THANK heavens for small mercies.

Saturday's unacceptable display against doomed Leicester was followed by a much more solid performance against Southampton, which keeps our head above water.

"It looks like they're still on their holidays," remarked the woman sat on my left before half time at Filbert Street.

There's an expletive or two deleted from that sentence but she was right. We went AWOL for the entire opening period on Saturday. Outfought by a team already relegated to all intents and purposes.

Thankfully our minds were more on the job against Southampton and relegation looks as though it will boil down to one of Rovers, Ipswich, Bolton or Fulham along with Leicester and Derby.

Against Sounthampton we benefited from playing more or less our strongest team, with everyone playing in the correct position.

I would like to see John Curtis and Martin Taylor in the starting 11, but given the players available no one could have had any serious complaints about Monday's starting line up.

By way of contrast Saturday's starting 11 was a truly baffling one with Tugay stuck out on the right and no place for Gillespie (initially), Berg or Duff. Why was Short drafted straight back in after two months out in preference to Berg or Taylor?

Why wasn't the Duffmeister at least on the bench? Tactics were sadly awry during that woeful opening spell and had to be corrected by a substitution after half an hour.

We also had the farcical decision to play on for ten minutes with ten men to allow Yordi to be patched up following injury, only for him to be substituted two minutes after his return to action.

Saturday was not the best day for either management or players.

The display against the Saints was far more professional and you would have to think now that even given our tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot, we would be hard pressed to collect fewer points than Ipswich on their horrendous run in. Following an off day at Leeds Damien Duff was back to the sparkling form he showed for the Republic of Ireland midweek and for us recently.

David Dunn was an inspiration in midfield prior to having to go off injured. Although he didn't score Matt Jansen was similarly inspired and looks a different player since Andrew Cole's arrival at the club.

All in all, things look considerably brighter than at 5pm on Saturday. So please, no more displays like that opening 45 minutes at Leicester. We know from years of bitter experience that we rarely do things the easy way. But hey, there are limits!