Have Southampton finally found their scoring touch?

After all, this was a team that had scored just twice in their previous five games and once in their previous four. A rather uninspiring zero shots on target before the interval would have only added to the sense of dread.

But less than 60 seconds after the restart, the ball was in the back of Spurs’ goal courtesy of Che Adams’ deft finish.

It was a step in the right direction but those half-time feelings of dread would have returned with a vengeance when Ivan Perisic seemingly killed the game off with a 74th-minute bouncing volley to make it 3-1.

READ MORE: Selles - 'I cannot say we will be okay, but we will fight for every point'

After all, this was a team that had scored just three goals in their previous five-and-a-half games and just twice in their previous four-and-a-half. 

Yet by full-time it was the Saints fans celebrating a remarkable come-from-behind point as Antonio Conte raged on the touchline in his final moments as Spurs boss. To complete such a task, Saints were required to do what they hadn’t managed all season: score three goals in a game.

And in doing so, they gave real hope for the remainder of the relegation battle.

Goals have proved destructively elusive for Saints this season under each of their three managers. Ralph Hasenhittl set his side out at the start of the season to be defensively solid and survive in games rather than push forward and the Austrian just never quite found the right balance.

Under Hasenhuttl’s guidance Saints scored just 12 goals in their first 14 games including just five in his final nine games in charge. The manager can justifiably point to the lack of a seasoned goalscorer signing in the summer but the problem was there nevertheless.

James Ward-Prowse celebrates his equalising penalty against Spurs. (Image: Stuart Martin)

Things hardly improved under Nathan Jones. The former Luton boss arrived on the scene and immediately pointed to his new side’s lack of clean sheets as the area to solve first. Saints displayed signs of progress on the defensive front but any good work was undone by individual errors at the back coupled with their inability to score.

Across Jones’s disastrously short eight-game reign, Saints found the net just seven times, with all six post-World Cup strikes coming from either James Ward-Prowse or Charly Alcaraz - despite insisting early on that strikers always score in his teams.

But in fairness to Jones, when Ruben Selles replaced him, the goalscoring issues hardly improved. That was until the second against Spurs at St Mary’s.

Not only did they break their three-goal bogey, but Saints also accumulated their highest expected goals number of the entire season as they put together waves of genuinely dangerous attacking play. Meanwhile, Adams became the first forward to score for Saints since he did so at Anfield just before the World Cup.

As each negative record was tossed to the side, it was hard not to get more and more optimistic about this team’s chances. Despite conceding three to Spurs, Selles’s early days have been full of defensive positivity, keeping three clean sheets in his first five games as manager.

The missing piece, of course, has been goals. With the second half against Spurs providing something of a blueprint, the challenge now is to make that repetitive, to do so regularly.

In order to do so, Saints have had to figure out how to become a more efficient attacking team - one that can carry a real attacking threat with more regularity.

While Saints rank a respectable 11th in shots per game with 11.54 this season, that in itself only tells part of the story and a deeper dive into their shooting habits helps explain why they entered the second half against Spurs joint-last for goals scored this season.

If we break down those 11.54 shots per game it becomes clear that Saints have been taking a lot of bad shots - a lot of shots that just don’t have a reasonable chance of regularly leading to anything concrete.

They rank third-bottom for shots on target with just 30% of their effort causing trouble and the location and types of shots they are taking help to explain this trend. Saints also sit third-last in terms of goals scored per shot taken while perhaps most damningly, they are comfortably bottom when it comes to expected goals per shot.

Che Adams has been guilty of a number of high-profile misses this season. (Image: Stuart Martin)

Part of the reasoning for this is that they sit top for the percentage of shots from outside the box and second-bottom for shots from inside the penalty box. The overall trends of expected goals tell us that shots from closer-range within the width of the posts have a higher chance of leading to goals than shots from distance; something that we all intuitively already know.

Now, obviously, there are exceptions to the general rule. When Ward-Prowse gets the ball outside the box, the crowd naturally expects and demands him to shoot and he’s good enough from range to continue trying. But overall, Saints have failed to find repeatable ways to score this season and the statistics clearly show that their methods have not worked.

But there were genuine positive signs against Spurs.

Adams’ equaliser was a great example of those positive signs in action. Far too often this season, Saints have taken the easy option with the ball, either playing it backwards or smashing it long.

The mix of progressive urgency and vision to pick a forward pass has lacked at times but as soon as Romeo Lavia receives the ball here, there’s only one thing on his mind. The midfielder has Stuart Armstrong ahead of him for a simple pass but the Scottish international has his back to goal and no obvious place to go - other than backwards.

Instead, Lavia looks one further. He moves to unlock Spurs with a pass between their defenders and into the space behind them where Theo Walcott is running on.

This move combined two attacking elements that have been missing. There’s the bravery and quality to attempt the pass and then there’s Walcott’s driving run beyond the Spurs defence. Both prove equally critical and it leads to a golden opportunity - that Adams does indeed take.

Lacking the incisive quality to frequently open teams up Saints have needed to take more chances and create space in the final third. They failed to do it against Brentford as the Bees cruised to a 2-0 victory but with Walcott’s pace in behind and Lavia’s ability to find his runs, Saints were a far more threatening proposition.

Additionally, Saints were much more effective at getting bodies into the box. Granted, it came with nothing to lose as they chased the game but Saints committed to each attack and threw bodies forward to try and create an opening.

Moments before Walcott’s goal to make it 3-2, Saints embarked on an attack that ended with Ainsley Maitland-Niles seeing a decent effort tipped over the bar by Fraser Forster.

And while we’ve spent much of this article explaining why Saints shouldn’t be shooting as much from distance, this opportunity opens up because they’ve penned Spurs back and taken all the territory around the box.

As Ward-Prowse receives the ball - before moving it sideways to Maitland-Niles - Saints have as many as four players in the box.

From the ensuing corner, Saints remain committed with bodies in the box and when Sekou Mara rises highest to win Ward-Prowse’s cross, he is one of three Saints players in and around the area. The increased numbers help generate luck and in this case, the ball falls perfectly to Walcott to tuck home.

It’s not an exact science and the finest of margins will continue to play a major role in the conclusion of Saints’ season.

But against Spurs, Saints seemed to stumble - intentionally or not - onto a far more explosive attacking presence and if that can hold down the stretch, they’ve got a real chance at survival.