Saints fans were sceptical when Mark Hughes name was first mentioned as a replacement for Mauricio Pellegrino, but those at Wigan felt he passed the first test.
It is fair to say that many were not over excited when Mark ughes was linked to the Saints job, but up at Wigan on Sunday there was an air of confidence in the new manager that has not been there in the last two appointments.
It was possibly a combination of a few things, being an ex player helped, even though his time here was almost 20 years ago and there would be no one at the club in a senior position who he would have known back then, it was just felt he would have empathy.
Also the fact that Hughes has a track record in the Premier league stretching back 14 years over a number of clubs and he had a reputation for being a no nonsense manager who knows how he wants to set up his sides and how he wants them to play seems t most Saints supporters to be exactly what the club needs at this juncture.
At Wigan it was never going to be easy, it was a horrible pitch, freezing cold, swirling wind and the opposition were fired up, after the season we have had o far, no one was going to be able to comein and just click their fingers and make everything all right straight away, but Hughes appears to have prepared his team well, although they were not great in the first half there was a fight about them that mean't that Wigan were kept at bay.
There was a new desire and intensity in the side, indeed according to Pierre Emile Hojbjerg Hughes instructed the team to prioritise "mentality, desire and hard work" and that certainly looked the case.
In the second half Saints having survived the early bluster of Wigan then started to impose themselves on the game and although things weren't perfect you could see something had changed in the mindset of the team, the confidence was starting to return and although Wigan will claim that they really didn't deserve to lose, the reality was that in the second half only poor finishing mean't that we did not put the game to be till late.
So Mark Hughes has passed his first test with the Saints fans and there is a perception that he is the right man for the job at least for the rest of the season, he says the right things, he know what is needed and he shows passion for the job.
So he is uniting the fan base again in a way that neither of his two predecessors did and that is going to be crucial in the run in, his mere presence means that the toxic atmosphere has gone, add to that the fact that he wil have Charlie Austin returning to the fold after three months out injured and he will have a squad more than capable of pulling clear in the relegation battle.
Indeed Saints can time this just right, they are putting everything in place as the season ends, the impact of a new manager at Crystal Palace, Stoke and West Ham for instance has now diminshed, but for us it is just starting and if Hughes can give us that little burst of wins that those clubs had earlier in the season, we should be OK.
So there is still a lot of hard work ahead and tough games, but you feel that in Mark Hughes Saints have the right man to do it, certainly there is an aura about him lacking in both Puel and Pellegrino, but present in Ronald Koeman.