After having one of the meanest defences in the Premier League last season Saints have started this one conceding goals, but fundamentally it is about one issue needing to be addressed.
Last season Saints had two of the fastest full backs in the Premier League playing regularly every week in their side with Nathaniel Clyne playing 35 games and Ryan Bertrand only one less, on top of that they were not both missing at the same time which meant raely were teams able to catch us on the break as they have done too many times in the five goals we have conceded so far.
But if we take a look at those goals conceded the real issue here is a lack of pace at the back, yes we do need a strong central defender, being blunt Yoshida is not strong enough, last season he could get away with it in a pacy defence, but not at the moment. So the real problem comes down to a lack of pace along with a couple of concentration issues.
The second goal at Newcastle and the first on Saturday were almost carbon copies of each other, both Newcastle and Everton broke from a corner and crossed quickly and caught us napping, last season this would not have happened because the full backs were quick enough to stop it.
Now this is not really a criticism of either Cedric Soares or Matt Targett, both are good full backs, but both are different types of player to Clyne and Bertrand, whereas the Soares and Targett are more traditional type full backs who make the ball do the work, last season's pairing are as much wing backs as full backs and can often use their pace to get them out of trouble.
Hopefully Ryan Bertrand will be back soon and that will solve a lot of the problems at the back at least in terms of pace and that is really the problem, take those aforementioned goals out and both games might well have had different results.
Of course we still need a central defender, but part of that problem has been resolved already with the arrival of Steven Caulker, Virgil Van Dijk as well will do wonders.
The way some Saints fans have reacted to Saturday's drubbing you ould think the Word was at an end, after the same number of games last season we had the same number of points as now and the bed wetters were out in force then, yes we are still a work in progress, but we had a lot of key players missing on Saturday and that didn't help, at least one more player in and the return of Ryan Bertrand and we will see something like the team of last season, in fact we already have in the Europa League.