Southampton news: late Lincoln leveller, subs queried, Ramsdale fourth choice
News summary
Welington had never scored for Southampton before Saturday lunchtime. He picked his moment.
A thumping strike on the stroke of half-time put Saints ahead at Lincoln, and the replay is worth a look. It held for 43 minutes.
Lincoln had been pressing hard for a while. Mikkel Ladefoged, a substitute who had never scored in English football, headed a late equaliser.
Tonda Eckert did not argue with the point. He gave the newly promoted hosts credit for "courage, manliness and energy".
What bothered him was that his players saw the pressure coming and still could not grind the game out.
Flynn Downes was blunter. Draws killed Saints last season, he said, and this team has not got time to repeat that.
Jack Stephens and Welington both returned. A busy run of fixtures was the reason Eckert gave when he ran through every selection call.
Keven Schlotterbeck came out best in the player ratings, while the substitutes barely registered.
Nineteenth place reads worse than the football has been, because Saints have lost only once in five. The four-point deduction is doing the damage, not the Saints' early-season results.
Swansea City visit on Tuesday at 19:45. Nobody has beaten them yet, so Downes's demand for wins comes at an awkward time.
Transfer news
With the window shut since the first of the month, the talk has gone retrospective. Fulham's £10.3m signing of David Affengruber from Elche is being held up as a miss, because Southampton looked at him and never followed it through.
Cameron Archer, who barely scored here, needed one game in France to change that. Two men beaten inside the box, then a low finish on his Auxerre debut.
Lyon won 3-1 anyway. Preston North End had tried to take him instead, but Archer picked France.
Aaron Ramsdale has not made a matchday squad all season. Daniel Peretz has the shirt.
George Long is second choice, while Jamie Jones came back to be third. That puts Ramsdale fourth, and he has asked to play under-21 football rather than sit around.
The initial £18m Southampton paid buys nothing now. A move in January would suit everybody.
Saints Marching opinion
Southampton led 1-0 when Leo Scienza came off just after the hour. The attacking intent went with him, so Lincoln spent the last half hour camped in Saints territory.
Those changes have already been called unnecessary tinkering. That feels harsh on a head coach handling a heavy run of fixtures, but the order of events does him no favours.
Eckert saw it coming. Afterwards he described the mindset of protecting a lead, and said he had known Lincoln would go long for second balls.
Knowing it and stopping it turned out to be different jobs.
Two draws in a week hardly counts as a crisis. It does not count as promotion form either, and Saints are carrying that four-point deduction before any of this.
Welington's strike, allied to his overall performance, earned him an 8.0 rating. That was his best of the season.
Eckert now has a left-back who defends properly and can hit one like that from distance.
Southampton have scored eleven goals in five games. The attack has never been the problem, and Swansea on Tuesday will ask the other question properly.
