It was the late late show at St Mary's for the second season running in the first home game of the season, Cyle Larin continued his scoring form and new boy Divin Mubama opened his account.

All the talk pre match was the omission of Taylor Harwood-Bellis from the squad after Tonda Eckert had confirmed one Friday that Caspar Jander aside he had a full squad to choose from, perhaps he was making that point deliberately as he knew what he might have to do the following day.

The manager confirmed after the match that he had made the decision to leave Harwood-Bellis out as we was not in the right condition to play, all I am going to say on this at the moment, as I'm sure there will be a lot more to be said in the next week, is that we should all be thankful that our brave firefighters all felt in the right condition to be able to get out into the fields of Britain and put out the wild fires otherwise there would have been a lot more devastation & death.

Tonda Eckert made 3 changes to the starting line up and the side looked more like the team of last season both in terms of the players on the pitch playing in their right positions, but also formation.

We started well a lovely through ball played by Flynn Downes put Larin into a race with a Stoke defender, he got ahead of him and slid the ball under the keeper to open the scoring.

Saints were now in control of the game and surely would go on to dominate and win the game.

But Stoke had not read the script, former Saints striker Sam Gallagher made a return to St Mary's playing on the wing for the visitors and he put in a decent cross on 26 minutes and found Galbraith completely unmarked to fire home from 8 yards out, it was against the run of play and now Stoke had something to defend and the pattern of the game would change.

The second half saw Saints have plenty of attempts but due to some stoic Stoke defending they were finding it difficult to get them on target and as the game approached the final minute of normal time it looked like we would have to settle for a point.

But then came some moments of madness, drawing comparisons to the opening home game of last season when we overcame Wrexham in the dying stages.

A lovely through ball from Lewis Dobbin to to Finn Azaz, saw him play a first time pass sideways to Divin Mabuma who ran on and fired a left foot shot across the keeper to send St Mary's wild.

Five minutes of injury time and you wondered what the Stoke response would be and could we hold on to the lead, the manager made a substitution to break up play and bring on fresh legs, Sam Edozie on for Tom Fellows.

This paid dividends just minutes later when Flynn Downes played through Edozie and as he got ahead of his man he was clearly shoved in the back, Stoke argued that the push was outside the box, tv replays could give some evidence in their favour, but it was a cynical foul and justice was done, a second yellow card seeing the Stoke defender depart.

Ryan Manning despatching the spot kit to make the game safe and ensure their would be no nasty surprises for Saints in the final minute or so on the clock.

The biggest plus points of the game were the performance of our midfield creative players, Flynn Downes played superb through balls for the first goal and the penalty and for the second Lewis Dobbin deserves a lot of credit for his ball to Azaz who played a quick pass to wrong foot the Stoke defence for Mubama to run through and score'

Again it was a game where Saints switched off defensively at a key moment, as they did twice at Watford, but in some respects this is a side in transition, they were missing THB our best defender and he will need replacing, but in all areas we are having to adapt at the moment.

We had two players making their home debuts, we were missing key players and if I am honest I think we got our pre season planning wrong, we did not play enough games both in terms of numbers and class of opposition.

This means that we are not firing on all cylinders, pre season should be about slowly building up the class of opposition with the final game being the toughest and at that point firing on all cylinders.

We have not done that and in many respects Colchester United and then Watford seemed to be part of pre season rather than the first two competitive games.

Against Stoke we were starting to gel, but we are not quite their yet, the absence of Jander & Harwood-Bellis yesterday was a problem, they were two of our best players and their future at the club is in doubt.

The next week or so is going to be key, we need to shift a few players and we are probably going to need a new central defender imminently.

But on the plus side we won this game and that is what counts, it hasn't been the start to the season we wanted after the defeat at Watford, but if you take the results from those fixtures last season, we are ahead of the game, just a solitary point from them last season and 3 from them this.

We are now in a position where we could get out of the bottom 4 next weekend, but it will be tough, the game is against Millwall who have won both their openers, we drew this fixture last season, win it this and we will truly be getting back to where we finished last season.

All Photos Via Reuters