It took Nathan Jones all of 45 minutes to run into a problem that has plagued Saints throughout their disappointing early season.

The problem - a rather big one - is simple: a catalogue of meek and meandering first halves. Only in the job for a matter of days before heading to Anfield, Jones could be forgiven for expecting the Saints of old who would get in your face and make life uncomfortable regardless of opposition.

READ MORE: Saints manager Nathan Jones: 'I wasn't here to get autographs'

After all, that’s what he experienced with Luton and it had been a key tenant of Saints’ Premier League run over the last four years. Not anymore though and it’s a major reason why Saints will find themselves in the relegation zone on Christmas Day.

On Saturday, Liverpool won the first half by a score of 3-1 while keeping 66% of the ball and out-shooting Saints eight to four. Jurgen Klopp’s side are amongst the league's elite, but this pattern has become commonplace.

Saints have led at half time in just three of their 15 league fixtures while managing 4.5 shots in each first half compared to 7.1 shots in their second halves. Jones quickly learnt of this issue through 45 minutes that saw the game lost.

“I thought we were really passive first half,” the new boss explained. 

“We scored from a wonderful delivery, but then I felt we were really passive, we were just waiting for the inevitable to happen and that’s not teams that I have. We go after teams, we punch above our weight, and today for 30 minutes we didn’t do that. 

“The goal before half time killed us. But second half, really proud of how they reacted, really proud of the performance, how they went about it, young players, game-changers we brought on.

“I felt we were really passive first half. We allowed top world-class players too much space and time and if you do that, that’s borderline footballing suicide. So that’s something we’ll address and work with - we will work on the negatives and be better in the next game. But the positives for me is the second half and how we went about our work.”

Jones now has six weeks to build with his new squad and tackle the spate of issues affecting Saints this season. Top of the list may indeed be the first issue he spotted, the damaging and repeating first half nothingness.

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