It was a game of two halves at Craven Cottage as Saints came strong late on to send Fulham to the bottom of the table.
The news that Wanyama was back in and Jack Cork dropped was greeted with puzzlement by most Saints fans in the pubs of Putney pre match, Cork had been superb against Arsenal on Tuesday and his reward was a place on the bench.
This decision by Mauricio Pochettino soon turned out to be folly with the Kenyan way of the pace in the first half and Saints didn't have the fluency that they had in the middle of the park against the Gunners, indeed if it wasn't for Artur Boruc who made a string of good saves in that first 45 minutes the game could have turned out a lot differently than it did, but despite Fulham having the upper hand Saints kept them at bay to go in goaless.
For the second half Cork was on and the game swung with the fluency back in Saints play, Cork seemed determined to prove a point and that benefited Saints who looked better when defending and now seemed able to break quickly and ping the ball about with more confidence.
It was Cork himself who won the ball to start the move for the first goal and the ball was moved quickly out to Adam Lallana who took the ball wide and planted it firmly home to open the scoring with 26 minutes left.
From then on there would only be one winner, Clyne who had come on for Chambers shortly before the opener, overlapped well and his cross seemingly for Rodriguez was cleverly dummied by the striker to leave Rickie Lambert with a simple chance which he buried in typical style.
But with England manager Roy Hodgson watching all it needed now was the third player in Saints Holy Trinity to score and the best goal was left to the last, Rickie Lambert played a great ball down the wing for Rodriguez to chase, initially there looked little on but the Saints number 9 cut inside and then curled a sublime shot into the far corner before celebrating with the 5,000 or so Saints fans behind the goal.
The game had been won in 11 explosive minutes and Saints can take much from this performance and it leaves them with a great chance of not only going 7th next weekend.
The plus points were of course the form of Lambert, Lallana & Rodriguez as well as Boruc, all three could qualify for man of the match, as could Jack Cork who truly changed the game when he came on for the second half, however it was a true team performance and Wanyama aside who really was put into a game when he wasn't ready every Saints player played their part, be it the aerial power of Fonte or the hard running of Steven Davis.
The downside was Pochettino's decision to drop Jack Cork, not just for the painfully obvious reason that Wanyama was just not match fit and would have been far better used as a sub, but for the fact that it does send out the wrong message to the squad, players want to know that if they play well they keep their place, that clearly isn't the case for Cork, it was good to see that the manager realised his mistake and rectified it and did bring Cork on, something he had not done before Wanyama's injury, but it will be interesting to see what he does next week, It cannot be denied that wanyama is a strong player and brings something to the team, but so does Cork.
All in all a good day at the office for Saints and one in the eye for those who made mischief in the press and talked of players wanting to leave and team spirit being destroyed, anyone at Fulham would say that the spirit and passion of the players up in London on Saturday was as good as have ever seen.
Now Saints have a great chance to not only put distance between us and the clubs behind to ensure a top ten finish, but to overtake Newcastle and even Man Utd in the coming weeks
