Saints lost at the Emirates after conceding a soft goal, however Saints fans should remember the points Artur Boruc has gained for the team this season and forgive him this howler.
Saints put in a solid performance against Arsenal although in fairness to the home side they had already hit the post twice before the bizarre 22nd minute opener.
Artur Boruc has to put his hand up on this one, he had not one but two opportunities to put the ball into the stand and finding himself cut off for a third attempt was robbed of the ball by Giroud who put it into an empty net, some Saints fans hurled abuse at Boruc, but most were just stunned into silence and when they got over the shock realised that Boruc has had a great season for Saints and should be allowed the odd howler, he isn't the first to make a mistake in the Saints goal and he wont be the last.
Arsenal though always looked comfortable for their win and although Saints battled hard as they always do, they were struggling in defence without Dejan Lovren, Jos Hooiveld put in 100% as he always does, but the plain truth is he isn't good enough against the best teams, especially the more mobile sides like Arsenal who rely on pace and guile rather than pumping balls into the box.
Did Saints ever look like getting a point ? not from my place in the stands they didn't but lets not forget that Arsenal are the league leaders and getting back to their methodical best, with all the reshuffling we had to do in defence with Luke Shaw going off at half time, we did well to stay in the game as long as we did, the trick as we showed at Old Trafford is to stay in a position where you can nick something at the end, something the Gunners have specialised in over the years, sadly on this occasion it wasn't to be and the game was killed off when Giroud scored from the penalty spot with 4 minutes to go.
Perhaps this game will bring Saints fans back to earth a bit and hopefully on the pitch a few lessons need to be learnt, in the preview I warned of our lack of cover and sadly this proved to be prophetical with the missing Lovren and then Shaw leaving us stretched to breaking point at the back.
But its all about learning lessons and coming back stronger than before, so far this season this team has done us proud, if someone had said before the season that it would be almost December before we suffered our second defeat of the season and that when we had done after 12 games we would still be 5th and have the best defence in the Premier league we would have laughed in their face, yes this was a disappointing loss, but in the big picture of things we are still in a good position, perhaps its a wake up call against complacency, to make mistakes a lose is not a crime, to keep repeating them is, now is when we will see the character of the side especially with some tough games coming up, I have said all season it will be the turn of the year when we will truly get the picture of how good we really are and I still stand by that.