Yeah credit to Hull for the second half performance, showed you have something about yourselves there.
Well, I don't see Hull going down. We were sensational first half, but they have a lot of fight about them and demonstrated some good play. All the best for the rest of the season.
Agreed, thought Hull were the better team in general play in the second half and we went off the boil a bit as we did against Fulham, but they were/are much better than them so made harder work of it for us and confounded our problem. But realistically they only troubled the goal twice, with the clearance off the line late in the first and then the goal from Vic's blunder, whilst in the second half we still had 4/5 very good chances for goals notching one of them, so doesn't sour it really (Apart from putting a needless blotch on our lovely defensive record ). I think someone said earlier in the thread that Vic's little misdemeanours on the ball were always going to cost us at some stage and think that's quite right at this stage in his career, I think people sometimes forget because of his big reputation coming from his CL performances that he's still only a 22 year old making a huge step-up to the Premier League. He might never blossom into the most technically gifted player, but he has plenty of time to mature and iron out those little careless moments from his game, and as you say, best he got it out the way when we had a nice cushion rather than at the Emirates or Stamford Bridge!
Ta. Credit to Hull City for their second half performance. They had a go, but left themselves thin at the back, hence the 4-1. And just to set the record straight, one or two of us said that Tom Huddlestone would join Fellaini in Victor's back pocket. Well it didn't quite turn out that way. I thought Huddlestone played quite well and Victor never quite won the battle with him. A good contest.
Have to credit Hull for the effort they put in today. First half from Saints was majestic, not much they could do. Second half they started to press us a little bit and evened things up. But aside from the Wanyama mistake, Saints were solid. I think after the first half, it was easy to panic because we looked worse. But the defense held up as it always does. Can't expect to waltz around scoring 3 goals a half all the time. There was about 30 seconds there where I got a tiny bit nervous, but that's about it. Good takeaways for me (aside from the obvious): Good to see Cork get some time, and he looked good. I thought Wanyama looked very sharp. Shaw continues to improve and got forward on a bunch of occasions. JWP had at least two good defensive plays. Wanyama was just an idiot on that ball. It's true Boruc could have just thrown to the fullback instead of playing into the center to a guy with his back to the opposition. But the thing was that Wanyama had plenty of time to play the ball, he just let it run by him to turn on it. If you don't know where the other team is, why expect that you'll be give yards of space in the middle of the pitch? He shouldn't need Boruc to tell him to play it to the flanks. Oh well. We'll see if Cork gets a run in the side now. I always thought those two should be splitting time anyway. And secretly, I was kind of glad it happened. Thought it was a good wake-up call, and the way that Hull fought until the end will toughen the team up for the rest of the season and especially going into the next two fixture. A little grounding isn't a bad thing.
For me Huddlestone was well off the pace today. Really struggled with the high tempo game. The less said about Wanyama the better...
Congrats lads, you played well on the whole. We couldn't deal with you first half and grew into the game a little. But the damage was already done. We didn't turn up today and you made us pay. I'd like to see you break the one of the Euro places this year!
Well played Saints, up to third now The one good thing about our fixtures is that all our aways have been to top half teams, so i'm still feeling positive for the rest of the season. Good luck for the rest of the season except at ours of course
From my calculations, if Saints beat Arsenal 2-0 at the Emirates, and Liverpool fail to beat Everton - we go top*. * - so long as Arsenal lose at Old Trafford tomorrow.
Thought Wanyama did a good job against Huddlestone. There were maybe a couple of holes in the rest of his game, though!
At the beginning of the season who would have seen us only one point off second after 11 games and only Arsenal pulling away a tad (if they win tomorrow and that isn't certain by any means).
Ha..! Claridge has just told his aeroplane story on Final Score, about a Saints fan betting that the team would be top of the league at Christmas. They giggled and Garth Crooks exclaimed.. It might happen..!
What a goal from Lallana though - a great performance capped by a superb goal. Looking forward to seeing it again later.
