It was 22 games unbeaten in all competitions, and as predicted, Russell Martin made changes, but it almost cost us dearly as Saints toiled for over an hour after losing an early goal.
It came as little surprise that the starting lineup for the match against Watford had nine changes from the team that started against Swansea City eight days earlier, with only Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Che Adams beginning at Vicarage Road.
At the back, only Jayden Meghoma had little experience, but they began the game in complete disarray, with a soft free kick given away that should have been easily dealt with, but bizarrely, Joe Lumley in the Saints goal failed to organise a wall of any sort, and he was caught out on his near post with only 5 minutes on the clock.
The rest of the first half turned out to be just as poor for Saints as they struggled to get any sort of meaningful attacks together from either the back or midfield and looked shaky at the back, only Taylor Harwood Bellis looking like he was comfortable.
The second half started vey much in the same way with Saints struggling to get the ball to he forwards and create any decent chances in the main, Mason Holgate’s effort and Watford keeper Bachmann turned over drive.
It all changed on 63 minutes when Russell Martin made four changes, off went Dibling, Adams, Charles & Rothwell and on came Will Smallbone, Ryan Fraser and both Armstrong’s.
The change was immediate, we looked to have urgency and the pace of Adam Armstrong & Ryan Fraser was causing problems.
Suddenly we were creating chances and looking dangerous, but the goal wouldn’t come, but then in the 89th minute the Bachmann again had to make a smart save, this time from Sekou Mara, the ball came to Stuart Armstrong who from position not far from where Watford had scored the opener, took the ball and feinted that he was going to curl the ball into the far corner, but instead went the other way and the ball nestled into the net in the same place it had finished in 84 minutes earlier.
Saints pushed for a winner and Watford were now leggy, but there was simply not enough injury time to push the point home.
A lot of Saints fans were critical of the players out there, the usual subjects coming in for stick as well as some not so usual, but the truth is we couldn’t make as many changes as we did and expect to just go out and roll over a team in our own division.
We threw in 11 players who had not played together much as a team and we struggled, it is easy to pick out individuals but the truth was it was a team issue. not an individual one, forwards can’t get chances unless they get the ball in good positions, they didn’t, the midfield struggled to create or stifle, the defence was all at sea.
The introduction of just 4 players showed how things could be changed and suddenly become a different team.
So it was pointless to slag off individuals on the day, Russell Martin showed exactly where his priorities lie, keeping focused on winning in the League and using the FA Cup to give the fringe players a game.
There wasn’t a man on the pitch that didn’t put in the effort, but we were too disjointed to make it count.
So I left the ground not spitting feathers about a poor display, but thinking about the next game in the Championship, that is the game that matters and it will be a completely different side in action.
Russell Martin’s only interest in the FA Cup is of it’s usefulness in giving his squad players a game, he is not interested in the result, he is looking at which individuals did what, I would suspect that for the replay we will see a similar team out, but if we beat the Hornets, then he truly has a dilemma, does he put the lambs out to the slaughter at Anfield or does he put out a strong team and to be blunt probably still get slaughtered.
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