A brace from on-loan Luke Varney condemned Saints to a costly 2-0 defeat at Hillsborough which leaves us 3 points from safety with only two games to play.

Full report to follow…

A late Marcus Tudgay goal gave Sheffield Wednesday a share of the spoils at St Mary’s after Bradley Wright-Phillips’ first-half strike looked like it was going to be enough to give Saints only their second home league win of the season.

Jan Poortvliet made his first change to the starting lineup in 4 games with Morgan Schneiderlin still recovering from a knock he picked up against Charlton last week. Alex Pearce replaced him, with Jack Cork moving into midfield.

Sheffield Wednesday started with an attacking-looking lineup with Francis Jeffers, Leon Clarke and Marcus Tudgay all named in the 11. Of the three, it was Tudgay who would occupy the slightly deeper role for most of the game.

Saints were fastest out of the blocks with Adam Lallana and Wright-Phillips central to most of the good moves, and it was Lallana who set up Andrew Surman on the edge of the area but his shot flashed wide of goal. Surman was the provider on 14 minutes when Saints took the lead. His 50-yard unchallenged run on the counter-attack ended when he laid the ball off for Wright-Phillips who cut inside Frankie Simek and curled the ball into the far corner.

It was all one-way traffic with Wright-Phillips bringing a decent save out of Lee Grant as he looked to double his own tally for the day and David McGoldrick powered a header over from a Rudi Skacel free-kick when he really should have at least hit the target. For all the domination in the first half, the one-goal lead held at half-time was the bare minimum deserved and arguably the game should have already been put to bed as the visitors had shown very little either going forward or at the back to suggest that they could get anything out of the game.

The second half began in much the same fashion with Robertson firing the ball into the six-yard box from out wide and David McGoldrick couldn’t quite get to it ahead of Grant. Jordan Robertson was replaced by Matt Paterson just after the hour mark and he was involved straight away when his header from Lloyd James’ cross caused havoc in the Wednesday defence but they eventually scrambled it clear.

He was also in the thick of the action soon after as he interchanged quick passes with McGoldrick and shuffled past Simek. He could have gone down and looked for a penalty but instead tried his luck from a narrow angle but could only find the side netting.

Saints started to look tired and seemed to run out of ideas as to how they were going to make the game safe, and reverted to a more defensive approach, hoping to hold onto what they had. Unfortunately, this invited the visitors to send more bodies forward and with time running out, an equaliser that had looked unlikely for most of the game eventually came. Just three minutes from the end of normal time, in fact. Leon Clarke was allowed to hold the ball up on the edge of the area without much challenge and he then rolled the ball to the side for Marcus Tudgay to side-foot the ball into the far corner.

It could even have ended in disaster as Kelvin Davis was forced to make a smart stop from Bartosz Slusarski in injury time, which would have been one of the worst cases of daylight robbery since the Securitas depot in Kent was raided in 2006!

Saints will certainly see this as two points dropped having led for so long and having dominated the game for long periods, but on the plus-side, with the exception of the last five minutes we are now starting to look reasonably solid at the back and going forward we seemed to look much brighter in terms of creativity than in recent home games.

Next up at home is Nottingham Forest. While they’re in the bottom three, they’re also unbeaten in 5 away games, so it’ll be a real test of character to see if we can get that much-needed second home win of the season. In the meantime, we have two tough away games, the first of which comes on Monday night at Crystal Palace.

Amid all the fuss about the FA Cup third round draw, it would be easy to forget that Saints have a league game tomorrow, where they welcome Sheffield Wednesday to St Mary’s.

Wednesday have been very hit-and-miss so far this season, in fact they have a symmetrical record in that they have won 8 and lost 8 in the Championship, and indeed their home and away form are direct opposites (6-2-2 at home, 2-2-6 away). While their away form overall is poor, they did win their last game on their travels - a 2-0 win at Blackpool - but like us, they seem to struggle to score goals.

Their leading scorer is Marcus Tudgay with six league goals, four of which have been scored at Hillsborough. At the other end, they have conceded 25 goals in 10 away games so far, which is the worst away defensive record in the Championship by some distance. Meanwhile, Saints have kept two clean sheets in a row and are unbeaten in three league games.

Jermaine Johnson is sidelined for the Owls with a knee injury but they could be boosted by the return of Tommy Spurr, Frankie Simek and Wade Small from their respective injuries.

Saints will again be without Michael Svensson, but Olly Lancashire could feature after he came through a reserve outing in midweek. Jason Euell is now available again after serving his three-match ban. Jan Poortvliet isn’t expected to make many changes from the team that started the goalless draw at Charlton, although Jordan Robertson may make way for Alex Pearce or Lancashire to allow Jack Cork to play in midfield.