Saints stung by Bees

Saints 0, Brentford 2
Facing Brentford, Saints were still suffering the after effects of the Cup win against Cheltenham.
Fears that Holmes’s injury were long-term were confirmed, there’s now a disciplinary price to pay for Fonte’s needless caution while injury kept out Richardson, despite a two week break.
With Chaplow and Barnard still unavailable (according to Mr. Adkins, the striker has had “two little things going wrong in the groin area”!), Do Prado partnered Lambert up front, and the two combined in the first minute, only for Lee made a brilliant save from Guly’s header.
As it turned out, this was to be a tale of two goalkeepers, with Lee making the spectacular seem routine while Davis set the Bees on their way with a 13th minute howler in his attempt to stop a tame shot from Alexander.
Saints could have been both level and playing against only 10 men had referee Langford interpreted O’Connor’s “handy” block from Schneiderlin’s header the same way as most of the crowd, but instead they were really up against it when a free kick from the opposition half was turned in by McDonald after poor central defending and hesitant goalkeeping.
Even then, there might have been something to build on at the break if it hadn’t been for Lee, but once Chamberlain volleyed a very presentable second half opportunity wide, things went steadily downhill. With a bench that included the untried talents of Doble and Dean, Nigel decided to reshuffle his starting line-up instead, pushing Chamberlain up front. The only substitution was Connolly for the ineffective Lambert 10 minutes from time – not much changed, though, and the final chance of note for the home team came on the break and right at the end of added time. Brentford work very hard to deny teams space to find openings when playing from the back, and the consequential square passing amongst our defenders frustrated a disappointed crowd.

LSSC Man of the Match: Danny Butterfield, but I’d have had trouble finding many prepared to vote for anyone if this were a true democratic process.

01 Davis
05 Dickson
12 Butterfield
15 Jaidi
19 Seaborne
04 Schneiderlin
14 Hammond
20 Lallana
26 Oxlade-Chamberlain
07 Lambert (Connolly 83)
11 Guly