Saints dominated the game at Crystal Palace and came away with a deserved three points that pushed them up to 9th in the table, something no one would have believed was possible only two months ago,
Saints didn't rotate as much as Ralph Hasenhuttl had indicated they would with Jannik Vestergaard preferred to Yoshida and coming in for the injured Bednarek and Obafemi in for the rested Ings the only changes.
Despite dominating the early stages Saints almost gifted Palace an opener Vestergaard losing possession but the home side blasted over, but they paid the price for that miss when Nathan Redmond twisted and turned held off a challenge then fired in a piledriver to make it 1-0.
Shortly after though Saints had to reshuffle with Soares going off and JWP going to right back and Oriol Romeu coming on, Saints went in at the break though well worth the lead, although it took a good tackle from Vestergaard who redeemed his earlier error.
As the teams went off there was an altercation when Zaha pushed Ward Prowse in the face and had words with Jannik Vesterggard.
The second half saw Saints double the lead when Redmond did some good work and slipped the ball to Stuart Armstrong who fired home from well outside the box.
Palace had their attacks but Saints were impressive and the home side ended up without an effort on target, Saints should really have scored a third in the second half with Long and Redmond both having good efforts on target but straight at the keeper.
Again another great team effort from Saints who battled hard to make sure that when they did allow Palace to get a sight of goal they couldn't get a shot on target.
James ward Prowse was magnificent as a makeshift right back refusing to be intimidated by the moody Zaha and let him have things his own way.
So Saints climb to 9th and could have been 6th if they had held on against Wolves, but we can't change the past only the future and who would bet against a top ten finish now if they keep up this form.
Now we can start looking up as we are past the 30 point mark on 31 and 8 points clear of the bottom 3 after a mixed bag of results elsewhere, two more wins should see us safe from the drop, but we can now aim higher than that.
The League is open and Saints have 5th place well within their sights if they can keep things up, the confidence is growing and the players and indeed the fans are starting to believe that this season might just be successful after all.
This win though means we can now also put out a strong team against Spurs on Saturday in the cup with the pressure off in the League, credit to Ralph Hasenhuttl who has turned things completely round.