Saints ended the year in fine style as they made it 17 games unbeaten and a 7th consecutive home victory and in doing so are now 6 points ahead of Leeds and only 3 off an automatic promotion spot.
For 90 minutes this was a comfortable game for Saints, but they shot themselves in the foot and made it a nervy 6 minutes of injury time.
Saints dominated from the start and for most of the game limiting Argyle to sporadic breakaway, including one that saw Sam Edozie chase back to help the defence and make a great tackle to block a cross that would have seen an attacker unmarked in the centre.
It is things like this that can help win games just as much as goals and Edozie capped a fine game with this piece of defending.
Saints thought they had gone ahead in the first half but Che Adams was offside and his great finish didn't count, Taylor Harwood Bellis headed against the post and Adam Armstrong almost scored from an audacious long range effort but the game reached half time goalless.
The game burst into life 10 minutes after half time when Plymouth thought they had scored but the linesman's flag again went up, perhaps the scorer was harshly judged, but in truth as the man who supplied the cross had received the initial pass he was clearly offside, so whether in today's confusing offside rules the flag was for this or not is unclear.
Argyle felt aggrieved and they were caught on the hop as a minute later Charley Alcaraz fired home a superb opening goal to make it a double set back for the visitors.
7 minutes later and the scoreline was doubled when a ball forward from Taylor Harwood Bellis found Che Adams get in behind the defence and steer the ball home to send the home crowd including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wild.
So the game was safe for Saints, but again came that triple substitution a couple of minutes later and I don't think this helped in finding the third goal, by the 82nd minute we had changed half the outfield line up and i think this almost cost us dearly with some changes being made for change sake rather than tactical reasons.
It is fine bringing on fresh legs up front or a single midfielder, but changing the dynamics defensively when you are holding a slender lead is not good practice, this is not aimed at Jack Stephens being brought on, he did not have a bad game, but we had to have a reshuffle to bring him on for the last 8 minutes and that upset the balance a little defensively.
2-0 up is still a scoreline that can be pulled back and if Russell Martin is making a mistake at the moment I think this is it at times.
90 minutes came up on the clock and we passed it around at the back and knocked it back to Gavin Bazunu, in fairness to the keeper the backpass had a bit of pace on it and he was being closed down fast, his first touch wasn't great and the ball was blocked into the net by Hardie. Although it should be said overall Bazunu was excellent.
This could now be a problem for Saints, although in fairness they didn't panic and stuck to their normal game with the confidence that they wouldn't make the same mistake twice and saw out the final total of 7 minutes or so with relative ease.
Perhaps the late goal put a damper on the game, but the fact was it was still a win come the final matter, it is not about how we get to a win, it is about being there when the final whistle blows, we had made it our 7th straight home win and also our 17th game unbeaten.
But this wasn't the only landmark, we also went past the 50 points mark and on to 51, and also our points average has gone over 2 per game.
This must have put a bit of pressure on those both above us and blow, Leicester didn't blink and won at Cardiff, but Leeds lost at West Brom and Ipswich fired blanks and were held at home by QPR.
So that means we start 2024 6 points ahead of Leeds and more importantly only 3 behind Ipswich, suddenly over the space of the last week we have gone from also rans in the automatic promotion race to potential favourites for the 2nd spot as Ipswich start to falter.
It is starting to become less important, but we are also 14 points ahead of 7th place.
That is testament from the work Russell Martin and his coaches have done over the last 3 months, they have rebuilt the squad and turned us from the leakiest defence in the Division to one of the tightest, we are also one of the top scorers and perhaps more significantly in that department, we are not reliant on one man to score the bulk of the goals, Charly Alcatraz was the 9th scorer of the 12 goals notched in the last 4 games.
As I keep saying it is a war of attrition, we just have to keep doing what we are doing and putting the pressure on.
In the last 5 games we have won 4 and drawn 1, Leicester have matched that, but Ipswich have taken just 6 points and Leeds just 4.
All unbeaten runs have to come to an end and surely we can't go the rest of the season unbeaten, can we ?
But at the moment you feel this team could do just that, for us a disaster is not a defeat it is just getting a draw and our rivals are now feeling the pressure.