Saints started badly at Brighton, but rolled up their sleeves and ground out a big win albeit it in controversial fashion with a little help from VAR, but Saints fans won't care it was ultimately three points that took us to 5th place in the Premier League.
Saints stormed up to 5th place in controversial fashion to win their third straight Premier League game in a row at the Amex Stadium.
It was a poor start for Saints in the first half as they struggled to gain any momentum and as in the previous game against United were getting caught on the ball too often and second best on too many occasions.
Brighton themselves didn't look convincing and relied too heavily on getting the ball forward quickly at every opportunity.
The first penalty of the night was not under dispute though, for some strange reason James Ward Prowse stuck his hand in the air for no reason and when the ball hit it he had no excuse and Brighton scored from the spot to give them the lead on 26 minutes.
For a little while the home side were on top and it looked like Saints would need to get into the break and then try and get some enthusiasm into their game and indeed cut out the sloppy play.
But as Ralph Hasenhuttl was writing his words to lambast his side at half time a perfect corner from James Ward Prowse found the towering Jannik Vestergaard who powered home a header into the corner of the goal.
At half time on came the King Of The Scummers and Saints looked a different side, suddenly they looked like they wanted to play and started to control play and the game fell into a familiar pattern with Saints passing their way forward and Brighton trying to catch us on the counter.
As the game headed into the final 10 minutes came the controversy, Kyle Walker Peters stormed forward and was pushed, of that there was no doubt, no one was complaining on either side about it being a free kick on the edge of the box, but then came 2 minutes of VAR with no real conclusive evidence to suggest that the ref's decision should be overturned, but suddenly it was and up stepped Danny Ings to blast home from the spot.
It just left Saints to see out the remaining 10 minutes plus injury time and this was done with no real drama to see us take the spoils.
This was not a great win, we were far from convincing, too many times we were getting caught in possession and for most of the first half we looked too sluggish, even when Ings appeared although we picked up we struggled to make clear chances.
It was a game that could have gone either way, Saints were clearly the better side, but they lacked Brighton's battling and that made it an end to end even game, but the reality is that neither keeper had a real save of note to make.
But they say the true test of a team is when they keep winning when they are playing badly and we certainly did that this evening.
Sometimes you need a bit of luck and this evening was one of those days that it went for us.
So with all the weekend's fixtures over we are in 5th place on merit, every Saints fans would have taken that before kick off and certainly at the start of the season, not just this season but any season we have ever played in the Premier League.
We now have to press home that advantage on Sunday against Sheffield United, we have to keep looking forward, my first reaction was to thin only i we had held on against United and won, one point behind the leaders would have been fantastic, but we can't change that result, we can only play who is up next.
Not a game we will remember for flowing football, we rarely got into our stride, but it will be remembered for being the day we learnt to win ugly and that could see us well in the future.
As Ralph Hasenhuttl said after the game we are starting to believe in ourselves, we are fighting as a team and have team spirit, a year ago we would have lost a game like this to a side that looks to catch us on the break, but we rolled our sleeves up and never believed that we were beaten.
This attitude will carry us through this season and with every game we get stronger.