Saints 1-2 Queens Park Rangers
Jay Bothroyd scores what proves to be the winner for QPR at St Mary’s
Fonte regained his place against Queen’s Park Rangers, which meant Hooiveld dropping out; Jos had done well deputising for Jose, and he’s certainly not the worst defender at the club (that’s the fellow wearing the number three shirt).
Saints began with a flourish against the bottom team but with Rangers parking the bus, an impression that we weren’t creating much began to creep in. Then a simple ball over the top between left back and centre back produced a breakaway goal for the speedy Remy, despite Fox’s effort to clear, having given up a direct chase after his man.
This simple ploy has now cost three goals in two games, and Saints suffered another blow when Lallana was led off, apparently with concussion. At least that introduced Rodriguez, whose energetic contribution engineered a goal when Cesar fumbled his shot into the path of Ramirez, who finished with a flourish. This goal in first half added time left fans confident of a second half improvement, and things could have been very different had a dipping effort from Rodriguez just dropped below the bar.
The forward did play another significant, albeit inadvertent, part as his challenge on Cesar forced H.R. into a substitution. The significance came after the visitors had delivered another sucker punch, largely of Southampton’s making: Shaw, on for Fox, was caught in possession, but then Yoshida dived into a challenge on Park-Ji-Sung, who was scarcely in a threatening position near the corner flag, and the resulting cross was put in by Bothroyd, with some pretty poor covering in the middle as well.
Yoshida had been denied his first Saints goal by a terrific Cesar save at Loftus Road, and he must have expected to break his duck when meeting Ward-Prowse’s corner solidly from close range, but replacement keeper Green made another tremendous save. That really took the steam out of Saints, despite 6 minutes added time (mostly the time it had taken Bothroyd to get off the pitch when replaced).
LSSC Man of the Match: Jack Cork, thanks to my advisor’s – none of whom seemed very interested after a very disappointing performance.
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