Intro & Team News

IBO Reporter - channonite

|At last! A home win. The first win since the 13th April, when Saints beat Wolves 3-1. Up until today, Saints had played six home games, losing five of them and only managing a draw against Manchester United, while conceeding 21 goals and only managing 5 goals themselves. No wonder the home hans started to get a little restless, when another error led to Watford scoring in the 24th minute. Still 0-1 at half-time, the players went off the field to the sound of some booing. The first half was absolutely awful, which was a disappointment after the encouraging performance against Arsenal the previous week. The team were clearly nervous and devoid of any confidence at all. All eleven Saints players were making mistake after mistake and way too often, when in possession, the ball went from side to side and then was played back to McCarthy to hoof it upfield.

The second half was completely different and was a real battling performance. What really changed things was the introduction of Boufal and Long for Redmond and Obafemi on 57 minutes. The pair of them put real pressure on the Watford defence and the Moroccan in particular caused the opposition defence all sorts of problems down the left. The equaliser seemed to inject the team with confidence and the reverse seemed to happen to the visitors. From that moment on it seemed like there would only be one winner, although there was always that nagging doubt that Saints might just stuff it up.

The final whistle saw the release of so much tension and it was good to see everyone smiling again.

Hasenhüttl chose an unsurprising team, with the possible exception of Obafemi starting the game, although Adams was at least back on the bench, after being nowhere to be seen for the previous game.

Match Report

IBO Reporter : channonite

|Well, this time I will be doing a proper match report, after beoming totally disillusioned in recent weeks. Sodt's law being in operation, I am really busy at the moment and there is another critical home game on Wednesday night, so we will probably end up with two reports up almost simultaneously later in the week

Much, much, much later - Well, that didn't happen then...

Match Stats

Referee: Michael Oliver

Attendance: 26,929