Saints seemed to get lucky in the draw for the team line up and put in a decent performance, however their luck ran out in the second half, as Liverpool got all the luck when VAR was called into action.
The Southampton team that ran out at Anfield for once seemed to have some balance at the back, a back four with two actual central defenders, two holding midfielders in front of it, with 3 attacking midfielders, but there was no striker with Albert Gronbaek appearing to have been pulled out of the hat to play up front.
For much of the first half Saints were under pressure, but they dug in and kept Liverpool at bay, indeed during the game the home side had 28 attempts on goal, but only 7 on target and when they did, Aaron Ramsdale did his job.
The job was made harder when Jan Bednarek departed injured on 19 minutes to be replaced by Armel Bella-Kotchap.
Many Saints fans headed under the stand for half time as the injury time board went up, meaning that they missed the sublime goal by Will Smallbone.
Many see to have Smallbone as the current scapegoat, but he harassed the Liverpool defence, forcing hesitancy and then after collection the loose ball, initially looked to be trying to pull it back, before suddenly swivelling and firing home after noticing Liverpool had no cover on the line.
This looked a fairly simple goal in many respects, but Smallbone should be given all credit for the way he created the opportunity for himself and gave Saints the lead.
So 1-0 up at Liverpool at half time, very few Saints supporters would have predicted that one !
The second half was always going to be a battle and Liverpool piled forward, but in simple terms the game changed in just a few minutes after the 50th minute, firstly Nunez scored, then Will Smallbone gave away a penalty.
After that we knuckled down and at times held on, if we had done this in a few more games this season, we might well have got a few more points on the board.
As we headed towards the 90 minute mark with the score still at 2-1, you could feel a sense of nervousness creeping into the Liverpool players and the crowd, even in the away section there was a sense that we might sneak something here, but again VAR didn't go for us for the 3rd time in the game and Liverpool put the game to bed from their second penalty.
So the talking points were the 3 decisions from VAR and to be honest I thought 2 of them were correct and 1 was got wrong.
The first came in the first half when Darwin Nunez scythed down Kyle Walker-Peters, I though that this one was got right, it was a bad tackle, it was not mistimed but calculated, but it was just scything down KWP, it was not dangerous with the studs up etc, so for me that was just a yellow card, the only question is whether the decision would have been different if it was Walker-Peters on Nunez.
The second controversial moment came just a few minutes after Liverpool had equalised, as the home side poured forward, we struggled to clear the ball and Nunez went down under a challenge from Will Smallbone, of course it went to VAR, but I think that they got this one wrong, look at the picture below, Smallbone's feet are on the ground, he did not make a tackle, Nunez felt a touch and went to ground, but a touch isn't a foul, physical contact is allowed, this was no penalty.
The final moment came in the 88th minute when no one in the away end could work out what was going on, it looked like we had cleared the ball, but then came the VAR call to the referee who hadn't seen anything wrong either.
But he soon changed his mind and in fairness this was a good call, Sugawara although he had kept his arm by his side, did use his elbow to divert the ball, it was very cute, but with VAR these days you don't get away with it, I don't know why he needed to do it.
So it all ended 3-1 and I suspect that there wasn't a Southampton supporter in the ground , who wouldn't have shook on a 3-1 defeat, if cricket rules could have been applied.
But the worry is that once again we saw some strange decisions by Ivan Juric, not so much this week in the starting line up, but in the substitutions.
Obviously when Bednarek went off it was simple, and Archer for Gronbaek was again understandable, but Suguwara for Dibling entailed a reshuffle as we now had 3 fullbacks on the field. but for me he gambled too much when taking off both his defensive midfielders in Ugochukwu & Smallbone in quick succession in the final quarter, take one off, but both left us open to getting overrun in the midfield.
In the past he has said that he would not play Adam Lallana at the same time as Matteus Fernandes, but this happened, in the final 10 minutes with Tall Paul Onuachu also now on the pitch as well as Joe Aribo, we had lost a bit of shape.
It was a brave gamble from Juric, perhaps a desperate one, but ultimately one that didn't pay off.
So now we look to next Saturday when Wolverhampton Wanderers are in town, this is an important game, our only goal now is to avoid being the worst Premier League team in history, we need 3 points to avoid that and on paper the game against Wolves is our best chance of getting a win between now and the end of the season.
It needs a full St Mary's behind the team to get that win under our belts.