Saints achieved arguably their best result in their Premier League as Ronald Koeman once again reshuffled his pack not just in his starting line up but through injury and tactical nous.
This result cannot be underestimated, Unite had the second best home record in the Premier yet Saints did not even allow them a shot on target as they played the game to perfection, holding United in the first half then imposing themselves on the game.
Some will say that Saints were lucky, United had 60% possession, but the fact is they did little with it and that was due to the superb discipline of every Saints player who did their job and deserved a victory.
Indeed Saints could have gone ahead before they did, they had a couple of chances early on and they really should have had a penalty, how Phil Dowd standing yards away failed to spot Pelle being held and unable to jump for a corner is a mystery, indeed the Saints forward's shirt was above his chest, whether Dowd thought it was there due to a gust of wind is anyone's guess.
But Saints did what teams like Liverpool in the 80's Chelsea and United themselves have done and that is go into difficult games and weather the storm and make sure that the opposition don't damage you and that is why this side are so good, they are built on defensive strength and that wins games, even more impressive when you take into account that we lost arguably our best player this season Toby Alderweireld to injury after only 20 minutes.
The goal when it came was classic Saints, worked with a series of quick passing JWP involved and then Dusan Tadic controlling and finding Pelle, it was a tight angle and it came back off the post but there was Tadic again to cooly slot it home through a crowd of players.
It is hard to pick a man of the match from this performance, all were 10/10 for both workrate and the way we never lapsed in concentration from the start to the finish, a couple of mentions though, Eljero Elia struggled to get into the game at first but the more it went on the better he became, suggesting he could be a real asset.
Also Florin Gardos, thrown into the lion's den after only 20 minutes he not only picked up the pace of the game quickly, something which is always hard when you come on so early, but he won some crucial tackles and aerial battles.
So Saints march on again and sit proudly in third place, there is a long way to go and going into this weekend we could easily have ended it in fifth place with teams breathing down our necks, instead we are now five points clear of Spurs in sixth and that is a big gap.
But as i said in another article, at this end of the table the most important game is always the next one and this will only be valuable if we now go on and beat Newcastle next weekend, we will go there with confidence as we should do going forward, as i also said this team is learning with every game, they learn their lessons well and make sure they don't make the same mistakes twice.