Lets be blunt we have been there before and come back and prospered, but tonight we were beaten by another inept refereeing performance combined with VAR yet again.
I am not going to make any excuses here, the fact that Alexandre Jankewitz was sent off after only 75 seconds was the biggest factor in this defeat and why the hell he was making a challenge like that in the first minute God only knows.
But let's be honest we would have lost this game if we had the full 11, we were just too ravaged by injury to be able to compete with a United side who were in free flow.
Too many players did not stand up and be counted and Ralph won't be happy with that.
In the first half the sending off knocked us out of our stride and we were forced to reshuffle, United tore us apart on our left, exposing Kayne Ramsey who was getting no cover from Moussa Djenepo who too often went missing and seemed unaware of his position.
No excuses for the first half United took us apart when we were vulnerable.
Second half we found our shape and seemed able to be able to deal with a United side who had made changes .
But we were not helped by VAR several key decisions went against us, Che Adams saw a goal that could not have had more than millimetres in it, with the camera not being level it was impossible to give a accurate decision and from this perspective it was not a clear and obvious error and that is what VAR is meant to be there for, not to debate millimetres where no truly accurate result can be achieved, but to rule out the clear and obvious.
On 69 minutes it changed when Martial hammered the ball home, it was a carbon copy of the goal conceded against Leicester a few weeks ago, the United player hammering home from an acute angle as Alex McCarthy dropped to one knee.
A minute later it was 6 with a long range effort going in.
But 10 man Saints dug in again and seemed to have made sure it was a rout but not another slaughter, but then came VAR again.
Martial went to go past Bednarek who pulled out of the tackle, Martial was already diving when any contact could have been made, VAR could not decide it was again inconclusive and not clear and obvious , indeed you could clearly see that there was no contact between them.
VAR could not decide so over went Mike Dean to look at the screen this he did but as he was watching the replay the screen froze, for around a minute he looked at the frozen screen and then spoke in his earpiece, he then went back gave the penalty and sent off Bednarek.
The Polish defender had clearly pulled out of the challenge, Martial clearly dived and Bednarek went down the tunnel and was shown after saying to the camera that Martial had admitted it was not a foul.
Ultimately Mike Dean could have made the decision, after his display in the VAR role when we played Villa, I have to say I think Dean is at best inept and at worse a genuine cheat, I stop short of accusing him of that, but for perhaps the first time in my life I can honestly say that I feel a referee is not acting in an honest way.
With 3 minutes to go the penalty was converted and we were in trouble , down to 10 men and we were clearly now disorientated and raging about the incidents.
Ironically Mike Dean only gave 3 minutes of injury time, I wasn't complaining, but given that we had spent over 4 minutes on the penalty VAR incident, at least 2 minutes on the Adams offside, several injuries and 3 substitutions it was another case of Mike Dean getting something drastically wrong again, perhaps he felt sorry for us and realised his mistakes have cost us and cut things short before he got things wrong again.
Two more goals followed the last being the last kick of the game.
No one is complaining about the result, that was down to us and the actions of Jankewitz, but the refereeing and VAR decisions were appalling and the sending off at Bednarek is a real problem for us when we go to Newcastle unless the red card is overturned.
Lets get this right though we lost this due to our performance, not because of Gao, not because of a lack of players coming in during the transfer window, not because we let fringe players out on loan, but what happened on this night alone.
Rant & rave about the defeat, but do so on the game itself and the performance on the night.
The good news is that few sides can have so many key players out as we have at the moment, when they are back we can start to compete again.
Ralph Hasenhuttl was shell shocked after the game, but In Ralph We Trust, he will get it right and we march on.