Adam Lallana insists Saints were not distracted ahead of their massive cup games this week when they took on Exeter.

The Saints midfielder produced a bit of genuine quality on an awful pitch to score his first goal since late November to give Saints the lead at St James’s Park.

Lallana ended an 11-match goalless run with his 13th goal of the campaign.

But it proved not be the winner as lowly Exeter clawed back a point with a 1-1 draw.

Saints now have little time to prepare for the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy southern area final second leg against MK Dons at St Mary’s tomorrow night before then switching focus again to the FA Cup and Portsmouth on Saturday.

Lallana, though, believes those impending games had no effect on the result at Exeter.

He said: “The pitch was difficult but it was the same for both teams.

“You have to adapt to the conditions and they seemed to do that better than us in the second half.

“We’ve got to look forward now, we have a couple of big games coming up so we have to prepare and get ourselves right physically for those.

“The upcoming games weren’t a distraction for us.

“We have a big enough squad to cope with all three competitions that we are in, but maybe we need to just be a little bit tighter as a team.

“The good teams win games 1-0 so we just need to make sure that we pick up and I’m sure that between now and the end of the season we will do that.”

The goal was Lallana’s tenth league strike of the campaign and a welcome one after a barren run in what has been a campaign of quality and consistency from the midfielder.

His run of one goal in his last 12 league and cup games contrasts with the nine goals he had plundered in 12 games leading up to the FA Cup second round win at Northampton at the end of November.

“It was nice to score but I would much rather have taken the win and not been on the scoresheet,” he reflected.

“It’s been a few games and it’s been at the back of my mind, but in the end it is two points dropped.

“We were in a leading position again and we let it slip.

“It was awful conditions out there but that’s no excuse as it’s the same for both teams.

“We did quite well first half and we went in with the lead but we couldn’t hold on to it.

“We had a couple of chances but in the end we just ran out of ideas.”

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