Printer-friendly pageTuesday, January 30, 2007
Lundekvam sat out the FA Cup visit to Manchester City, which suggests the club are more concerned for his health than they've been letting on in recent weeks.
There was also the inevitable tweaking with the midfield, which meant a recall for McGoldrick, but this time on the right side. It doesn't look the answer to me, but McGoldrick again set up a Southampton goal with a long ball that tempted Weaver off his line to meet the run of Jones.
It takes more than nearly 14 stone of goalkeeper coming at him with arms and legs flying to put Jones off (the more subtle skills are sometimes a different matter) and happily the ball ended up in the net.
Mr. Burley remarked afterwards that City's goals came at bad times for us, and it would have helped the cause had we hung onto the lead for more than a couple of minutes, but Vassell was given to time to turn in the box and fire inside Davis's near post from 15 yards.
To my mind, that's bad goalkeeping, and I'm not alone, even if it's not necessarily the majority view amongst the few travelling London Saints. Then City scored again at a bad moment: first half stoppage time. It was a nice finish by Barton, but someone ought to have covered his run on to Ireland's through ball.
City probably deserved that lead, and they put the tie beyond doubt when Davis repeated Weaver's charge off the line, but never got near to colliding with Beasley who had plenty of time to evade the challenge and score. To be fair, a reaction save from Miller right at the end looked a lot better, and there weren't many defenders around to stop Beasley either - but I'm afraid the damage had been done in the first half.
Man of the Match: Chris Baird. You would have thought it would have been easy getting a verdict out of just 7 LSSC travellers, but it needed a casting vote to decide. Honorary mentions, then, to Powell and Jones who came close.
