I left St Mary's with mixed emotions, on one hand we had only narrowly lost to Manchester City and had matched them, but on the other hand there was a gut feeling that we had not performed to our full abilities.
The scoreline was only a single goal, but to be brutally honest City looked dangerous with every attack, but for some poor finishing and also at times a tendency to over elaborate and almost walk the ball into the goal, this defeat could have been far heavier.
We rarely truly bothered Ederson in the City goal and once Danny Ings went off injured just before half time, we were finished as a potent force, we had some great build up play and Che Adams battled bravely, but in truth we were too disjointed.
It seemed that Ralph Hasenhuttl had decided when taking off Ings that he would protect the rest of his squad for the next two games which are more winnable, when Ings departed, there were some obvious options, Shane Long as a direct replacement or bring on either Nathan Redmond or Stuart Armstrong out wide and push Theo Walcott up front, but he brought on Nathan Tella.
Redmond did come on on the hour mark, but after a couple of mis controls you could sense the the sighs in some of the crowd, these two faux pas aside Redmond did little wrong and certainly offered more than Djenepo the man he replaced.
Strangest substitution though was on 82 minutes, off came Che Adams and on came Dan N'Lundulu, at this point we rarely threatened, N'Lundulu and Tella ran around a lot, but they didn't know how to make the runs, draw defenders out of position and create space and chances for others, perhaps both of them will come good in the future, but this was not an aid to their development and it seemed at that point we were content to hold it as it was, lick our wounds and regroup for the next two games where we can win them.
I was surprised that Ibrahima Diallo wasn't brought on for the final 15 minutes, he is the natural replacement for Romeu who will miss the next game due to hid booking triggering a one game suspension, surely it would have been sensible to give Diallo some game time.
City could have scored 3 in the final minutes of the game, but we dug in and made sure that when they either blasted over or over elaborated we didn't let them get an easy chance.
So this was a day where we achieved little of real worth aside from keeping the score down, we lost our top striker to injury, we lost Oriol Romeu for the trip to Fulham after a booking, we didn't even find out if two of our youngsters were up to the required standards.
We did keep our shape though and therefore our pride and we have moved forward over the last year, as I keep saying one defeat is not the end of the world, but suddenly we are looking over our shoulders a little, the last three games have only yielded 4 points, we have to now bounce back at Fulham.
This was not a game where we can take much out of, but we shouldn't get too downhearted either, such have our standards improved, since we returned to the Premier League in 2012 a 1-0 defeat to City would be a cause for celebration, now we see it as a disappointment.
I try to highlight the good and bad points in these match verdicts, I try to judge on the bigger picture rather than knee jerk reactions to a piece of poor play.
It is a squad game and the trick now will be to use the squad well, to keep getting results without Danny Ings and make sure that in the final third of the season we are still in position to be able to contest something, perhaps the FA CupFinal or a place in Europe.