The biggest surprise in the January transfer window was that Saints failed to sign a new central defender, with the problems that then arose they brought in Martin Caceres, but why has he not been used ?
Even those Saints fans not that close to the club knew that Jose Fonte was determined to leave St Mary's and try to cash in on his new found reputation after Euro 2016 and that Saints would need to replace him.
That need was compounded with only 10 days of the transfer window left when Virgil Van Dijk limped off against Leicester City, yet the window slammed shut without Saints landing a quality addition to the central defensive department.
That meant that the task of keeping the opposition at bay fell to Yoshida who had started the season in perhaps is lowest ranking in the pecking order with Cuco Martina ahead of him and Jack Stephens a player who in almost six years at St Mary's had reached the age of 23 without getting his name anywhere near a Premier league squad up until a few weeks earlier.
Florin Gardos was returning from injury but clearly Claude Puel does not rate the Romanian as h has not featured since the debacle against Arsenal in the FA Cup, a game when it would have been unfair to judge anybody with the team we put out being so unbalanced.
Martin Caceres arrived to the relief of many on 12th February on a deal possible because he was out of contract, assuming that he had been training prior to his signing, certainly he had done a week at Crystal Palace and another at Staplewood with Saints before his official arrival, the only real question was match sharpness.
In the meantime Claude Puel stuck wit Stephens and Yoshida with mixed results whilst it cannot be argued that both gave their all and have played well, the stark truth is that neither are of the quality required to be first choice at Premier League level.
We know that about Yoshida in this his fifth season at St Mary's, time spent mainly as back up and although Jack Stephens was a completely unknown quantity to most Saints fans given that his only appearance prior to this season was 3 mins as sub in an FA Cup tie at Coventry in January 2012, you have to surmise that there was good reason for that.
In 9 full Premier League appearances as a duo since the injury to Van Dijk we have conceded 14 goals in total an average of 1.55 per game and to be blunt only poor finishing in the three games prior to the City game last weekend has kept this to this figure.
Compare that to the 1.18 average prior to Van Dijk's injury and you can see the difference in goals conceded, some have said I have something personal against Yoshida and Stephens, nothing could be further from the truth, I want them to play well and succeed because that would mean that Saints would be doing better.
I try to be objective about their performances and 32,000 saw Bournemouth tear us apart and only fail to score three due to abysmal finishing not great defending and that for me is the issue, Claude Puel appeared to be happy with the scoreline and did see beyond that and that the performance defensively had been poor and that for me was the worrying factor.
So why is Puel not picking Caceres ?
There is a school of thought that says that it is about money, that Caceres is mainly remunerated on a pay to play basis, that being the case Puel is under pressure to use him only if absolutely necessary.
I don't buy that, give the money paid out in the Premier League per place, just getting us one place higher in the league would more than pay any wages we have had to pay to Caceres even if he had played every game since his arrival.
So it must be a different reason, I can't believe it is completely because Puel is happy with his current pairing, the stats I have pointed out show that if those were repeated over a season we would concede around 60 goals, a look at the current table shows that only 5 sides are likely to concede that many this term.
So if Puel really belives that Caceres is no better than he already has and it is not money then what is it ?
I cannot come up with any real reason myself, my big surprise is that Caceres has not at least been tried, on Saturday at 3-0 down and the game gone that would have been the ideal time to get him on the pitch for 10-15 minutes, let him get the feel of the pace of the Premier league and just take a look at him, but instead we had the debacle of the Shane Long substitution.
But prior to that we had three league games in the space of a week, six months ago this would have been the cue for wholesale changes from Puel, yet this time he in the main injury and suspension aside kept faith with the same team.
I must admit I'm completely baffled by the situation with Caceres, but I am also completely baffled with Claude Puel, I was never a critic of Puel up till recently, I took into account some of the factors that were beyond his control, injuries to key players ranging from Charlie Austin and Virgil Van Dijk with long term problems to what seems endless shorter term knocks.
I took into account the fact that we had the Jose Fonte issue and how that had completely scuppered our plans for the season on the eve of the transfer windo shutting in August and this should not be underestimated when considering the merits of this season.
I always said that Puel should be judged over the season and not in either a short term in the first half, or isolated periods, but just as i hoped that Puel would start to show he is the man to lead Saints forward, I am disappointed by what I see.
Manager's should have consistency, but Puel has shown none of late, whether it's Jordy Clasie's MOM performance at West Brom and winning goal earning him nothing more than a place on the bench the next week or the Caceres situation I am baffled by our manager.
I therefore can only conclude that the reason Martin Caceres has not been given even a minute of first team action since his arrival is completely down to the manager, he cannot seem to be proactive, he cannot look at areas of the team and make subtle changes, he has to either stick with what he has got and hope it works or as he did in the first half dress it up as a rotational system.
This is worrying, very worrying.
Earlier in the season Puel appeared confident in what he was doing, now he doesn't, he almost seems disinterested, is he just seeing his time out here now, is there something behind the scenes we don't know about, will we see another managerial change in the summer ?