Saints were on the cusp of a rare clean sheet at Burnley on Saturday but as usual they threw it away with sloppy defending, if they are to avoid the relegation dogfight to the last day of the season then they need to start getting a few shutouts.
Once again at Burnley a good performance was ruined by poor defending and an individual error, in the last 15 Premier League games Saints have managed a clean sheet only once and that was ironically at Chelsea.
Strangely in the first 10 games four of those saw us keep a clean sheet and although that first half of the season was poor, we did have the capabilities to defend well at times.
The problem we have is that we have the same old players making the same old mistakes and costing us dearly, I have been saying for two years now that we need to sign a quality leader to play in the centre of defence, it's all ifs and buts but if we cut only half of these defensive errors out of our game we would be safely in mid table now.
Burnley was typical of not just this season but the last one and a half before that, teams know that our positional play at the back and the concentration of certain individuals is suspect, that when they launch the ball into the box there is a good chance they will find one of their players not marked properly.
That is what happened at Turf Moor, Jack Stephens knew that Crouch had pulled off him and that he was the wrong side of his man, yes there was a foul in there but Stephens panicked and threw up an arm and gave away a penalty.
But this poor marking and soft goals is epidemic, Wesley Hoedt was the scapegoat of the fans, but nothing changed when he was axed, in fact it got worse, in the 7 games in the Premier League after he was dropped we conceded 14 goals and virtually everyone of them saw either poor defending & individual error and in some cases both at once.
Anyone who has read this site for a while will know that a favourite saying of mine is "Do the same things get the same results" that is very true of Ralph Hasenhuttl's reign so far, he has brought a discipline and spirit to the club, but ultimately at the back he cannot turn certain players into Premier League quality defenders however good he might be, yes he can get them playing with spirit and discipline, but he can't give them quality.
So how can he turn things around at the back ?
WE ll firstly he has to look at the game when we kept our only clean sheet, what was different and the answer is the goalkeeper, Angus Gunn made his only Premier League appearance of the season and put in a great performance, strangely for the following League game McCarthy was back.
It would appear that Ralph wanted to gee up McCarthy a little to inspire him to find his form again, but if that was the idea then it has sadly not had the desired effect.
McCarthy has not looked anything like toe goalkeeper he was in the final four games of last season, and he has slowly slipped into a dip in form which seems to see him low on confidence, his performance against Crystal Palace was not great and he came and missed several crosses and was caught out on his near post for the Palace goal, put bluntly Fraser Forster last season was slaughtered when he had better games that that and would have been crucified.
At Burnley McCarthy was no better, he seemed hesitant and that almost cost us dearly when he dithered then charged out and was lucky not to see a penalty awarded against him, he did make one decent save and his handling was good, but hsi decision making was poor and that is the crucial part of any keeper's games, not only commanding your box but knowing when to come and when to stay and doing so with impeccable timing.
So the good news is that Ralph Hasenhuttl does have one option to change things at the back.
With three central defenders seemingly his preferred choice he has to look at which three, Jan Bedanrek is perhaps the only one of the four who is truly an automatic choice, Jannik Vestergaard is starting to get to grips with the Premier League so would be my choice to go alongside him, but then we are in lottery territory.
Yoshida and Jack Stephens are good club men, but they are that for a reason and that reason is not because other clubs are bettering down our door to sign them, at times they can both put in good displays, but both cannot concentrate for the full 90 minutes, they get caught out and more to the point they know their own flaws and that means they are not playing with confidence.
So Ralph has four choices here, firstly Yoshida partering the aforementioned two, secondly Stephens doing so as has been the case whilst Yoshida has been away on International duty, thirdly perhaps using Ryan Bertrand as the third defender when he returns from injury or fourthly reverting to a four man back four with only two central defenders.
None of these options are completely tried and tested, but we have to o something different.
Against Cardiff that could easily have been a game that saw us virtually safe if we had cut out these errors but instead is a game that could see us drop in the bottom three, I think the returning Yoshida will come in for Stephens, but after this game I think Ralph will try something different.
Whatever he does though is not going to be great, Yoshida and Stephens have both been here for 7 years or more, neither have been truly first choice except in emergencies, they are not going to turn into World beaters now.
What we have to do is make the best out of a bad situation and Ralph Hasenhuttl is certainly the man for that, he has to make sure that letting Wesley Hoedt go and our failure to replace him will not bite us in the rear end come the end of the season, Hoedt was not the fans favourite, but of those five clean sheets he played in four of them, tat tells you something.
It is a big game on Saturday, if we come through it unbeaten the last three games will have been a little disappointing but not disastrous, if we win it then we will take a big step towards safety, I for one are sick to death of games being thrown away by poor defending, there is no easy way to say this, but the evidence is out there for all to see.