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Saints At Stoke City The Verdict
Monday, 20th Apr 2015 08:55

A very disappointing day at the office for Saints who really should have taken something back to St Mary's from this game and now again face playing catch up.

This was a game that Saints lost rather than Stoke City won, from the early stages of the game Saints took control and capped that off with a goal from Morgan Schneiderlin on 22 minutes to go into the break in front after a half where they had dominated and stood strong against a Stoke side who were their usual selves full of battle and niggly fouls.

But the referee allowed them to get away with it, the fouls given total was even on 17 yet Saints had four booking with the home side not receiving a single yellow card, I am not blaming that to our defeat, however it shows what Saints were up against and how well they did to keep their passing game going.

But things changed straight after the break, a chip from Nzonzi looked fairly innocuous, Kelvin Davis seemed to thing it was going over and although he covered it seemed content to let it go over, but he misjudged and the ball hit the bar and rebounded down with Diof reacting fastest to prod the ball home and the direction of the game had changed.

However the game was stll very much for Saints to win, although Stoke now had their tails up the truth was that Saints were comfortable and perhaps that was the issue we were comfortable but lacked that certain sense of urgency, that was perhaps best illustrated by the fact that we didn't bring on Shane Long and Eljero Elia till the 86th minute after Stoke had taken the lead, Ronald Koeman doesn't make many wrong decisions, but I did feel that we should have been looking to win the game earlier that that by bringing on certainly Shane Long rather than waiting till it was a desperate finish to try and save a point.

The reality is that any fleeting hopes of Champion League football are virtually gone and it is now going to be all about qualifying for the Europa league and that destiny will become clearer after the Spurs game on Saturday.

Overall in this game Saints did not play badly, we just lacked a spark .

Photo: Action Images



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Jesus_02 added 10:01 - Apr 20
Gutted for Shane Long, he must be wondering what he needs to do to get a game.
2

SaintBrock added 10:34 - Apr 20
Totally agree at least he never gives up and on Saturday his running in behind would have turned their defence. Much as I like JWP he is not the right player to bring on when we are trying to find a way of breaking through opposition back lines. Stoke is just the sort of team like Leicester and QPR that Shane would be effective in.
1

SonicBoom added 11:28 - Apr 20
Yep Long should have been on way before he was. I never understand putting someone on with a few minutes to go if you are chasing the game. It smacks of just hoping they will get lucky.
Also seriously WTF was Davis doing. This is why he was dropped in the first place because yes he makes several confident saves but it's always been in his locker to make a stupid error which invariably costs us a goal. I know people will say he's a great pro and he is, and we are lucky to have a keeper happy to sit on the bench etc etc but I firmly believe that giving away such a soft goal knocked the stuffing out of us on Saturday. If he hadn't done that I couldn't see Stoke scoring. Who knows how costly that is going to be. We must sort out the keeper situation properly this summer.
4

saintsnutcase added 11:33 - Apr 20
I am really sorry to say this, but Kelvin should have done better with both goals. I think he is a wonderful keeper at lower levels, and has been a fantastic Saints player, but we needed a better no 2 keeper in the Prem.
3

schatfield added 13:18 - Apr 20
Kelvin was awful! How come you didnt note he was largely at fault for both of those goals in the game...
well, at least it shows we need to hire another keeper come summer.
2

SanMarco added 13:26 - Apr 20
I agree schatfield and saintsnutcase - The Forster injury was always going to cost us points because if Kelvin was good enough at this level he would have played regularly at this level. He is not and I suspect it may cost us more before the season is out.

I do wonder at our seeming lack of urgency in the last few games - "We just lacked spark" is not the phrase that should end a report on a game of this importance.

That siad we were unlucky not to get at least a draw and I can't believe some of the negative comment I have been reading on the Echo website over the past couple of days. It has been a great season and I just hope we can finish on a high note by winning next week and then a couple more to get at least 6th.
1

DPeps added 14:31 - Apr 20
I won't repeat the sensible points already made above. A couple of things stand out to me as being most disappointing:
1.) why did Stoke seem more up for it? We've got important things to play for this season, they haven't. I love Koeman but I wonder if he's capable if putting a rocket up some of our players on occasion. Same applies to Fonte.
2.) we've been so good at holding on to leads this season, so disappointing to be overturned by Stoke (no disrespect intended -I actually think we could do with a more 'Stoke' mentality.
If we beat Spurs all this will be forgotten...
0

davepid added 20:35 - Apr 20
Before we rush to criticise Kelvin - and his error for the first goal was embarrassing - he did make 2/3 superb saves against Burnely which kept us in the game.
-2

IanRC added 22:52 - Apr 20
Above comments are valid but what is it that Clattenberg has against us now Lallana has gone. Only gave yellow cards to one team, failed to give a penalty when Mane was bundled over early on and failed to over rule a very poor offside decision by the lineman when Mane was clear through after a superbly timed run.

Good to hear Morgan refusing to concede on CL although it is clearly going to be very much uphill from here.
1


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