This was Saints chance to post notice of intention, to push themselves right into the middle of the Championship play off melee, the pattern was set early in the game, Saints broke it and scored then let down their guard for 30 seconds and undid all the good work.

Sadly come the final whistle this was one of those games that didn't go our way, but it wasn't just about this game, this was Nathan Jones chance to stick it to his old employers in front of the very same fans who had in his eyes been against him from the very start.

Therefore we saw a far different Nathan Jones side than most that he put out when he was manager here, an organised and fired up team who battled for every point and at the end celebrated what in truth a meaningless point in terms of the Championship table.

Jones had made it there cup final and he and his team could not have celebrated more at the end had this been at Wembley and they had won the FA Cup.

Nathan Jones was a nasty little man in the dressing room at St Mary's by all accounts and looking at the way he rants and raves through games from the dug outs, you have to think that this view of him was true, his behaviour since he has left has not made anyone think we made a mistake in sacking him so early.

But we should have put them to bed, we battered them in the first half had chance after chance and they to their due, put everything in our way to stop them.

Over all we had 23 attempts at goal, 8 of which were on target with 72% possession, no one can complain about our effort.

But Charlton had come to do a job, get everyone behind the ball and go on the break and that is what they did.

When Ross Stewart scored a very good headed goal from a Leo Scienza cross within minutes of the 2nd half restart, you hoped that this would change the flow of the game, that it would open out and give s the chance to get in behind them.

But it made it even more scrappy, Charlton stuck to their dogged task, they did everything to break up the game slow it down and practiced the dark arts of football with enthusiasm.

The lead lasted just over 20 minutes and you could see the goal coming, Charlton had too much time and room on the enge of the box and passed it to Carey who fired home a shot which should have been stopped by Peretz.

Those Saints fans like me who have claimed that Gavin Bazunu should not have been let go unless a "better" replacement was found, had evidence to back that in this goal, if Bazunu had let it in, then he would have been lambasted, Charlton had only one decent effort on goal and two minor ones, yet it seems we are still making the same errors as we have for most of the season.

Once they had their equaliser, Charlton doubled up on everything, fouls, shirt pulling and time wasting was fully on show and they were not going to give it up easily.

So where did it go wrong, I would say that the substitutions didn't help, Charlton were a big side and it was no coincidence, that the visitors scored only minutes after we took off Shea Charles, the visitors were a big strong side , Charles was the one man who had a big strong presence, it changed the balance in midfield.

After the goal we made multiple changes, on 71 minutes we made 3 substitutions, we had upset the rhythm of the side by taking off 3 players at once, one yes, Ross Stewart had done his part, two perhaps, but not three, especially when one of them was Leo Scienza.

We then stopped trying to play through them and reverted to banging in crosses into the box, in the Charlton defence it was land of the giants, not just defenders but midfielders all towering over most of our side, they dealt with anything in the air easily.

Bringing on Cameron Bragg with 5 minutes to go was senseless, with Charlton camped in their own penalty area, we should have thrown a striker on, yes it would have been Cameron Archer, but he has scored late goals, notably at Birmingham City, we could have and should have gone for it.

All the talk as the crowd filtered out of St Mary's was about how we had thrown this game away, the general consensus, listening to those around me, was that the substitutions had been poor and so had the goalkeeper on the goal, I have to say I agreed.

This was a learning curve for Tonda Eckert and hopefully he will look at this game in hindsight and see what could be done better.

However despite the fact that you would have thought Charlton had just secured promotion and we had been relegated, judging by the reaction of both the teams and supporters of each side, this was just a set back, not something terminal.

We need to lick our wounds, learn our lessons and get back to winning ways against QPR on Tuesday.

The disappointing thing about Saturday is what it would have done for us if we had won, we would be in 7th place just a point off 6th spot, we would have closed the game between us and Ipswich in 4th to just 5 points, we would be in the game as they say.

But we are still in the game, we are still just 3 points off 6th, it is still all there to play for, there is a long way to go, I am sure that no one thought that we would win every game between now and the rest of the season, so we have to make this once of those, hopefully rare , occasions when we drop two points.

We have to march on from this and have faith in our team !

All Photos Via Reuters