Thought Dyer was going to pick our pockets when he came on.......Oh hang on, maybe he did at half-time?
On the day Rickie Lambert scores to secure Southampton's best ever season, his old club Bristol Rovers are relegated from the Football League.
Is it NBC hiring these guys, though? I thought that NBC really only has Arlo White, Lee Dixon, and Graeme LeSaux as commentators, plus Rebecca Lowe and whoever else in the studio. Those guys do the lead game every week. For all the other games, I thought they're just taking feeds from other broadcasts.
Utterly boring second half, especially after Lallana came off - who I expect we are protecting for the world cup. Playing 5 CMs was never going to be exciting and we just kept the ball in the middle third and barely threatened. Personally feel the Schneiderlin-Wanyama-Cork experiment failed - not enough attacking movement and I didn't feel any of them played to their full potential.
I thought they all played very well, and to their full potential too. It's just a fact that none of their potentials are attacking in nature. If you play that midfield, you are playing for one-nils!
I'm happy with this. Three points is three points. I wish we'd gotten more crappy wins like this instead of draws. It would be nice if we could do more in the final third, but failing that at least we played two halves of decent pressure and possession. Throw enough balls in the box, sometimes you end up with a lucky bounce or a mistake.
I thought they all played pretty well. Schneiderlin hasn't been great this season in general but was still up to speed, Cork played as he normally does and Wanyama was arguably our best player once again. I agree on the lack of attacking movement, but then we've not had that since Rodriguez got injured so I'm not sure how much I'm gonna blame those three.
The midfield setup worked for me, utterly dominant throughout. You can't blame the midfield for our lack of attacking threat, we are still in the post-Jay tinkering stage, and Gallagher showed a couple of great touches today. With a more potent striker we would have scored a few today, as it was the old warhorse had to bundle one in.
I appreciate that I'm biased, but I'm not sure you can judge how well Morgan, Cork and Vic fit together based on today's game. They had no Rodriguez or Ramirez or Osvaldo in front of them, only one of Lambert and Lallana at any one time in front of them, and the only pace and width in front of them was seemingly provided by just the full-backs. I'd rather they be judged when we have a full front line available. And of course it was just one game. You can't really judge anything based on one game.
