The game ended in an ironic familiar fashion with a soft last minute of injury time goal conceded that has been the hallmark of this season, but Saints fans didn't care they knew The Great Survival had been completed.
Season 1998/99 was dubbed the Great Escape as Saints stormed to Premier League safety after spending all but the last two games in either 19th or 20th place, this season was different, Saints went into steady decline after a solid start, they did not hit the relegation zone till the final third of the season and apart from a month from mid March till mid April spent most of the rest of the season clear of the bottom three.
But the issues were there for all to see, unlike 1999 this was not a storming ending to the season, but we crawled over the line, therefore this was The Great Survival, just as much down to the inability of Swansea to win any of their last 10 games and end the season with five straight defeats than our own endeavours, indeed we won only 2 of our last 11 games, gaining 11 points in the process, it was not our own team we needed to thank for our survival but the three teams below us who were worse.
Having said this, there was a change in attitude and performance levels in the squad, it would have been naive to think that Mark Hughes had a magic wand which he could wave and suddenly transform a squad in complete chaos and with zero confidence, however in the final games he did so to a degree, but we were not just fighting other teams we were fighting poor refereeing and just plain bad luck.
We knew this game would be hard, we knew that City would have a lot of possession, but we dug in and made sure that it counted for little, although City had 70% of the ball as I predicted in the preview of the game, they spent too much time trying to create the perfect chance and we worked hard to make sure they didn't get it, the fact that they had only two shots on target speaks volumes given their possession and we managed three ourselves.
Indeed as the game went on and it was clear that the ten goal swing was not going to happen, we grew in confidence and looked the side most likely to score in the later part of the second half, Dusan Tadic having a shot cleared off the line.
This game ended the way that many of the others have done, for over 90 minutes we battled like trojans, yet in the final minute of the final injury time of the season, we did exactly what we have done in countless games before, we lost concentration, we let Jesus get on the end of a ball leaving his marker for dead and City won the game.
To be honest we didn't care, survival was all that mattered, in fact part of me was pleased to see City get that 100 points total, but the goal illustrated just what has been the problem all season.
So we achieved that Great Survival, something that just over two weeks ago looked highly unlikely, those that moaned about a lack of entertainment have certainly got value for their money in the final three home games of the season, personally I preferred bored sh*tless and 8th lol !
So now we are safe we need to make sure that it never happens again, those that call for the board to be sacked wholesale need to consider that on that board there are those that have nothing to do directly with football matters, to do not sack the commercial director who had quadrupled income in the last four years because we failed on the pitch that is not his fault.
No we need to look at the root cause and learn from it, remember that those responsible have delivered four straight top 8 finishes, one poor season does not mean that all is wrong, but lessons do need to be learned and perhaps changes made.
Over the next week we want to see intent from the club, we want to see they know what went wrong and how to fix it.
But for today it is all about breathing a sigh of relief and thanking God and Swansea's strikers for The Great Survival !