L1: Yeovil 0 Southampton 1

Football can be a cruel game sometimes. The Glovers deserved so much more than they got from yesterday's match, but that's two games in a row now that injury-time goals have cost us points, and that's something the team and management must look at. We should be 4 points better off now than we actually are, and looking at the certainty of League One football again next season. As it is we're not out of the woods yet and need at least another win from our final three matches to assure safety. The good news is that if we approach our final three games in the same positive manner that we've played this week, then surely that win will come.

Yesterday's visitors Southampton are so far ahead of us in any measure you care to make it's not even funny, but where we can and did match them is in heart. The Saints dominated the first 30 minutes of the match, creating chance after chance after chance but a combination of good goalkeeping, profligate finishing and last-ditch defending kept the score goalless. The Glovers gradually came more and more into the match, Townsend and Kalala began to make their presence felt in midfield and Gavin Williams started to find space to spray the ball around. By half-time the Glovers were more than matching their visitors and both Bowditch and Tomlin had spurned excellent chances, misses that were to come back to haunt the home side at full-time. The bulk of the second half contained more of the same, with the Saints probably enjoying more possession but the home side counter-attacking with real intent and threat and looking more likely to score. The Glovers task was on paper made easier when Saints midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin was dismissed on 70 minutes for violent conduct after a kick on Gavin Williams, and the visitors were somewhat fortunate not to receive another red card a few minutes later when Jose Fonte fouled Williams with the midfielder bursting through on goal. As time went on the visitors again began to look more threatening despite being a man down and in a last gasp bid to keep their season alive put on two more strikers to try to force the win. In contrast the Glovers by now seemed happy to take the draw, the feeling reinforced when the sole striker Bowditch was replaced by a midfielder, Murtagh, with 2 minutes to go. The effect was to leave Yeovil with no outlet when clearing the ball and Southampton were able to play out injury-time in the Yeovil half. With strikers of the calibre of Barnard, Waigo, Connolly and Lambert on the pitch this was always going to be risky; and sure enough it was Barnard, a £500,000 snip from Southend in the January transfer window, who popped up in the 3rd minute of injury time to head home the winner and break Yeovil hearts.

Merit marks as follows:

1. Alex McCarthy: 8/10 - Kept Southampton out almost single-handedly at times during the first half. Had a lot less to do after the break. Helpless for their goal.

2. Craig Alcock: 7/10 - Typically solid display. One of the most improved players in the team. At the start of the season he could be relied upon to make at least one bad error per match. Nowadays he can be relied upon, as simple (and effective) as that.

5. Steven Caulker and 6. Terrell Forbes: 8/10 - Immense partnership at the back. Ricky Lambert has been scoring for fun against all-comers all season but for most of the game he didn't get a sniff. Caulker has been getting all the plaudits all season and rightly so, but Forbes is equally deserving of praise. Sign him up NOW.

28. Nathan Smith: 8/10 - Back to his best. Marauding runs down the left, combining well with Andy Welsh and his defending is top-notch too. His long-throws are starting to become a useful weapon as well. Sign him up NOW.

10. Gavin Tomlin: 6/10 - Worked extremely hard all match and got himself into a couple of great goalscoring opportunities - but didn't score.

21. JP Kalala and 25. Shaun MacDonald: 8/10 - After a dodgy first 20-25 minutes where they both looked off the pace they began to find a measure of control in midfield, which they didn't relinquish until that unhappy last 5 minutes of injury time. Sign Kalala up NOW.

11. Andy Welsh: 8/10 - Combined really well with Smith to provide a real attacking threat on the left. Not his fault that all too often his crosses led to nothing because of a lack of numbers in the box. If only Sam Williams had been on the pitch!

20. Gavin Williams: 8/10 - Once again the creative fulcrum of the team, once up to the ferocious pace Southampton set at the start. The only thing I'd criticise him for (and it's a very mild criticism!) is for trying to find that killer ball once to often when he himself is in a good position to shoot.

14. Dean Bowditch: 6/10 - Put himself about well again and got into good positions to score but unfortunately left his shooting boots at home. Sign him up anyway, NOW.

Subs:
8. Keiran Murtagh (88 mins for Dean Bowditch): N/A - Not on long enough to make an impression.

Despite the disappointment of losing there were plenty of positives to take from the game. The fact is that for much of the match we matched and even bettered a Southampton side that to my limited knowledge has spent at least £1.5 million on just 2 players in the last year (both of them strikers). The match itself was thoroughly entertaining and as in the Millwall game last Tuesday we played some very good passing football albeit without an eventual end product. It was good to see the biggest crowd of the season at Huish Park with probably the highest number of home fans all season - let's hope the generally positive vibe of the day will persuade the irregular attenders to come more often in future. The negatives - well, we lost, yet again to an injury-time goal. We have got to learn to close out games properly, something I don't think was helped by the substitution of our only striker for a midfielder with 2 minutes left. It's easy to be too critical of Skivo here however - look at the options he had on our bench and then look at the options Alan Pardew had on his bench. The difference is chalk and cheese.

Onwards and hopefully upwards anyway. Brentford away next weekend in a game which will mean a great deal to us but hopefully not so much to them. I'm hoping we'll go into the game in the same positive vein that we've approached the last 3 games. If we do I'm convinced that we can get the result we need to be playing in League One next season.