Saints made heavy work of the win at Colchester in the Carabao Cup, but apart from one spell in the first half, they looked comfortable and always in command, but they looked a little out of sorts.

This was the line up and the performance that you would expect in the last pre season game of the summer and not in a competitive game, as I suggested in earlier articles, Tonda Eckert seemed to see this as the last of the summer warm up games in which something near his first team line up would find it's feet, rather than a finely tuned team firing on all cylinders.

The first half saw a familiar goalkeeper and back four, but a change in the holding pair in front of them with Matsuki partnering Flynn Downes behind an attacking trio of Fellows, Dobbin & Scienza with Ben Brereton Diaz as the centre forward.

In the early stages we struggled to get our passing game going and rarely threatened, at the other end Colchester had their moments and it took a triple save from Daniel Peretz to keep the scores level at the break.

The second half started very much in the way of the first with Saints having a lot of the ball, but struggling to create and things needed to change, they did on the hour mark, Cameron Bragg on for Fellows and Larin on for Brereton Diaz.

We now seemed to be getting in our stride with Bragg moving the ball quickly in the midfield and we were looking like a team that knew what they were doing and who was going to be where when they moved the ball around.

On 72 minutes the deadlock was broken and it was a well worked goal, Ryan Manning put in what could only be described as a pin point undefendable cross from far out on the wind and Cyle Larin was there to nip in and head home from close range with the deftest of touches.

Shortly after on came Finn Azaz and he truly took control and we got the ball down and looked back to our best with the passing game that Tonda Eckert likes to see.

We never looked in trouble then and the came was put to bed by another superb goal, this time from sub Romeo Akachukwu, who had only come on minutes earlier, he took the ball in his stride and went past his man before slotting home past the keeper.

Some may be uncharitable and say that we struggled to put away a League two side, but as I have said this was more the final training game of the season for Saints than the first competitive game.

I think that there may well be a closed doors friendly this week, there were still a few squad players who did not play and lack game time, Finn Azaz was playing his first game of pre season, but Caspar Jandar, Mads Roerslev, Nathan Wood, Joshua Quarshie, Welington, Damion Downes as well as some of the youngsters such as Nick Oyekunle, all played no part in this game, so i would suspect there might be another game yet before next Sunday.

I think the manager will be highly satisfied with what he saw on Saturday, yes there was the odd dodgy moment as mentioned, but in the main with 74% possession we dictated this game, it just took time for us to get used to each other as a team after a summer of mix and match sides.

There were some good things to see out there, Ryan Manning's cross for the opening goal, the Irish full back was one of the scapegoats in his first year, but he has blossomed under Tonda Eckert, Cameron Bragg seemed to have grown an inch or two in stature and could play a major part this season.

Cyla Larin started where he left off and it was good to see Romeo Akachukwu show what he can do.

So all in all a good way to end pre season and a bonus in that we are in the next round of the Carabao Cup.

All Photos Via Reuters