Exeter City 1 Southampton 1

Even forgetting the upcoming battles with MK Dons and Portsmouth, even the league campaign feels like a draining series of cup ties.

At home to Stockport, Saints were the massive favourites.

The clubs are so far apart in terms of pretty much everything that it felt like a cup game, Stockport the lower league team with nothing to lose, Saints the big boys expected to win and trying to avoid the proverbial banana skin.

At Exeter it was no different.

Saints arrived in east Devon with their expensively assembled squad, their plentiful staff and equipment, having left their beautiful St Mary’s base with a training round in development that will be as good as a pretty much anything in the top flight.

When they arrived at St James’ Park it was to be handed leaflets that asked for donations from the public to help relay the pitch.

The club cannot afford it so the fans are being asked to help out.

Aside from a brief few months of financial perils, Saints could not even contemplate having to ask fans to pay for new grass.

These games do feel like cup games, but they are not.

This is the reality of life that Leeds have found in League One and Saints are too.

Odd though it may sound, it may actually be easier for them when they eventually make it up to the Championship because right now they are a team that every side looks forward to facing.

It’s the millionaires of Saints turning up, and here’s a little old club that has no real right to compete with them in many ways, aside from the fact they somehow find themselves in the same division.

So everybody around the club, including the players, raise their game.

Every match for Saints is like a cup game and that is a tremendously draining pressure to have.

When every side knows they can’t compete with you in quality and so go out and work at breakneck speed and with remarkable energy just to compete.

You are the big scalp they all want.

Saints are just getting used to this.

It’s something that the big teams in the top flight, your Manchester Uniteds and Chelseas of the world, have got used to.

Saints are taking time to adapt to that pressure.

Perhaps that is why their league form is stuttering but their cup form, where they have been the underdogs at times or at least in some cases – Norwich, Charlton, MK Dons for example – on a fairly even footing, is flourishing.

Pressure and expectation are tough beasts to deal with, especially when there is such little respite.

Even the likes of Tottenham are underdogs eight times a season when they play the big four sides.

The flyers asking for donations to replace the Exeter pitch were rather revealing of what was about to come.

The playing surface was shocking, absolutely shocking.

It cut up awfully while the bounce was so unpredictable that often there was no bounce at all.

To be fair to Exeter they, like Saints, are a passing team so it also does not help them.

They don’t want it that way, to try and even things up and turn it into an ugly scrap. Paul Tisdale would rather it was beautiful like St Mary’s and allowed for freeflowing football.

But then Exeter are also used to it and know how to get around it.

Saints are still adapting to having these different type of conditions – another parallel to cup games.

The match was, as conditions dictated, a real scrap.

Midfields were pretty regularly bypassed meaning Rickie Lambert, as the lone striker, was called upon once more to put his body on the line.

Chances were few and far between.

Andy Marriott made a couple of routine saves from Papa Waigo and Morgan Schneiderlin before Saints took the lead on 37 minutes.

It was from the one piece of genuine quality of the game.

Lloyd James hung up a cross from the right to the far post where Adam Lallana controlled beautifully and cut inside Steve Tully, leaving the Exeter defender on the ground.

He then quickly adjusted his feet and side footed low across Marriott and into the far corner.

Just four minutes into the second half the scores were level, though, Matt Taylor powering past Jose Fonte to slam home a header from Scott Golbourne’s corner.

Both sides had periods of pressure for the remainder of the match but neither could find another goal.

For Saints, debutant Jason Puncheon, a rare attacking bright spark with the ball at his feet, cut back to Lallana whose effort was saved by Marriott.

Elsewhere, Lambert’s deflected free kick looped just wide while ex-Exeter star Dan Seaborne had a chance to win it late on but scooped his effort from a goalmouth scramble just over from six yards out.

Exeter were arguably slightly more dominant in the second period, but Saints’ backline did restrict their chances.

Ryan Harley’s low cross might have been turned home by Barry Corr if he could have sorted his feet out quickly.

Substitute Bertie Cozic came closest to winning it in stoppage time when he turned on the edge of the area and curled a shot towards goal that Kelvin Davis got fingertips to at full stretch to deflect on to the outside of the post.

In these conditions the result was not a bad one for Saints in many ways.

If it was a cup game you would have accepted a replay and the chance to face them on your own, manicured, turf.

But this is the league and, as the table is showing, Saints need to find a way to win these games to stay in touch with the play-offs.