Printer-friendly pageMonday, September 18, 2006
Saints were unchanged for the visit of Plymouth (Bale's injury keeping him off the bench) and hopes were high that the team could build on two excellent away performances while avoiding the individual errors that had limited the return from them to 3 points.
However, Plymouth must have come to a similar conclusion and they appeared to be content to sit on the 0-0 scoreline they started with. Unless we can get an early goal, that tactic usually exposes Southampton's limitations, and a scrappy opening period ensued. It was not helped by frequent injury breaks, in particular a long stoppage when Aljofree was hurt.
The board showed 9 minutes added time, but that was displayed when Pele was receiving treatment and it was just short of 4pm when the half eventually ended. Football-wise, all we have to report from that hour was a miss by Jones that could have been costly. However, George introduced the subtleties of Belmadi in place of the pace of Dyer, and the visiting defence were immediately given more problems.
When Belmadi pulled the ball back, Viafara shot into a mass of players but Rasiak was able to react fastest and score a scrappy but valuable goal. Rasiak soon hit the bar from a Wright-Phillips cross, but Plymouth enjoyed more possession in the last 20 minutes than they had in the earlier part of the match. However, few clear chances emerged; indeed, the best chance fell to a mixture of Rasiak and Wright-Phillips in injury time (just 3 minutes this time) but they got in each other's way. It was that sort of untidy afternoon.
Man of the Match: Grzegorz Rasiak. Tough call, this one; Belmadi didn't play for long enough so Rasiak's goal swings it ahead of other sound but unspectacular performances.
