Saints were again the architects of their own downfall as they gifted united a second goal to turn the tide in the game.
This was another tale of the luck not being with Saints as they initially took the game to United, but did not take their chances in the first half and paid the price.
It was a great opening for Saints, they took the game to the visitor with Mane and Pelle looking in fine form and when the Italian striker scored after 13 minutes Saints were well in command of the game, sadly though the referee and his officials weren't, it needed a strong referee and Mark Clattenburg seemed strangely reluctant to dish out a yellow card to stop persistent niggling fouls from United.
On 34 minutes the linesman got it wrong as the United equaliser was clearly offside, this was the sort of luck Saints are having this season.
Five minutes after the break though Saints could blame no one but themselves as Yoshida hit an horrendously short back pass that Martial latched on to for a lead that United did not deserve.
This seemed to knock a lot of fight out of Saints and we endured a spell of play were we barely saw the ball and the United third goal on 68 minutes was the culmination of 45 passes were Saints could not get near the ball, even the goal saw Saints deserted by luck, the initial shot hitting the post then going to the one place a United player was standing for the tap in.
But Saints regained their spirit for a rousing finale, David De Gea making a number of saves one of which was truly World class, he could not keep out another great header from Pelle though to reduce the arrears, but despite a bombardment of De Gea's goal it was too little too late in the final minutes.
Saints did not play badly in this game, at times they were excellent with Mane & Pelle especially taking the game to them, but gain it was a case of individual error, the inclusion of Yoshida at right back was strange, Soares is far more mobile and United did not offer real aerial threat up front, it was strange why we opted for the Japanese player ahead of the Portugese and ultimately this cost us at least a point.
Other than that it was Saints the more decisive, although United had the lion's share of possession they only had three shots on target and they all went in with the other 7 not testing Steklenburg in Saints goal, at the other end Saints had 15 shots with 8 on target and as mentioned De Gea made at least one World class save to claw out a Fonte header and several other fine saves that could have on another day gone in.
It as not to be our day and the season has not started as well as we would have hoped, however there is enough positives to be taken from this performance to suggest that we are still very capable of hitting the top ten this season, we just need to cut out these individual errors and lapses in concentration.