NIGEL Adkins hailed his side’s second-half performance against Watford, as Saints ran out 4-0 winners over the Hornets at St Mary’s.

After a tight opening period, with Rickie Lambert’s controversial penalty the only thing separating the teams, the hosts accelerated away.

Adkins was thrilled with some of the football his players produced after the break, as they improved their grip at the top of the Championship.

“We’ve had to work very hard today in the first half,” he said.

“We want to play out and they’ve presented us some challenges where we couldn’t quite do it.

“I thought the crowd were great, because we weren’t at the races first half in respect of being able to play out.

“I think we understand that you get back at half-past two or three o’clock on Wednesday morning (from Cardiff) and have to try and recover again to go on a scorching hot day against a team that was going to make it difficult for us.

“But we want to play, and in the second half I thought we played some great football.

“We changed the shape round just before half-time, because we didn’t have a grip of the game.

“We want to control the football and we didn’t have that.

“We’ve changed the shape round, because we’ve got adaptability in the side, and the second half we demonstrated our level of fitness and we demonstrated that we can pass the football, and some of the play was great.”