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Saints V Colchester The Verdict
Saints V Colchester The Verdict
Monday, 20th Sep 2010 08:54

Things did get better as the game went on !

On Friday in my preview of the game I mentioned that if we did the same things selection wise we would get the same results, sadly on Saturday that was the case as Nigel Adkins only made one obvious change to the line up by putting Barnard in for Connolly.

To be blunt this meant that for the first 70 minutes of the game Saints played in a similar fashion with the same old players putting in the same performance that had lost us three in a row, however on 72 minutes Adkins made his substitutions and they worked.

The replacement of Harding with Dickson was one i mooted on Friday and the pattern of the game immediately changed aligned with the removal of Puncheon and arrival of Lee Holmes, in eighteen short minutes plus injury time Saints looked a better balanced side with Holmes showing those that confuse pace & a failure to deliver with a footballing brain & pin point crosses as good football.

Sadly the change was made ten minutes too late and it didnt quite give Saints the time to capitalise, but it has to be said that the bulk of Saints 8 shots on target came in that final period including two Lambert free kicks that made the keeper work.

Of course we can forgive Adkins on this occasion in both his team selection and his late substitutions in that he has not had enough time to work with the squad and really decide who is worth a place etc, but he should now have a decent feel for the team.

The plus points are that in the final part of the game we found our feet and several players who had been dire for 70 or so minutes started to find their feet, including SRL, it was no coincidence that when we got a player who could cross the ball on the field we started to create chances, rather than the half hearted attacks that Colchester easily coped with.

The downside was that several players still were not performing to their capabilities, one of whom was Dean Hammond who is a shadow of the player he was last season.

The final 20 minutes showed that we have enough about us to get the season back on track, but we need to start doing it now as we have wasted too many games.  

Photo: Action Images



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Spot51 added 09:53 - Sep 20
St. Agnation.
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kcaj1164retsof added 11:14 - Sep 20
I feel we badly need 1. A central midfielder 'with an engine' and the ability to score goals regularly. 2. a wide player, as Puncheon is inconsistant, Holmes is injury prone and Chamberlain cannot play all the time. 3. A striker to supplement Lambert and Barnard. The loss of form of Hammond plus the fact that we lost Antonio and Papa Waigo, replacing them with 3 full backs is the reason for this.
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