Victor Wanyama was withdrawn on Saturday due to an ankle injury, however as good as the Kenyan is, it was a substitution that changed the game.
When Ronald Koeman first arrived he saw the benefit of tactically switching between Victor Wanyama and Jack Cork for certain games. For the tougher games when we had to dig in and battle in the centre of the midfield he would select the Kenyan, but for the games that he felt we would dominate the midfield and that we would be spending more time attacking he would put in Cork for his ability to get the ball forward quicker.
After Cork was firstly injured and then subsequently left the club in January, this was not an option that we had any more, yes Schneiderlin and Wanyama were arguably the best defensive pairing in the Premier League last season, but in the less tough games we struggled to break sides down as neither had the abiliity to get the ball moving quickly and catch teams on the back foot as we had been doing earlier in the season.
This season when his head has been right Wanyama has been selected for every game, yet perhaps on Saturday he should not have been, we did not need his power and strength and when he had to go of injured it perhaps changed the game, Oriol Romeu seemed a little more mobile and able to speed things up a little bit, we started to push Villa back and get it wide quicker to use the pace of Cedric and Ryan Bertrand overlapping down the wings.
So has this inadvertent change on Saturday reminded Ronald Koeman of just why Saints started the season so well last year and the reason why we slaughtered the likes of Sunderland at St Mary's, a game tht Cork started and Wanyama came off the bench.
It could be argued that Victor Wanyama is the best player in Saints current team, certainly he is the most coveted by other teams along with Sadio Mane if transfer rumours in the media are correct, however sometimes even you best players have to drop out tactically.
That means that sometimes you need the power and muscle of Wanyama and at others not so much and Romeu's performance on Saturday must have given Ronald Koeman food for though in that direction.
However Koeman's problem, especially as they try to persuade the Kenyan to sign a new deal is that if he leaves Wanyama out he will run the risk of unsettling the player and allowing the likes of Tottenham to try and play on that.
He has to make Wanyama feel he is the top man in the team and everything revolves around him and that means playing him every week, even if the situation perhaps warrants otherwise.