A devastating day for Saints supporters after eight minutes of madness saw defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.
For over an hour on Saturday it looked like the Saints of old, passion enthusiasm and plain old rolling their sleeves up and fighting.
When Jan Bednarek put us 2-0 up on the hour it looked like Saints could finally turn this season around and get themselves back on track to stay up.
But then with 20 minutes left came 8 minutes of chaos.
It started when referee Mike Dean pulled play back for what looked like an innocuous challenge, Chelsea tried to take the free kick from around 15 years from where the offence took place, Dean indicated where he wanted it taken and then after they had moved the ball only 3 years towards the spot allowed them to take it with Saints clearly thinking they had to move the ball back to the spot where the offence occurred.
This was symptomatic of a referee who rarely had control of the game and allowed Chelsea to literally do what they wanted continually stealing 10-15 years at throw ins and free kicks and completely ignoring Dean when he sometimes tried to usher them to the correct spot and the referee did nothing.
But I am not blaming Dean for what happened, we as a team lacked leadership on the pitch at a crucial moment, someone should have been stood on the ball, we lost concentration and we paid a price.
The following minutes were painful to watch as Chelsea twice pumped balls into the box and we defended deep and when cleared the ball fell first to Hazard and then Giroud who both fired home completely unmarked and able to pick their spot.
In fairness we found our composure again and went hard for an equaliser, but the damage had been done and all we can take from this game is that there is the spirit there for a great escape but only if we stop shooting ourselves in the foot and for once get a piece of luck.
But survival is looking very difficult now and if we fail to win at Leicester then it could be almost impossible after nest weekend when we don't play in the Premier League.
Now is the time for the spirit that was showed most of the game to be shown in the final five games and make this a Great Escape season.
Will that happen ?
I doubt it, in 1999 we believed that we could stay up and found a run of wins to do so, now the fans don't believe it and spend their time moaning about the performance of certain individuals who will always be the scapegoats, not spotting the irony of criticising those players for a lack of passion.
But this is football nothing is over till it is mathematically impossible to finish 4th from bottom, we have to keep fighting, we have to keep optimistic and we have to try to keep the atmosphere that St Mary's had for the first 70 minutes on Saturday when for the first time in a long while the crowd was fully behind the team.