Southampton are a club who seem to have made plenty of mistakes since we faced them at Villa Park six years ago most of them involving decisions by Rupert Lowe. I said in my last entry that they now seem to be facing their most major crisis at the worst possible time in the season but to be fair to them last night, they were certainly up for it.
They weren't better than us by any means but they had that desire and desperation of needing the points (even though I'm sure in the end it will be futile due to affairs off the pitch) whereas we've already got the look of a team that has relaxed because we've secured another season of Championship football. Whether this is a good or bad thing I'm not sure. After Saturday and tonight I do think we are safe. With Forest 9 points behind us, five games to go and a whole host of teams between us and them I can't imagine a scenairo where we'll go down, especially if justice is served on the Saints.
So we allowed ourselves a few mistakes tonight but still played well enough to deserve to win. To start with no one seemed to pick up Saejis who was allowed a free header to score the Saints opening goal. However we responded well and Cauna clearly sensed that Kelvin Davis is a seriously dodgy keeper by blasting the ball at him to equalise when the more sensible thing appeared to be to cross it.
Cauna had an interesting debut. At times inspired and the best player on the pitch but at others he showed some truly woeful decision making like passing the ball far too far into the Saints half when no 'Orn was anywhere near it. Like Danny Rose I think he'll be entertaining and maybe frustrating to watch over the next month.
We were the better side for the rest of the first half. Ian Bolton and Les Taylor were introduced to the crowd at half time. Bolton still looked like he could easily fit into our defence despite presumably now being in his late 50's. We were still on top at the beginning of the second. However the Saints played as if their lives depended on it and forced some great saves out of Scott Loach.
We went ahead through a rare Priskin header from a corner and then, yet again, were victims of a truly absymal mistake by the referee and linesman running the Rous Stand line. McAnuff got clear of all but the last defender who then sythed down Jobi clearly in the penalty area. We all saw it but the ref and linesman deemed that it was about 2 yards outside. Feeling annoyed, at least we had the comfort of knowing the ref would send off the offender for being the last man. But no, the card he pulled out was yellow. Are the officials running a competition on who can make the worse decision in front of the Rookey? Atwell and Bannister are still winning but there have been some impressive attempts to be second.
Southampton continued desperately pushing forward which made for an entertaining end to end last twenty minutes. Then Rodgers made a rare mistake by choosing to take off Priskin for our new Estonian defender Stepanov. Had it been 3-1 this would've been a sensible decision to close out the game. But at 2-1 with an opponent prepared to doing anything to score it looked iffy as if they did score we'd restricted our attacking options in order to reply.
Of course, the Saints did score and not through some desperate bundling the ball over the line for survival type goal but a fabulous free kick that curled round the wall and flew past a diving Loach.
Our attacking options may have been restricted but we still had one last glorious opportunity to score which wins the award for mistake of the night. Jobes sent Tommy Smith off down the right flank and his cross went past Davis to give Danny Rose an opportunity to put the ball into an empty net. It looked easy. All he had to do was make contact and we would win. I reckon even I could've done it. But for some reason Rose jumped over the ball. It set me and the bloke I sit next to wondering whether Rose is actually some double agent who has come to Watford to make sure we don't score. It was that bad.
The Southampton players and fans celebrated as if they'd won promotion. The Vicarage Road faithful were fairly muted in their appreciation which I thought was very unfair as we had actually played well in a thoroughly entertaining game. Yes we made some mistakes but don't we all. None though quite as big as the ones the ref and linesman seem to make every game on the Rous Stand side.
