I'd agree, sounded like the effort was there but lacked a little composure and organisation at times. That's what comes with no 1st choice halves and no captain.

They also said afterwards he looked furious at being subbed

Usually I think he does ok but tonight he hated us. Think Doc has become a very good commentator though, and I liked him when he played for us.

Returning to the game ,I thought Horne was very quiet last night

He will have been if he was playing 7 and oranising the attack.....Horne isnt a organiser and would have trouble organising a pi$$ up in the pub...No disrpepect to Horne,its just not his stron point.

We lacked direction and creativity. And greatly missed Fitz

I see Horney brought his usual drop off in to every set of attack we had, he seems to do it real with no effort. Which makes it so predictable!

And his laser guided kicking crept back into his game!! He made Wellens look good yesterday!!

don't recall saints kicking game being all that great last night, but still managed to beat us in other areas!

We weren't aggressive enough, our line speed was really slow. To win any saints team you have to get in their faces and we didn't do that at all, tbh saints probably made as many errors as we did but they were more clinical than us.

I think we seriously need some craft around the dummy half, saint's dummy half options last night were far superior. Tickle was my MOM.

Horney was always going to struggle with the loss of Obst imo. With Obst out Horney had to take on the role of organiser, lead kicker and the main source of creativity which arent some his stronger points had Obst being fit Horne would have being free to do what he does best like support the ball carrier, burst through a gap etc...

Your forwards ran hard, but everytime they were barrelling straight into the chest of the tackler, making some yards but not creating much threat past that.
In contrast, the Sainst forward "hit edges" which gave us a few more half breaks, and our halves seemed to balance forward drives with wide ball much better.

At the end of the day, if either team had sharpened up ball retention, they'd probably have won the match easily.