What a difference 90 minutes can make. What a difference six minutes can make.

Two Charlie Austin goals in the space of next to no time to lift his side to victory against Everton may just have transformed Saints’ season.

At the very least it has eased the pressure Saints and manager Mauricio Pellegrino have been feeling.

Saints so desperately needed to beat Everton at St Mary’s.

Having failed to accumulate the points they should have done up until this stage of the season, and early into a very difficult run, bagging a win against an Everton side in disarray was imperative.

The script was written for Saints if they failed to get three points, and it would have read ‘a long few months ahead.’ This is hardly the full stop at the end of proceedings, the end of doubts and problems, but is a huge step in the right direction.

For all the fears over where Saints have been heading in recent weeks there is at least a small crumb of comfort. Against the bottom five Saints have amassed four wins and a draw this season, which hardly suggests they are going to get dragged into a huge battle for survival.

Whether it proves to be a campaign that offers much more, in an upwardly direction, is still to play for.

There will be those who inevitably say this was a case of playing the right team at the right time.

Undoubtedly that was a factor. Everton were a shambles. Embarrassingly bad.

They only seemed to have any type of sustainable game plan once a player went off injured and they were forced to change to five at the back, but even then it didn’t last.

Their team looked as they had already played 90 minutes when the game kicked off, such was their general lethargy.

However, to just pinpoint Everton’s inadequacies would be unfair.

Saints also went into the game low on confidence, especially after the 3-0 beating at Liverpool.

They were under pressure at home, and had to produce.

They were being asked questions about their character and spirit.

They could have faltered, hidden, but they did not.

Instead, Saints stood up to the challenge, looked it square in the eye and produced the goods.

Pellegrino changed things around, giving Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg a first start of the season, and getting Charlie Austin involved from the beginning, and it worked.

There was somebody to convert the crosses into the box, and Hojbjerg, clearly with a point to prove, produced a hungry performance.

Saints took full advantage of Everton’s early incompetence and battered them from the start.

Indeed, they should have taken the lead long before they did – and that was after only 18 minutes.

Jordan Pickford had to save from a deflection off of one of his own players, Phil Jagielka, before Charlie Austin spurned two great chances.

They were both about eight yards out, the first falling to him via Virgil van Dijk’s deflected knockdown from a corner, which Austin put well over the bar, The second came thanks to Cedric Soares getting the better of Gylfi Sigurdsson with embarrassing ease and playing in a low near post cross which Austin met but could only direct against the outside of the post.

When Saints did eventually get the breakthrough it came as a result of good play down the left that culminated in Ryan Bertrand playing in Dusan Tadic.

The Serbian managed to bring the ball under control and, off balance, stab a shot that rolled past Pickford and into the net.

Saints also had a penalty shout turned down after Michael Keane blocked a Steven Davis cross from the right. It clearly struck the Everton defender’s arm but referee Kevin Friend decided that from close range it was not deliberate.

The nearest Everton came to testing the Saints defence before their enforced change was when Kevin Mirallas threatened to get in behind but a heavy touch allowed Fraser Forster the chance to sweep up.

However, after the change of formation and their slight and slow growth into the game, Everton got a goal out of nothing.

Sigurdsson, so much more threatening in a central role, cut back outside to create himself a few yards and hit a right footed shot from 20 yards out.

It curled over and beyond Forster, struck the underside of the bar, the inside of the post, and then the underside of the bar again before settling in the net.

If that was a blow to Saints and a boost to Everton, it didn’t show as Saints scored twice in six minutes shortly after the restart.

Austin gave them the lead again on 52 minutes, flicking a header off the well-used underside of the bar after Sofiane Boufal had chipped the ball to Bertrand and the left back had whipped in a sumptuous cross.

The striker headed home again, once more grateful to static Everton defenders, this time Tadic supplying the left wing cross.

That really was game over. Everton’s wafer thin confidence was shattered and Saints were in total control.

Substitute Shane Long nearly ended his long scoring drought but was denied by the fingertips of Pickford.

There was to be another Saints goal three minutes from time as James Ward-Prowse cut back to Davis, who let loose a superb right footed shot from the edge of the area that bent into the far corner.

It was a wonderful finish to a wonderful afternoon for Saints.

A defining moment? Only time will tell, but this is the sort of thing that will do it if anything can.