It's a tricky one for Strachan. He can't be too critical, yet there are clearly one or two things that need work. So instead of mentioning Saints lack of creativity, or Fernandes' insistence on ignoring Telfer and cutting inside or even Anders lack of defensive qualities, he talks about Brad Friedel.

“Brad Friedel has been absolutely fantastic against us this season and has cost us five points," said Strachan.

“If we had scored early on I’m sure we would have done very well and even when they scored I still felt we could get back into the game."

This is quite true. Saints looked great for about ten minutes after kick off. The problems lay in the lack of accuracy after that.

“We got shots on target but I was not that pleased with our build-up play in that we didn’t get as many crosses into our strikers as we would like," Strachan continued.

That could well be a jab at Fernandes. He's skilful and tricky. However he persists in trying the same tricks and he's been found out. Opponents know that he won't go for the byline or even pass to Telfer to go down the flank. Fabrice makes their job easy and there's little doubt he's been told about it. Fernandes is now one of the first players to be taken off, along with Tessem

Strachan went on : “But I think the difference was Brad today. He had a superman performance against us down on the south coast and he must take the credit for this as well.”

No, I think our lack of ability to put telling balls through to our strikers or getting enough movement in midfield are our problems.

Strachan stood up for Beattie, the one player who does have really good awareness saying: “The way he has been playing you would have thought he would have taken his chances, but that happens in football and it’s just genuine mistakes.”

Ah, well a frustrating afternoon. On the plus side, we have Norwich next week in the cup. Nigel Worthington plays a more defensive game when he's away from home. That's a shame because Norwich will only ever win if they go forward. They have far too many attack minded players in the side to sit back.