There can be no excuses for what was the poorest performance of the season so far on a day when everyone seemed to have an off day.
Ronald Koeman suggested that the atmosphere inside the stadium wasn't right, perhaps because of the pre match remembrance to the victims in Paris last week and although yes the supporters did not help the team being very quiet, the truth was it was the players on the pitch who didn't do it.
Put simply the entire team seemed to have an off day and that gave Stoke the opportunity to do what they do best these days and that is sit back soak up pressure and hit on the counter and that is what they did.
Saints dominated possession with 59%, they had enough shots with 16, but so did Stoke and more to the point they had 4 on target to our measly 1.
That perhaps pointed to where we were going wrong, although we had plenty of pressure we did little with it and rarely looked like making it count, we just never got going as a team or as individuals, several players had their worst performances for a long time, Ryan Bertrand looked lacklustre, Pelle a shadow of the player he has been this season and they were far from being alone.
Once Stoke scored a goal on 10 minutes it was always going to be hard, the goal itself was sloppy, Eric Pieters was allowed far too much time to run and cross and Bojan Krkic was allowed to get in front of Fonte and flick in from a tight angle.
This perhaps set the tone for the day and from then on Saints could not find any kind of rhythm despite plenty of the ball.
Saints should have had a penalty when Pelle was seemingly hacked down in the area, but ref Lee Mason didn't think so and the chance for the game to be turned round was gone.
This was a bad day at the office, it is the first one they have had in a long time, every team has one as sadly Manchester City showed later in the day, this defeat for Saints is a blow, but it is not a terminal one, we now need to lick our wounds, work on where we went wrong and come back stronger than ever.
There is a long way to go in the season, there are many more games to go, we now need to make sure that this defeat is a rarity.