Martin hails Saints' youngsters

Ryan Fraser was the star of the show, scoring twice and assisting Saints’ second goal for Sékou Mara, but the manager was keen to shine the spotlight on the four teenagers who featured.

Jayden Meghoma and Sam Amo-Ameyaw, both 17, started the game, while Tyler Dibling (17) came on to make his home debut before Cameron Bragg (19) also made his first senior appearance from the bench.

“They deserve it. You have to earn it – you’re not giving out debuts or games to young guys just for the sake of it,” Martin said.

“We have some really talented young players. Jayden I thought was outstanding; so, so good, so talented, so young – it’s a hard position to play in the Championship when you’re that young. I don’t think there’s many doing that at this age.

“He came in today because he deserved it, and he was really excellent. He’s going to be a real exciting talent for the club moving forward.

“Sam Amo was great in bits – he’s really understanding more what we want from him out of possession. He’s been really good, I’ve enjoyed watching him and he’s trained really well recently.

“Tyler does his stuff, such a talented player, and I really enjoyed Braggy’s performance – he deserved to get on the pitch, I really like him as a young man and as a footballer. He’s really got such a good understanding, learns quickly, asks questions, so it was nice to get him on the pitch because he deserved that, and I thought he was really good when he came on.”

As for the game as a whole, Martin made nine changes to his starting line-up, saying he “enjoyed a lot of the performances on the pitch”.

“Such a young team out, but a really strong team still, I think, and people that deserved an opportunity that haven’t played a huge amount of minutes but have contributed a lot to this run we’ve been on, so I enjoyed a lot about it," he added.

“We started so well, and then 15 minutes before half time and maybe four or five minutes after half time, a bit sticky.

“I said to them at half time I was a bit frustrated because in this team the team look amazing at times when they get it right, in my opinion. The team can look really spectacular in what they do when they play with courage and aggression, but when they play in their position.

“At the end of the first half we end up with too many players running everywhere, people trying to take so many touches in the middle third to beat people and stuff, but we’re trying to get people into the final third to then do that and express themselves.

“There were just a few people trying too hard, probably, to make an impact in the game, and they did less in the second half, in terms of running everywhere – they played in their position more, which enabled them to do a lot more in the final third, so it was a good bit of learning, but it’s only out of their keenness to do really well and their desire to come and show something to the supporters and to us, to really impact the game.

“But so many of them impacted the game way more in the second half because they played in their position, and position in this team is king – you have to be really specialist in your position, that’s why you play there.”