There were no real surprises in the Saints line up to take on the giants of Manchester City, the only real surprise came at the end of the game when the scoreboard still read 1-0 to the home side.
There weren't many Saints supporters who travelled up to the North West on Saturday who had much hope of anything other than a straight forward win for the home side, indeed at least one Saints fan had taken pre emptive action to dull the post match pain by placing a £10 bet on City to win 10-0. That would have netted him £2,000 at the 200-1 odds offered.
The first big question though was what the starting line up would be and the first question was whether Jack Stephens would be restored to the starting line up straight away, that was never really going to be a question just a given and that was the case at 1.45pm.
Elsewhere in the side the only other change from the side that started against Leicester was Joe Aribo dropped to the bench and in came Adam Lallana.
This in itself was strange, after the defeat against Leicester, Russell Martin when asked about why Lallana had not been used in that game and the defeat at Arsenal, he said that they were not Lallana's type of game, insinuating that a fast paced opposition were a lot of hard work would be needed, would not be Lallana's game.
So to see him in the starting line up against City, in what would be for most sides the toughest away game of the season was a very strange turnaround from the manager.
The game could not have started worse, with barely 5 minutes on the clock, Jan Bednarek allowed Erling Haaland to get in front of him and fire the ball home from close range, the game has barely started and already we have made a defensive error to concede a goal.
At this stage the 10-0 bet and £2,000 was looking a distinct reality for at least one lucky punter.
But in fairness we dug in and made sure things didn't get much worse, did we play well ? I wouldn't quite go that far, in truth City should have scored more, we relied on some stoic defending, some great goalkeeping and a couple of bad misses from the home side, to keep the score very respectable.
The travelling Saints support stayed with their team and the feeling in the stands was that Saints were not only taking on 11 City players but the referee as well, the home side seemed to get away with a lot more than the visitors and certainly the booking of Flynn Downes was harsh.
We did have the odd chance though and the best was Cameron Archer's run and shot which crashed against the bar, some would say he should have played the ball across for Tyler Dibling who was unmarked, but the truth is Archer was well placed to take on the shot and passing to Dibling would have been more difficult.
Dibling was replaced at half time for Adam Armstrong, again this change showed the puzzling side of Russell Martin, a week earlier against Leicester bringing on the hard battling Armstrong was to most an obvious substitution given we were defending a lead and needed to close down the game, but it was never made and the likes of Tall Paul & Sulemana, two players who are yet to make a real contribution to the club nearly two years after joining were preferred to an experienced team member.
At the Etihad Martin's substitutions were a little better and well timed, Aribo for Lallana on the hour mark was the right moment as Lallana had done his job and it was time for a rest,
Russell Martin kept the shape of the side till the 87th minute, unlike previous games when multiple substitutions and changes damaged the rhythm of the team and cost us dearly.
In the 87th minute on came the aforementioned Tall Paul and Sulemana, I could see the logic of this, we were 1-0 down and had done a job, at least Martin tried to perhaps snatch a point instead of hanging on to 1-0.
Overall though, despite the fact that we got zero points out of this and Brighton's late capitulation to Wolves meant we dropped to the bottom, the fighting spirit showed that there is still hope.
But there is still this nagging thought in the head, that this game was despite Russell Martin's team selections and not because of them.
On another day City could have got 4 or 5, from a footballing perspective we were always second best, but from a battling for our lives view point this was 9/10.
Now comes two games that will define the season, Everton at home and Wolves away, quite simple we cannot afford to lose either of them and in truth we have to win both, if we are to try and drag ourselves up the table.
Palace beating Spurs on Sunday, now means that we are 5 points from safety, at present there are 6 teams that could potentially go down, but this could very easily narrow down over the next couple of weeks, indeed defeat against Everton would leave us 11 points behind them.
So we have got the City game out of the way, now we have to start picking up points, Sport Republic have taken a big risk with Russell Martin, they have gambled that he can win these next two games, if he doesn't then we are in big trouble.