It does strike me that the old achilles heel is still there.........losing to the lower/bottom placed sides. (Walsall was it last year and a couple of others) At the end of the day these defeats can be positive if the mental attitude is right. It just means they have to do better next time and they will.
It was obvious before the game that Bristol City were in a false position which they are now correcting, so we played a team in form. We've shown previously that we are not invincible because our strength is in scoring rather than in keeping a clean sheet. Our style of play will always result in some dropped points. Shows how important our home form is to us. Shows how one poor result changes everything around us..apart from West Ham and Cardiff most other results were okay for us. Most concerned about Cardiff..5 points is good but would like a bigger gap between us and third. Roll on the Hull match.
I had hoped that even if the team weren't on form at least the fans would be. Throwing a bottle is petulant and just not Saintly.
Beddy Want to try to add to level headed contribution to this thread. I think your remark is spot on - there are "lower" teams who we should anticipate being able to beat but against whom we always seem to come unstuck. This always seems to have been a problem for the Saints for as long as i have been a fan. Hopefully yesterday was a blip but I think that as the season progresses, the differences between the top teams will average out. I expect the finish to go to the wire in May. The only team I feel will be a "shoe in" for promotion is West Ham - simply because they have the most talented squad in this league. There is probably not a great deal of difference between the other teams in the top six and ,as was shown yesterday, there are only a few really poor teams in this league. Even teams outside the play-off positions are well-placed to push for an automatic place with a run of decent results. I think the Championship will offer a myriad of different permutations as the season progresses and I don't doubt that there will be periods when we will find ourselves slipping out of the automatic places. This is an extremely tough league and this season it is evident just how high the standard is - perhpas more than at any time within the last 5-10 years. Even Forest are just scraping above the relegation zone. What has been achieved to date at St. Mary's this season is staggering but it is premature to think that we can maintain this type of dominance especially with teams like Leicester and Birmingham being very likely to pose a threat.
I agree there, it's a problem that Saints have had for years, even in the Prem: do well against top sides but slip up against the lower-placed ones. Is it complacency i.e. ''It's only [insert team name here] we only have to turn up to claim the three points"? It's an attitude that some fans have but one I hope that Nigel would squash if the team display it. I think Saints will be a lot better on Tuesday.
After losing games that we really shouldn't have done against Walsall and Rochdale (away), we went on amazing runs of form. In many ways it's the jolt back to Earth that the team needs.
