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Saints luck turned, as they recorded their first home win of the season. In the last half an hour Saints played some great stuff, but it could have been very different without another man of the match performance from Kelvin Davis. It’s hard to believe he was getting stick last season, and even on this website we thought it would be best if he moved on in the summer, but we are very glad he didn’t. He again made some “world class” point blank saves at vital times. Particularly in the 2nd half when we were 1-0 up, and Norwich looked threatening. But once we were awarded a generous penalty on 63 minutes, when Lallana went over in the box, and they had Stefanovic sent off….(I’m guessing for abusive language, although someone did say he throw the ball down and he hit the referee, who thought he did it on purpose), Norwich heads dropped and Saints made the most of the extra man, and with better finishing could have scored 2 or 3 more. There wasn’t a lot to shout about in the first half until the terrific goal from Robertson, who cut in from the left and scored a beauty with his right foot into the top left hand corner, giving their keep no chance.
He showed the others than we need to shoot more and stop over passing. Great to win and get 3 points at home….but we shouldn’t get carried away, there were still concerns out there tonight. Saints only really took any sort of control when Norwich were out of the game, and they looked much more threatening when Mcgoldrick (not sure if it was his own decision or the managers), came in to a more central position to support Robertson. Before that McGoldrick had a poor game, and look disinterested, and BWP, couldn’t seem to put a foot right, in the 2 wide roles. Cork and Surman (please don’t put him back to left back) in the centre of midfield were tremendous, with both winning the ball and distribution. Lallana showed some great skills at times, and with a more direct approach will cause any team problems. The 2 Norwich wingers caused havoc in the first half, comfortably getting the better of the 2 young full backs, but in fairness to them they stuck to their task, and in particular Mills, looked good going forward in the 2nd half. There have been suggestions that Skacel isn’t played because of his win bonus, and that seemed to be the case tonight. On 80 minutes JP decided to rest Robertson, but instead of putting the ineffective BWP up front in his favoured position and putting Skacel on the left to keep things tight, he put another youngster on. They say you learn more from defeats then victories, but let’s hope we learn lessons from tonight as well. We won’t always be playing 10 men, but lets enjoy 2 wins on the trot whatever the circumstances.
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