Having sneaked a win against ten men after leading by two goals, Saints fans were more relieved than anything having edged a five-goal thriller at St Mary's.
Read on to see what they have to say in this week's OV...."Got out of jail there. Second half was woeful, safe lazy football. Only the two centre halves really put the effort required in. Attitude was defo, 'we've won this'. Shocking, no surprise they came out and stuck it to us. Early on we looked good. Gabbi's movement is fantastic, but we delay passing to him too much. Probably a hangover from last season's style, but we need to play him in down the sides more and earlier than we do. Antonio's a real handful, it's what we're missing, a direct powerful runner. At the end of the day, we deserved a win last week and a draw this, so can't really complain."
- Lord Duckhunter
"WHU, in the main, were pinging long balls wide to Antonio and Arnautovic. The first goal was a bit disappointing, but I've looked at it a couple of times now. Romeu was arguably too close to Antonio, who spun him and got a shot off with his left foot. Forster was planted, he probably wasn't ready for it the same as I don't really think anyone else was. The second couldn't be landed at Forster's feet either, he made a cracking reaction save, only for this time Cedric to miss Hernandez who came around his blind side. The main point was there was a lack of any closing down of Cresswell. It was another of those games, we had a goal dissallowed, hit the bar twice and generally were the better team, we just don't make enough of our possession."
- Smirking_Saint
"Zabaleta's been at a big club for the last however many years getting away with things like that. Absolutely no way we get that decision in the 91st minute against Man City, Chelsea, etc, but a game against West Ham is relatively out of the spotlight so the referee doesn't have 'shit, I'm going to be analysed to the nth degree by Gary Neville on Monday Night Football if I give anything contentious, so let's just give nothing all afternoon instead' in the back of his mind."
- stevegrant
"Having watched the game live on NBC and seen several replays of the various incidents, Tadic's foul was never a red. It was clumsy, but was hardly dangerous and he wasn't out of control. Yellow all day long. Noble is a thug. should've gone. That elbow to Jack Stephens neck could've been far more serious. Thankfully it wasn't. Very harsh to blame Forster for the first goal. Was a decent save - Bertrand switched off. Don't know what Pellegrino said to the team at HT, but he might need a rethink."
- BigShadow
"West Ham spent the whole game nudging any player who went up for a header to put them off balance. Got away with it so much that they made it so obvious the ref had to give us one and he chose the best position! Soft penalty/hard penalty - one thing in common... Penalty!"
- Pip
"There was more to both of WHUs goals then just losing a header. For WHU's second, Creswell had the freedom of StM to put in a very good cross which is pretty odd considering we had a man advantage. No way should he have had that much space to pick his pass. In both of their goals no one picked up Hernandez allowing him to pick up the second ball, Bertrand was embarrassing for the their first goal."
- doddisalegend
"We barely won a defensive header the whole game. Even MP acknowledged that Yoshida was easily beaten for their 2nd goal. I think we would have lost that had Carroll been playing, as they had the better of us in the air nearly the whole game."
- Batman
"First up on MotD! Yuss! Analysis: 1. Pre-match: Focus on Bilic; Hammers being away from their stadium due to athletics. 2. Match highlights: ok, showed goals, fouls, cards as expected, though didn't show Tadic's 'worst challenge ever' at all. 3. Post-match/studio: Hammers defeated themselves; their experienced players made bad decisions. 10 seconds on Saints playing a better style than last year; focus on Hernandez return to form for Hammers. So, who won? Where was it played? Which team has just had a major financial takeover? Who's got a new manager? Who's just scored at home for the first [& 2nd & 3rd] time for about six matches? Were Saints even playing, or did West Ham just go out & stick the ball into their own net three times?! First up on MotD... not that you'd know it!"
- 5string
"It was always going to be one of those games really, despite buying a few decent looking acquisitions it seems that WHU are sticking to their Allardyce credentials and basically are the new Stoke. A tough battling side, played with two wide target men with Chicarito looking to pick up on the flick ons. And they did ok at that, Arnautovic looked a bit of a handful, he makes life difficult for defences at least, well, until he lost his head anyway. We screamed out for a real physical leader with real arial prowess, far too often we were caught out to WHU long balls."
- Smirking_Saint
"I thought we were easily the better team today. Then I saw the stats. So, I have decided to ignore stats from now on!"
- SaintBobby
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