Southampton Pull Away As The Pack Closes Up!

What a terrible wasted opportunity. Two wins on the bounce and playing the bottom team in the division. It should have been three easy points. After all, Allardyce has got us playing such effective football hasn't he?

Now far be it from me to remind you that I questioned the quality of our performances in the games against Brighton and Leicester. But I did.

I said that our performance at Brighton was shockingly poor, that we showed no creativity whatsoever and highlighted the lack of offensive ambition or cohesion in the team. I said too that our inability to better managerless Leicester in the second half on Saturday highlighted the ongoing problem with lack of balance.

Now, let's start to be honest. This is a shit division and any half decent team playing half decent football would be pulling away by now - just like Southampton! But Southampton play decent football. They have creative players. They seek to impose themselves on the opposition. They play with conviction and verve and pace. They're not great individually, but they are organised and they go for it - rather like Newcastle in the Prem at the moment, and like Pardew's West Ham.

But we are not pulling away, we are being sucked back into the chasing pack, throwing away home points because we are trying to fit square pegs into round holes: Nolan in a withdrawn midfield role, Noble as a holding midfielder, Sears wide on the left and Piquionne on the pitch!

Today's game sums up our performances so far. We are stuttering, uncertain, playing football devoid of imagination and quality. Sure we are in second place still, but for how long? We are losing touch with Southampton already and pretty soon we could find ourselves gobbled up by the jogging pack.

Allardyce was cocky after the Leicester game, knocking us fans who are challenging his approach. Well tonight showed just how one dimensional and inadequate this team is. An improvement on last season? Cobblers, we are just playing against crap opposition. Lest we forget, Grant's team played three Championship teams last season and won all three games comfortably.

After tonight, people should get their heads out of arses and wake up to the bitter truth. This is still a poor team playing very poorly, with no self belief and no conviction. The Premiership looked a million miles away tonight and, to be honest, this team would be annihilated should we somehow stumble our way to promotion.