Saints Bubble Has Burst

Though at times Saints strung a few nice passes together, it was clear that Leicester seemed a better all round team and looked much stronger.

With Lambert, Lallana, Chaplow and Fonte all missing the heart of the team was missing and Saints looked well below par in just about everything that they did.

An all together poor display which gave little hope to the fans that the bad run would soon be over. After going so long on the home winning front Saints have now gone three games at home without a win and have lost the last two matches.

It would be easy to say that the defence was poor but there was little support from the midfield and the attack was more or less non existant.

You don't become a bad team overnight but last night the disappointment was not just the defeat but the manner of the way it came.

Worse still for Saints was the injury to Jos Hooiveldt and I for one hope that it isn't as bad as it looked with him feeling his hamstring.

This performance highlights the weakness we have in the squad once there are a few of the first choice players missing. The team is strong when we are at full strength but appears to be limited once we start losing them. So now we need to see how our manager reacts to this situation.

Lambert will return for our next game and Fonte is close to a recall as hopefully is Chaplow. The main problem for me last night was the lack of bite in midfield.

Without Chaplow we appear very short of real intent and his runs forward are something that has been sorely missed. Richardson played as substitute in the second half from the 55th minute, which should mean him being ready for the next match.

The players will get a lift from the return of Lambert and Richardson with Fonte hopefully ready. For me the game at Millwall is now even more important and I have a feeling that Nigel will send out as strong a team as he can to bring back some belief to the team.

For large parts of the second half they played like a team that knew it had lost and seemed to lack the fight to get back into the game. This is not how we are used to seeing them play and it came as a wake up call.

Nigel may need to bring in a centre back to shore things up for now but it is a case of do we try for a player who is ready for the Premiership or bring in somebody as a stop gap?

We have had an amazing run under the leadership of Nigel and still have promotion in our hands but we need to sort ourselves out now before we have to start playing catch up.

There is still time and we can still do it but changes need to be made.



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