Russell Martin did not stick to his pre match promise of playing his best available side and made 6 changes to his starting outfield 10, after a promising start, the game faded into a familiar pattern.
The changes were rung in the starting line up with Goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale seeing 6 outfield changes in front of him from the side that kicked off at Manchester City on Saturday.
But this was still a side full of experience with only Lesley Ugochukwu & Mateus Fernandes fitting the description of youngsters.
The game started well, Saints taking command and passing it around and it was no surprise when Taylor Harwood-Bellis headed home to give us the lead, when Adam Armstrong doubled the lead on 35 minutes from the penalty spot, you felt that there would only be one winner and an emphatic one at that.
But the second goal only served to stir up Stoke City and as the break approached you sensed that Saints might yet throw away yet another lead, some panic stricken defending saw the ball rebound off Sugawara and an acrobatic finish from Phillips halved the lead on the stroke of half time.
Now you sensed that that it was game on and that proved to be the case when on 54 minutes yet more poor defending saw Stoke take the lead.
Yet again we had thrown away a lead with a lack of organisation and leadership.
Now the game fell into a pattern that has become all too familiar, we passed the ball and then we passed it again, but rarely did we actually threaten the Stoke goal, they however looked threatening on the break and could have taken the lead, but Sugawara made a great desperate last ditch clearance with the ball almost crossing the goal line.
On 67 minutes off came Mateus Fernandes, just about our only creative player along with Cameron Archer and on came Ben Brereton Dias and Tall Paul Onuachu and things did not get better, we had plenty of possession, 78% to be exact, but Stoke got men behind the ball and frustrated both the team and the crowd, yes we passed and passed the ball, but we did little with it.
On 81 minutes we took off Jan Bednarek and Adam Armstrong and brought on Sulemana and Sam Amo-Ameyaw, but the game didn't change much, in fact it got worse, now we were now even more disorganised than before, we got into promising positions, but we didn't make anything of them.
But the game did have a twist, out of the blue James Bree fired in a low shot into the bottom right hand corner from 25 yards in the 88th minute to give Saints a win that no one thought would happen.
There was still 2 minutes plus injury time to navigate, in truth 8 minutes added was probably kind to Saints given the number of subs made & the amount of time that Stoke players spent on the ground needing treatment.
But the goal seemed to break Stoke hearts and we saw out the remaining minutes without any real scares.
But the fact remained that once again we had struggled, we had again got into a winning position but thrown it away, we had shown that possession football does not work for us at either end, both defensively and also from an attacking perspective, as mentioned 78% possession, but only 12 attempts on goal, Stoke had 6, we had only 5 on target, Stoke scored both of their only 2 on target.
More worryingly we had only 32 touches in the Stoke penalty area, this highlights our failure to get the ball into positions to score goals, Stoke who had 22% possession had 15 touches in our box.
The Stoke keeper aside from the goals had only 2 saves to make.
All of this adds up to show that we do not have the players to play this possession football game, our team seem to be playing to instruction and afraid to play the killer ball unless it is nailed on, we are scared to play quick balls into the box to try and catch the opposition on the back foot.
Put bluntly we might have won this game, but if I was on the Southampton board, it would have rung alarm bells, if we cannot implement this style against Stoke who with respect are an average Championship side, then how is it ever going to work in the Premier League.
In the league the focus on our game has all been about the defensive lapses, but this game highlighted our lack of goals and to be blunt, our board should be asking the question as to why with 78% possession we created so few chances, our forwards rarely get a decent chance, they make runs, but never get the ball, it is played out wide and then back to the midfield again.
This is why we are losing so many games and enough is enough, Russell Martin cannot say he has not had enough time to change things and that is the problem, he is inflexible, it is his way or nothing else, this could be the difference between being a great manager or just another has been, good managers adapt to the squad they have and are prepared to make changes when things aren't working.
Art the moment Martin doesn't seem to have any answers other than just playing keep ball, I truly worry about going into the Everton game on Saturday, I cannot see anything other than us doing the same things and getting the same results.
For me as I have said, we might have scraped a win in this game, but the deficiencies were there for all to see just as plainly than if we had lost, something has to change and if Russell Martin cannot change, then Russell Martin must be changed, I truly hope that I am proved wrong !