Saints fell to their first defeat under Tonda Eckert at Millwall, in a game where they never really got going and looked to have fought for a hard earned point until with just about the last win of the game the home side scored a winner.
The travelling Red & White Army in South East London were filled with trepidation on Saturday when the team news came out, there was no Leo Scienza, one of a number of players lately who seem to have fallen ill rather than being injured.
Jay Robinson came in for Scienza as did Cameron Bragg for the suspended Flynn Downs, the only non enforced change being Jack Stephens coming back in for Joshua Quarshie.
It was clear from the kick off that things were not right, our rhythm seemed to have been disrupted by the changes and Millwall seemed to know this and press us hard to try and further knock us out of our stride.
We got into half time level, due to a couple of decent saves by Gavin Bazunu, one of which was top drawer, although we had a couple of decent chances of our own, we looked disjointed and not having Leo Scienza on the left seemed to leave us no outlet, Jay Robinson seemed to struggle to hold his position out wide, although he did have a couple of good chances well saved.
The hope was the second half would see us improve and it did, in terms of scoreline at least, the referee did well to spot a shirt pull and pointed to the spot, TV replays showed he was spot on, but you rarely see these given these days.
Adam Armstrong gave us the lead and you hoped that we could push on from here.
On the hour mark off came Jay Robinson and on came Joe Aribo, initially I thought this would be a good substitution, however Aribo was not at the races, he looked a yard off the pace and out of sorts.
Soon after Millwall fired home an equaliser and then 10 minutes later scored a screamer, the question was though, that Aribo stood back and didn't close his man down, there was no block and such is our luck their man got the time and room to hit his shot and that gave it a chance of being on target from that distance and on target it certainly was.
But we were not dead and buried 6 minutes later we were back on terms when after a great save from a header the home keeper, Finn Azaz scored from a tight angle.
Surely we could now get a point out of this game ? the answer was no, Millwall put in a cross that found someone unmarked at the far post who put the ball across goal and to be blunt it should have been hacked off the line but was only sliced into his own net by Taylor Harwood Bellis, we had been caught at sixes and sevens and paid the price, there was barely enough time to kick off before the final whistle went.
So this was a big disappointment, how could we have been so good against Charlton & Leicester in the week before this game and then so poor in this one ?
But this is not uncommon in football and from this perspective we have to lick our wounds and get on with things, there were mitigating circumstances with two enforced changes in key areas and that disrupted our rhythm, in many respects although we didn't play well, we dug in and looked to have earned a point before that final moment.
As ever it is now not about what has happened, but what we do next, this is not a sign that Tonda Eckert might not be the man for the job, it is a defeat and every team in the League has lost games this season.
If we had been told a month ago that in our next 5 games we would win 4 and lose 1 we would have been happy, this defeat is not terminal, we are still only 5 points off the play offs, it is just so gutting to lose so late in the game.
So onwards and upwards we have done well to get our season back on track with so many key players out injured, Leo Scienza in this game plus Flynn Downes suspended, add to that Shea Charles, Ross Steward, Elia Jelert, Mads Roerslev are all full internationals and such is the depth of our squad we could also leave out Ronnie Edwards & Cameron Archer with both not even making the bench.
This is actually not a bad thing in terms of finding out whether Tonda Eckert is the man for the job longer term, we will see here how he reacts to a defeat, how he reacts to the manner of the defeat and how he will deal with what went wrong in this game.
Will he show maturity beyond his years and have identified not only what went wrong but how to fix it.
Although Leo Scienza was a big loss, it should not have been an issue, with the squad we have we should have been able to deal with it, but we never really got going in this game.
So a big game next weekend as we face fellow promotion hopefuls Birmingham City, they are only a point ahead of us, we have to make it two in front by 5pm on Saturday, we need all the advantages we can get and that included not only a full squad but a full house and full backing from the home fans, our support has been great this season, both home and away, but empty seats don't make any noise we need to see them filled for this one and indeed a few days later when West Brom rock up at St Mary's.