Saints had a few players back from injury and looked a more settled and balanced side, but a good performance was all undone by a lapse of concentration and two awful VAR decisions, but we march on.
I have always been an exponent of VAR, my reasoning is that it is better to use technology and make sure that the right decisions are made, but the game against Aston Villa last night exposed the flaws of the system and how it can actually be counter productive.
The first was the most controversial the ball clearly hitting Matty Cash's arm, the verdict from VAR was the ball had deflected off the Villa man's thigh and was therefore accidental, but it was clear that as the ball had come off his leg, Cash moved his arm to account for the change in direction of the ball.
How did the man operating VAR not see this and take it into account.
The second in injury time saw Danny Ings fire home a deserved equaliser, only for VAR to declare that his arm was offside, given that according to the rules the arm starts at roughly the shirt short sleeve level, there were millimetres in it.
They were two terrible decisions and to get one of them against you would be a travesty, but two in one game !
I am not using this as an excuse, Saints still had plenty of chances to win it, they dominated in all areas, it looked a better balanced team with the likes of Oriol Romeu, Nathan Redmond & Moussa Djenepo back in the squad and gave Ralph options off the bench.
The Austrian reshuffled the side pushing James Ward Prowse to right back and a midfield central duo of Romeu & Diallo, it worked well, JWP marshalled Grealish well and we controlled the game well, but we did lose something going forward without the creativity of Ward Prowse in his usual central position.
We should have been ahead in the first half, but went in at the break a goal down after a lapse in concentration saw Barkley head home unmarked on 41 minutes.
In the second half it was Saints who did all the threatening and should have had the ball in the net long before that late VAR fiasco.
Perhaps the best opportunity came six minutes from time when Villa stopped 3 attempts on target in literally seconds, firstly Jan Bednarek rising highest to Ward-Prowse's in-swinger. Villa keeper Martinez saved from point blank range, before Che Adams and then Jack Stephens seeing efforts blocked as the visitors struggled to clear.
This was clearly a game where luck wasn't on our side, we didn't play badly, we started to look a bit more like we did earlier in the season, but sometimes things just don't come off.
The plus points are that we saw Oriol Romeu back in the side and carrying on where he left off, we also had Djenepo back and the hope is that Vestergaard will return in the next two weeks.
WE are on a poor run, but we are now in better shape to get back to form, there is still a long way to go this season, we have a manager who is working to a long term plan, he knows that all teams have bad runs, but if you stay focused you come through them stronger on the other side.