Southampton is not a nice place to go. It's a long, long trip, and when you get there you wonder why you bothered. It seems that every seat is an obstructed view, and apart from Goodison Park it has to be the worst stadium in the Premiership. Still, I'm sure that when you come away from the Dell with a win you don't even notice how antiquated the place is, but unfortunately I wouldn't know, as not a single one of my four visits to the south coast town has yielded all three points. This time though, it appeared my luck had changed. Although we'd looked pretty dodgy at the back throughout, when St Michael left the Saints defence trailing in his wake to put us three up, I was already celebrating the three points. Unfortunately, it seems the players were too, as they switched off and allowed Glenda's boys to make an astonishing recovery to ensure that the trip home seemed even longer than it actually is.
As well as questioning the players application, I must also call into doubt Houllier's decision to withdraw our best player on the day, Vladimir Smicer, as well as our other most creative midfielder in Nick Barmby. That sends out the wrong message to the players on the field. With Smicer still on the pitch, and Owen in the best form he's shown for over a year, we could have scored a hatful against the hapless Saints. Instead, we settled for the three, and paid the price.
Owen was left isolated, and we stopped playing football. The ball was simply hoofed up the field aimlessly as possession was squandered over and over, and we handed the initiative firmly back to a Southampton side with nothing to lose. They piled men forward, and left the kind of gaps that would have been ruthlessly exploited by Smicer and Barmby, but without them we sat back and invited the Saints to throw bodies forward. Even so, the fact that we conceded three goals from high balls into the box is both inexcusable and alarming.
We probably have the tallest side in the Premiership, yet we were at sixes and sevens whenever the ball was thrown into the box. Sander Westerveld was horrendously at fault for the first, whilst Djimi Traore's misplaced header gifted them the equaliser. Our inability to deal with basic bread and butter crosses has cost us two points, and also contributed to our downfall against the Gunners the other night.
If we are to keep our reputation as the meanest defence in England, then there's a lot of work needs to be done on the training ground. So often over the last twelve months we've been solid at the back but struggled to score. Today we finally sorted out the attacking side of the game, and the defence falls apart. As for me, I doubt if I'll be making the long trip to the south coast for a while, although when their new stadium is built I may reconsider.
TEAM: Sander Westerveld; Markus Babbel, Sami Hyypia, Stephane Henchoz, Djimi Traore; Nick Barmby (Steve Staunton), Dietmar Hamann, Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, Vladimir Smicer (Danny Murphy); Michael Owen:
