Southampton Lament Poor Defence

Nigel Adkins lamented the desperate way with which Carlisle were able to run through our defence at times.

The disappointment showed in his face and tone as he tried to explain away the poor performance shown at Brunton Park.

He was extremely critical of the three goals that we let in and said, ‘You can’t go away from home and give three poor goals away – end of story.’

‘We had numerous chances to score goalsthere. Our shape was set-up nicely to counter attack their presence of getting the ball forward, to make sure we could dominate the middle of the park, get the ball and pass it and go and counter-attack.’

In that regard I feel we failed abjectedly in the first half. Carlisle took over after a reasonable start and terrorised our defence.

Whatever Nigel said to the team gave us some impetus and we began to dominate for large spells of the second half.

Nigel said, ‘two-nil down at half-time, okay you’ve got to go and deal with it for the second half. The game was there to go and totally dominate the second half, but you cannot go and concede from a set-play.’

He went on to say how he had set up the team with a 4-3-3 system to utilise the width of the brunto Park pitch. It ddn’t work and after a while he changed back to a 4-4-2 formation.

He added that the last two away performances were just not good enough. Adding that we allowed the opposition to dominate instead of taking the game by the scruff of the neck.

I can see the players being put through the wringer behind closed doors and believe there will have to be some changes made.

One thing I noted with interest was the statement about the players in the team.
‘It’s good to actually analyse people’s character and characteristics and who’s going to go with us to the next level.’

The players should take note because reading between the lines I can see some player changes being made both with imminent team selection and in January with the moving in and out of players.

I really hope that this performance has told Nigel more about the players we have because we simply can not continue to play in patches as we are currently doing.

That said we do have a good squad of players and I firmly believe we are primed to rise higher in the next few weeks to begin a sustained push for promotion.