First of all I would like to congratulate Reading on winning the Championship title; after being so far behind in November they reeled us in like a Florida fisherman trying to land a Marlin. Our poor recent form, which has seen us take maximum points only once in our last four matches, means we have not only been overtaken by the Royals but also allowed West Ham to close the gap to three points with three games to play. Now from looking comfortable for an automatic promotion spot, all of a sudden we are looking over our shoulders at a West Ham side, who have suddenly found their scoring touch.

The most worrying statistic from our last two home games is that, although we have limited the opposition to a combined 7 shots on target (3 for Portsmouth and 4 for Reading), 5 goals have been conceded from them. This is either really bad luck or there is something about the way we play that allows the opposition to take advantage of their rare attempts on goal. Indeed, there are striking similarities between the second equalising goal for Portsmouth and the goal that put Reading 2-1 in front on Friday night. Players arriving late on the scene scored both goals. Firstly, Norris was left unattended on the edge of the box to hammer home a volley, and then Le Fondre arrived unchallenged to fire home from the edge of the box.

The problem the way I see it is that the midfield players do not seem to be tracking back quickly enough when they lose possession; certainly no-one seems to be picking up opposition players who make late runs into the box. This could well be a problem with the diamond formation that Nigel Adkins uses. For me it is not an ideal formation because it spreads out the midfield players too far; this, in turn, can leave huge gaps between the midfield and the defence.

The diamond formation relies on midfielders tracking back quickly when possession is lost and also requires the midfielders to work hard, so if someone is having an off day then gaps begin to appear. Another problem with the formation is that it the full-backs are tasked with getting forward as we do not have any out and out wingers in the side; this weakens the flanks and leaves them open to teams with pacy wingers.

This brings me on to my biggest gripe about the formation. We do not have pace and width in the side, there is no one who can get the ball wide, attack the fullback with pace, get to the bye line and put over a testing cross. Playing Richard Chaplow out on the right-hand side against Reading was an awful decision and his performance was tinged with a degree of frustration at being played out of position. Blackpool had their tactics spot on a few weeks ago when they beat us 3-0 by playing quick direct balls out wide and getting crosses into the box. Now I’m not saying that we should scrap using the diamond formation all together, after all we have been in the top two all season, so something must work; my only concern is that we do not have a “plan b” when teams suss out how to deal with the diamond formation.

Nearly all of our attacking play against Reading was in front of the Reading defence; how many times did we get in behind them to get a decent cross in? Yet we looked quite dangerous from corner-kicks and were unlucky not to score from at least two of them, if Jos Hooiveld had timed his jumps a bit better, he may well have had a brace.

So now we come to the final three matches and we have two tricky away matches in a week at Peterborough and Middlesbrough, and at least 4 points is required from these two matches in order to make the final game of the season at home to Coventry less nerve-wracking. No doubt we will get a lot of possession in these games like we did against Reading, but what is the point of having 59% possession if you are going to lose 3-1?

If the pressure of expectation is beginning to get to the Saints players, then maybe they will benefit from playing the next two games away from home, rather than in front of 30,000 edgy and expectant home supporters. There can be no excuses now, and these players are either going into the history books as the first to gain the club back-to-back promotions, or be responsible for one of the biggest crashes in Football League history.

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