Saints had to show that they could bounce back from the defeat at Bristol City by getting a result at The Hawthorns and Russell Martin rang the changes and his side responded with a solid performance that proved some of the doubters wrong.
West Brom had built their march into the play offs on their home form and therefore they went into their game against Saints as favourites, but Russell Martin had other ideas.
The problem with the previous two defeats had been defending on the break and Martin brought back Jack Stephen’s into the back four employing him as a left back, in many respects replicating how he had solved the problem a few months ago when James Bree came into the side.
Also back was Stuart Armstrong and Ryan Fraser and as predicted in the preview, Sekou Mara was given a start up front.
From the kick off it was clear that their was a resilience and bounce in the team that was missing at Ashton Gate on Tuesday, you could see that this was a game that Saints were not going to lose.
The first 20 minutes or so saw Saints in control topped off by a superb finish by Ryan Fraser, the Wee Man slotting home after 14 minutes to put us into the lead.
But West Brom were in no mood to let Southampton win easily and if we had the better of the first period of the half, they came back strongly in the last 20 minutes of the 45 and we had to dig in and defend.
The only real scare coming when Jack Stephen’s clearly handled the ball, however luckily for us the referee did not have the benefit of VAR or TV replays and so Stephen’s offence went unpunished.
The Saints defender atoned for his error moments later though when he cleared the ball off the line from a ball flicked on from a corner.
The second half saw the Baggies stat strongly and Russell Martin made his first changes on 58 minutes when he brought on Joe Aribo in place of Shea Charles and Sam Edozie on for Ryan Fraser the fresh legs saw Saints start to reimpose themselves on the game.
10 minutes later David Brooks entered the fray in place of Adam Armstrong and it was the Bournemouth loanee who would fire home the second goal on 73 minutes with Edozie providing the assist.
Now Saints were in command and just had to see out the remaining 17 minutes plus injury time, they did so with calm confidence, in the final 8 minutes Sulemana came on to add pace and Joe Rothwell for experience and West Brom fans knew their team was done.
So a great result at one of the hardest places to win in the Championship and it showed that we have the staying power to continue the push for promotion.
But although Saints would move back into 2nd place, it would just be for a matter of hours with Leeds winning at Plymouth to restore their 2 point lead, albeit having played a game more.
The only positive result for us was that Leicester lost at home to Middlesbrough.
With Ipswich also winning this was a result that Saints had to get or it would have seen them drop down in the automatic promotion battle.
Now the focus moves to Tuesday’s game against Hull City, a win would jump us back above Leeds and also within 8 points of Leicester, although I feel we are running out of games in the chase to get above them.
Hull will be no push overs, but they struggled to beat Huddersfield this afternoon only doing so with a late injury time winner.
But all in all a satisfying nights work at The Hawthorns, every man in the squad did their job and did it well, both the manager and the players showed that the result at Bristol City was one of those things and we are still a good side and even good sides have bad results.
But as the weekend’s results have shown, this promotion race is far from a foregone conclusion, only Leicester can have real hope of automatic promotion, we are still in a 3 team battle for that 2nd promotion spot and it is going to go to the wire.