NIGEL Adkins felt Saints deserved to beat Notts County with their second half performance.

The Saints boss saw his side make it four wins from five and just one loss in eight with a 3-1 victory at Meadow Lane.

They did it the hard way, falling behind in a lacklustre first half performance but two goals in the space of five second half minutes on the back of a red card for County skipper John Thompson fired them to victory before Adam Lallana put the icing on the cake in stoppage time.

Adkins said: “Great credit to the players who have shown great character to turn the game around.

“It wasn’t going our way in the first half and the players have responded very well in the second half and we’ve got a well deserved victory in my eyes.

“Yes we talked about before the game that the set play delivery of Davies is exceptional and we knew it would be a threat so we talked about not giving cheap set plays away and we did that early on.

“I thought we started well with Barney getting a shot off within the first 30 seconds but credit to them, they’ve got a new manager in place and were certainly up for it and we had to earn the right to play.

“We maybe weren’t as competitive as I would have liked us to have been first half but we have to give the opposition a bit of credit for that but second half for me we have deservedly won the game.”

Full match report, pictures and action in Monday's Daily Echo