It was a game of two halves as Saints went to the dogs in the second and were lucky to come away unscathed.
I have said in the last few weeks that Claude Puel needed to show in the final games of the season that he has what it takes to take the club forward, initially he showed that he might have what it takes, but I'm afraid that in this game he got it badly wrong.
Firstly he again kept faith with Yoshida and Stephens and although some would point to a clean sheet as evidence that this was the correct decision, the reality is that only some poor Bournemouth finishing kept our goal intact and the two central defenders although at times solid were caught on the hop due to a lack of concentration on too many occasions.
Why did we bother signing Caceres if we are not at least goi to try him.
The second strange decision was to play Jay Rodriguez up front instead of Shane Long, the only justification for this seems to be that J Rod scored against Bournemouth four months ago and whilst I am not a critic of Rodriguez, I have to say that he is not ahead of Shane Long in the pecking order.
Players like to know that playing well gets you in the side, they know when they have been overlooked wrongly and the Irish striker must be feeling pretty miffed, he deserved the opportunity to start this game and show the form we know he is capable of.
But all of this being said we dominated the first half, but sadly there was too few actual chances on target, Tusan Tadic clipped a post but should have done better and Jay Rodriguez himself had a great chance, he did everything right but Artur Boruc made a decent save.
But if Saints dominated the first half then the Cherries carried the second, they played without fear and the truth of the matter was that it was only their poor finishing that kept our goal intact.
It is at times like this that you look towards the manager to do somethng to change things, just after the hour Puel made his first change and it put us into more disarray, most expected Boufal to come of for Tadic, but it was if the manager was almost challenging Tadic to show why he should be kept on, he didn't deserve to on his second half showing but his recent outburst must have made Puel leave him on to prove a point either way. Shane Long came on in a double substitution.
The upshot was that we lost our shape completely without James Ward Prowse and Bournemouth poured through the centre on too many occasions.
You have to commend the manager for an attack minded change, but the truth was that we had no cohesion and we were getting overun in the centre of the park.
As the game entered it's final phase you thought that Puel's last change might be to close down that hole, Clasie or Hojbjerg would have done that job, but strangely it was Sam McQueen a wide player who came on for Tadic.
It left us still with that imbalance, we needed a strong central trio but what we were left with was just Davis and Romeu and no one quite sure who should have been in the centre with them.
So this was a game that we almost threw away because of our own failings, even with Bournemouth's domination in the final half hour the fact that we still had overall 61% possession tells you of our first half dominance and what Bournemouth's tactics were in the second, we did not deal with their breaks and we showed little in terms of creation especially after the break.
If we had won then the League table would look much rosier today, we would be in 9th and pulling clear of the traffic jam in the mid table, yes we moved up to 10th, but it is very crowded and we really do need to beat Crystal Palace now or face dropping down a few places.
This was not a good day at the office for Saints, I have constantly mooted that we need to give Claude uel the full season to judge him, but games like this do not help his cause.