Rickie Lambert felt Saints should have been out of sight in the first half against Orient.

The striker's deflected free-kick gave the hosts a well earned lead against the O's, but a flurry of opportunities after the visitors' equaliser somehow couldn't yield more goals.

"The free-kick was a bit lucky with the deflection, but it's brilliant for me to get off the mark," he said. "I thought we deserved it, because I think we deserved to be three up in the first twenty minutes, we were just unlucky not to score the goals.

"It was a massive disappointment to concede straight after, and it was my fault because my defender scored which is so frustrating and I apologised to the players. I was a bit gutted but I was confident that we would go on and win the game, but it just wasn't to be today.

"They had their luck today as well, but we know how teams are going to play and I thought we'd done enough to beat them because we deserved to win 3 or 4-1. How Barnard hasn't scored I don't know, some of the strikes he had, the 'keeper pulled off some unbelievable saves from him and he's hit the bar and post too, so it was an unlucky day for him.

"As the game went on it became a bit more frantic to try and score the winner, but I was confident all through the game that we were going to win because we blew them away in the first half an hour and just couldn't score the goal, so I don't think there is too much pressure on us, but it did build as the game went on."

Rickie conceded that he has been desperate to get back into the action, and says he is not far from being on top of his game again, as the team looks to build on the start to the league campaign.

"I've been dying to get back in. it was disappointing to miss a few weeks of training and not playing, which I think I felt today especially in the second half when I was struggling, but the fitness will come back through playing games. I'm not far off being my old self.

"Everyone knows that our main objective this season is the league. We all wanted the first win but we haven't managed it, but it's still only early days, if we look at the performances then I think we can say that we've been very, very good especially in the first halves.

"We just need to play the same, but it's that bit of luck which we didn't have today because some of those chances would have gone in on another day."