Nigel Adkins described Saints’ draw with Blackpool as a “good point” for his side.

Rickie Lambert salvaged the draw with yet another goal deep into stoppage time just as it seemed Saints would slip to their first home league defeat for a year.

They manage to avoid that but their winning streak of 20 home league games did come to an end with Ian Holloway’s men bagging a deserved point.

Adkins said: “We’ve won a lot of games here.

“Unfortunately we went behind after being in front. I thought we did OK for a period of time but Blackpool did well to put themselves in front.

“It was great character from our players because we kept going all the way towards the end and Rickie Lambert’s popped up with an equalising goal towards the end and everybody’s emotions are different to if the scoreline had been 2-1.

“It was 2-2, a good point for us and another game undefeated at St Mary’s.

“It’s not a win but it’s not a defeat and what we’ll do is analyse the game but for now it was a good point.”

The Saints boss also had words of sympathy for Bartosz Bialkowski, who had a terrible afternoon in goal having replaced the injured Kelvin Davis.

“It’s always going to be challenging,” he reflected.

“Bart’s fantastic in training and it’s can you perform in the arena?

“I’ve got a lot of confidence in the lad and what we’ll do is pick him up. It happens, I’ve been in goal myself.

“Until you play in situations you don’t know if you can deal with it or not and he’ll be stronger for the situation that happened and the good thing is we’ve gone behind and didn’t lose the game from it.

“We remained strong and kept going all the way until the end which shows the character we’ve got in the team.

“Yes passes went astray and we’re a very good passing side but we ground out a result and that’s important.”