Saints went to West Ham hoping that they might get the win that took us over the 11 point unwanted record, they didn't manage that, but a dogged gritty performance saw us snatch a well deserved point in the last minutes.
Simon Rusk is keeping it simple, unlike his predecessor Ivan Juric, he is not confusing the players with multiple changes both in terms of personnel and tactics, he made just one adjustment to the team that started against Aston Villa, out went Cameron Archer and in came Flynn Downes, he tweaked the formation slightly, but the message was that he was looking to build a solid foundation and then work from that.
Against Villa it was slightly different, but for 70 minutes or so the game remained level, so the final result whilst deserved by Villa didn't reflect the mindset change made in that game.
This game saw us build on the foundations made, keep things simple and then everyone knows their job.
We matched the Hammers in all departments, it was a fairly even game throughout, in fact we could easily have gone in at the break in front, Sulemana rattling the bar and Kyle Walker Peters putting a decent chance just wide of the post.
We looked a team again.
However the second half had barely got under way when the home side took the lead, we got caught on the break and it was 1-0 with a large chunk of the away support still on the concourse.
Under Juric this might have broken our fragile confidence and spirit, but we stuck to the task in hand and kept going, we weathered a brief storm after the goal and started to impose ourselves.
As the legs tired, the substitutions were focused and not just scattergun as under Juric, Cameron Archer coming on for Tall Paul was a good change and Tyler Dibling for Sulemana was a good change, the youngster had legs and although things weren't quite working for him, it offered us a different dimension.
With 5 minutes to go came the final changes, Welington for Manning and Ross Stewart for Harwood-Bellis showed that Simon Rusk was not sitting back and happy with a narrow defeat, he did something different to try and change the game, push West Ham onto the back foot.
This paid dividends in the 3rd minute of injury time when the ball fell to Lesley Ugochukwu who slammed the ball home to send the Saints supporters behind the goal wild.
A few minutes later and the game was over and a point gained, Saints fans celebrated, not with the ironic "Championship" chants as two weeks earlier when we went down at Tottenham, but with just plain and simple joy, not just for the equaliser, but also for the fact that it felt something had changed !
It's hard to pinpoint, but there was a feeling of relief, the last 8 months have felt like a runaway train, no one was in charge and steering it, this game felt different, it felt like a team performance, it felt like all the players knew their job and did it, it felt like we had leadership and organisation.
Of course it is too little too late now for this season, but it should give us some confidence for next season.
The Southampton supporters were magnificent, funnily enough although the ticket allocation had sold out, it didn't feel full, it felt like a few hundred fans had bought tickets but had not bothered turning up, that is their choice but they missed a rare event this season, a game where we didn't lose.
That has only happened 7 times in the Premier League this season, Russell Martin only managed to avoid defeat in the league on 3 occasions, Ivan Juric managed it just twice, Simon Rusk has now done it two times out of only 3 games, there is a good reason for that, perhaps not enough to suggest he should get the job on a permanent basis, at least not just yet, but a good sign that this squad is not as bad as some would make out, it just needed to be freed from that draconic possession football game and actually have some calm leadership.
At the end we celebrated like we had won the cup, but we weren't celebrating a point, we weren't celebrating failure, we were celebrating what will hopefully be the start of a new era, that the mistakes of the past can't be changed, but they are gone, we are now moving forward again, albeit it slowly but definitely forward.
A few of the players in this performance won't be hear next season, but the bulk of them will be and that is a good foundation to build on, we needed something positive and at West Ham we got it for perhaps the first time this season.