The defeat hurt and made our position near our target of finishing second, at the very least, seem ever further away.
The three games since then have brought us nine points though, as the team responded with three valuable wins, two of them away.
At Walsall the team opened up the opposition defence again and again without finding the finishing touch. Then to make matters worse Walsall broke down the other end and scored a soft goal to beat us and knock us back.
The next game against Colchester was a very tough game and the team had to scrap before they could apply their skills and score twice to take the spoils.
Not a pretty game to watch and neither was the next game at home to Yeovil. Despite winning comfortably we didn’t perform as well as we might have liked but ended up the worthy winners.
Bournemouth last time out at Dean Court was another game where we had to scrap to get a foothold in the game. The Cherries gave us a good hard time and were a shade unlucky to lose 3-1. Again it was a case of having to scrap before we could start playing with some good attacking momentum.
Three wins and without playing to the standard that we had become used to. The bonus being that we were now showing that we are learning how to battle before we are able to produce the form which enables us to beat sides with our varied, strong attacking options.
Richard Chaplow reckons that the game at Walsall was good for us as it rammed home the fact that we can’t expect to win no matter how much better a team we may be.
Talking on Saints Player he said, ‘It’s strange when you look back at the past month, because the best we played was probably against Walsall where we got beat. The amount of chances that we created in that game was frightening, but we couldn’t convert any at the time.’
He feels that the defeat has spurred on the team and is happy that we are now showing a more ruthless side to our game. The open flowing football has only been seen occasionally but knowing we have some very good attacking options helps no end.
Talking about the squad Richard said that he was pleased to have played in the last 13 games. First skipper Dean Hammond was out injured and now it is Morgan Schneiderlin. He is enjoying the way we play as he often gets the chance to burst through and get ahead of Rickie Lambert as he drops back.
Me, I am just happy that we seem to have found the ability to tough it out. We have often looked like the proverbial southern team with a soft under belly but now look stronger all round.
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