Saints won through at Craven Cottage but it came at a price with two players taken off injured as a goal by Michael Obafemi saw them home.
As promised Ralph Hasenhuttl put out a strong side, but it took a bit of time for them to get going with the home side dominating the opening exchanges.
But as the game went on Saints started to get a grip and went into the break all square and looking stronger as the half went on.
In the second half Saints started to impose themselves and although Fulham still enjoyed the majority of possession, Saints started to dominate chances on goal and more importantly shots on target and by the end of 90 minutes the home side had barely added to their total on the half hour mark and finished the game with 7 shots and only 1 on target that single effort to trouble Alex McCarthy coming in the first half, with Saints eventuallu amassing 19 shots and 7 on target.
The winner came in the 57th minute when Michael Obafemi sidefooted home a Nathan Redmond cross from close range.
From then on Saints dominated, however it came at a price, firstly the scorer Obafemi went off on 68 minutes to be replaced by Danny Ings, but then came the worrying moment as Nathan Redmond went down in the 74th minute and stayed down, after prolonged treatment he could not continue and had to depart to be replaced by Shane Long.
Saints saw out the rest of the game without serious incident and indeed could easily have added to the total.
In the end it was a pleasing win, however it came at a price and that could be the fact that Nathan Redmond could be missing on Saturday for the visit of Manchester United, Redmond has become an integral part of the Saints side and is perhaps the biggest loss should he not be available.
Of course we have options to replace him including new signing Moussa Djenepo.
One player whose future became no clearer was Sofiane Boufal, he completed 90 minutes and looked tidy winning more tackles than any other player, but he perhaps did not create enough going forward.