I don't think you will find many Saints supporters in disagreement about this game, it was a shambles, a team with no leadership or direction and more to the point no attacking threat, it does not bode well.
It is hard to find anything good or positive to say about this game aside from the stats, 58% possession, more attempts on goal, 4 shots on target with Palace having only 2, but the only stat that mattered was the scoreline.
Aside from a brief period in the last 10-15 minutes when Saints finally woke up and poured forward albeit with little cohesion about their attacks, there was little to speak positively of in this display.
But if Saints are relegated and bizarrely that is still far from being rubber stamped, despite yet another setback, it isn't this game that will have sent them down, it is a chain of events some out of the club's control and many that are, that will have all added up to one great mess that sees us relegated.
I am not going to go into detail yet, but when you have three managers in a season that is an indication of just what a mess we are in and that those in charge are either panicking or didn't know what they are doing in the first place.
We panicked when we dumped Ralph Hasenhuttl, a man who had experience in football management at the highest level and had suffered from a horrendous injury list in his final half dozen games and replaced him with a man who only had experience in the lower leagues and whose coaching methods were outdated and soon had to be sacked.
Ruben Selles is a decent man and in time may become a top coach, but the truth is he had no experience as a manager only as a coach and not at a level that was needed in a relegation battle.
He should not have been put in this position, clearly the players like him and respond to him, but he does not have the experience to make key tactical decisions and more to the point has little experience to lean on to help him out in his coaching staff.
This is why yet again we are putting out a team that clearly has talent, but has no set pattern of play and no leadership or organisation on the pitch, James Ward Prowse leads by example and he is one player who comes off the pitch having left nothing on it in terms of effort, but he is not a leader of men, he leads by example but that is not enough out there.
The truth is in the summer walk down Above Bar last summer and ask any Saints supporter what the squad needed and they would have told you, an experienced leader in the centre of defence and a proven Premier League striker up front.
What we got was a plethora of youngsters, all with talent, but with little experience, a recipe for disaster.
Ralph had dragged out enough good displays with no money for two seasons, but even he couldn't just hand youngsters experience, it had to be gained.
Sports have made mistakes, no one can accuse them of not spending money, it has just not been spent well, that is perfectly clear.
So what we got again was a Saints performance that on paper wasn't that bad, but in reality went the same way as the other games, unable to keep clean sheets at the back and toothless up front, it's the story of the season, no matter who has been the manager and who has been on the field.
So what is the answer, truthfully at the moment I can't see it coming from within the club, we have a young inexperienced team being led by a young inexperienced manager, where is the motivation coming from.
I don't blame Selles, how could he turn down the job when offered, but he wasn't ready for it, but the biggest mistake was not giving him an experienced assistant to counsel him, look at the Saints coaching staff, absolutely no one with any experience at this level to help him.
What is the answer, surely not a 4th manager ? although to be blunt I wouldn't be averse to it with the situation we are in, although we would lose a good coach who could well have been a top manager with the club given time, but we could have a compromise, bring in someone on a temporary basis as his number 2, someone who can motivate and help him through the last few games.
On the pitch it was a strange starting line up, Joe Aribo up front, a man who had played just 147 minutes of Premier League football, since the return after the World Cup break, but more to the point only 11 minutes since 4th January, a three month period when he has been completely out of the picture and only a few weeks ago could not get into the matchday squad let alone on to the pitch.
This strikes of pure panic, you could say it is trying something different, but this wasn't a player pushing for a first team start, it was totally out of the blue. Ruben Selles in his 8 Premier League games in charge before this game, had not given Aribo a single minute of first team football, indeed he had only actually included him on the bench once, so how the hell is he suddenly the man to lead a forward line, especially when he is essentially a midfielder.
In truth I couldn't work out who is playing where at times, was it 4-4-2 or 4-2-2-1-1, who knows !
I feel sorry for Tall Paul Onauchu, he is clearly not suited to the way we play, no one can fault his effort or commitment, but truth is he has had little service, those who played out wide during his 30 minutes on the pitch are not wingers in the traditional sense, they are attacking midfielders, they like to run at sides and look to get a shot in, Tall Paul needs balls into the box, but when you are playing Palace that is food & drink to them.
So yet again people were streaming out of St Mary's early, they had seen a side who offered too little for too long, a side with no fight and no leadership on or off the pitch and clearly when you look at the coaching staff listed on the club's official website, no experienced coaches on the training ground.
Relegation is far from certain yet, if we had beaten Palace we would have been off the bottom and one point off Forest & Everton, truth is it is now perm 3 from 5 and Leeds are on the cusp of reducing that pack down to 4.
But yet again we have thrown away points that we should of won, our problem has not been so much our failure to win games, but a failure to draw them, even just under Selles in the last 9 games, if we had drawn at Leeds & West Ham and held on to a point in this one, that would have changed the table drastically and have given us a fighting chance.
But we cannot change the past only the future, the time for post mortems is when the maths say we can't stay up, until then we have to keep fighting or at least try to start fighting and hope for a great escape.