lot of points away this season.

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StSaint added 09:13 - Oct 24 Saturday was a point won, and a good one at that. If Reading keep playing like that then they will shoot up the league. Having played so badly and still come away with something is an example of how Adkins has turned us around. As another poster mentioned, we wouldn't have taken anything 18 months ago. Particularly when you consider our best player this season (Lallana) was not playing. He can make a big difference. Hopefully Fonte will turn it round - he didn't start last season particularly well, so fingers crossed he comes good again. Overall I think we are looking a lot more solid at the back than a few weeks back. The difficulty we have at the moment is a lack of pace up front. As a result, team like Reading can squeeze up at the back, in the knowledge that we can't hurt them with a ball over the top. I imagine we will sign someone nippy in January which will give us a whole new dimension. If we can stay in the hunt until then (which I am confident we will), then we should kick on.

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geezershoong added 10:17 - Oct 24 I think it's harsh to say we were 'dire', we didn't play anyway near our best but this could be put down in part to the fact that McDermott is no mug & obviously did his homework, closing our players down quickly & not giving them a chance to play the passing game. It's somewhat gratifying to see that even with 10 men & without the magical Adam Lallana we dug out a result & I was even optimistic that we would. It took character to get a result in the end. Fonte, luckiest man alive after the hand ball & being the last man!

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SalisburySaint added 11:22 - Oct 24 On saturday we achieved what all good teams do, getting a point despite playing poorly What was good to see was the team spirit when not only going 1-0 down, but also after losing Hammond, many Saints teams of the past would have given up at that point but the current team has more about it and kept going until the end. Onw thing I feel people should acknowledge is that opposing temas are doing their homework on Saints and finding ways to stop us playing. This has been particularly noticable away from homes were Burnley, Cardiff and Reading all stopped our midifled palying and put pressure on our centre halves by not not giving us time to dwelll on the ball. I don't think it just Saints not playing well , credit should be given to the opposing teams who have managed to stop us playing. Despite this we are still picking up points away from home, but I feel we need to mix things up a bit more with our style of play or formations and personel away from home, as teams closing us down well in midfield is stopping us playing at the moment.

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bstokesaint added 12:35 - Oct 24 A point at Reading is a good point. They are no mugs at home and would have been relishing the opportunity to have a go at us. Both teams had a chance to win it and despite Fonte's current lack of form I'd rather he'd have had that header than Martin - he would have converted. As you say Nick the next run of away games should yield some points and I think they will. I don't think Kelvin gets enough praise as a keeper from a lot of Saints' fans, he is a top pro. I think de Ridder will only get better too. He has a lot of talent, more than a sub's worth. On another note RJH are you seriously calling this league a "weak league"? Just take a look at the teams at the top of the table and tell me how many of them are ex Premiership? Leicester have spent a fortune and can't even get in the top 10, and look at some of the other ex Permiership sides in the bottom half. This is a very strong league and we're at the top on merit. The only reason other clubs haven't taken advantage of our away form is because away points aren't easy to get. I predict we'll sort things out at Coventry, but need to get back to business against Middlesbrough first. I've no idea what team will face Palace tomorrow, but it won't be an easy game.

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rjh added 19:10 - Oct 24 If we can get six points against Boro and Coventry then I will take it all back. I am just amazed teams are where they are given poor runs of results.
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