Aston Villa came away from St Mary's with all three points in their Premier League encounter on Saturday night.
A header from Ross Barkley just before the half-time whistle proved to be enough for Dean Smith 's men as they moved up to eighth place in the table and three points clear of their opponents.
The three points also takes Villa to within one point of sixth-placed Tottenham and seventh-placed Everton.
However, the win didn't come without a bit of controversy, with VAR ruling in Villa's favour both at the start and end of the game.
Here is what the national media made of the game.
VIDEO: Ash Preece on Southampton 0-1 Aston Villa
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The Guardian , Ben Fisher
Villa were not at their best but Barkley's header earned a second win in six league matches. It was an ugly victory, eked out when John McGinn and Cash threw their bodies on the line, but Villa have now won 10 league games this season, eclipsing last season's tally. This Villa side, however, are a different beast. Southampton, too, have won admirers for their fearlessness but are sliding after winning just one of their past eight league matches, though as Hasenhüttl was quick to point out in midweek, that win came against the champions. Things could have turned out differently had Southampton prospered from a late corner that led to three last-ditch blocks or if Ings ditched the home shirt for a vest before poking in the rebound.
The crescendo was painful for Southampton, with Villa miraculously denying Jan Bednarek, Che Adams and then Jack Stephens before those all-too-familiar pesky dotted lines landed on the side of the visitors. "Just as well it wasn't my backside," tweeted McGinn, attempting to see the funny side.
Daily Mail , Riath Al-Samarrai
Good timing all round, really. Good for Ross Barkley in terms of one run into the area and another across his manager's eyeline, and good for Aston Villa as they ended a mildly troubling streak of results away from home.
What might have been a fourth straight loss on the road was instead a fortuitous win that carried them back up into the thinner air, and within that climb came a goal from Barkley which will help his own interests.
It is no great secret that his loan from Chelsea has had its tricky moments, be it an iffy hamstring or an iffier decision around the Covid regulations. It also won't have been lost on him that £14million has just been spent on a versatile midfielder in Morgan Sanson who might threaten his place.
A fine moment to get a goal, then. And a good goal it was, too, both in the headed finish from Barkley shortly before the break and furthermore in its creation via the precision of a Jack Grealish cross on the run. That marvellous playmaker now has nine assists in this campaign - only Harry Kane and Kevin De Bruyne have made more.
For Villa and Dean Smith, the evening injected momentum back into an impressive season that lately was in danger of getting a little sticky, after one win in their previous five. For Southampton and Ralph Hasenhuttl, there is the aching frustration of two big VAR calls in Villa's favour and the wider knowledge that they racked up 20 shots to nine from their opponents. To emerge from that kind of game with a deteriorating record of one win from eight league fixtures was clearly galling.
BBC Sport
For all Villa's entertaining attacking football this season, this was a victory in which the visitors had to dig in and, at times, ride their luck.
Smith's side had already surpassed their best points tally at the halfway stage of a Premier League campaign since 2009-10, when they finished sixth, and have now won more games in the competition in half a season than they did in the whole of the last one.
It needed the creative spark of talismanic captain Grealish and the reactions of goalkeeper Martinez to earn three points that move them back within touching distance of a European spot.
Grealish's hooked cross for Barkley's headed winner was his ninth assist in the league this season, with only Tottenham's Harry Kane (11) and Manchester City's Kevin de Bruyne (10) having made more.
Villa's failure to kill off the game at Turf Moor in midweek cost them against Burnley, but this time the visitors' goalkeeper kept them in the fixture.
Martinez has been superb since arriving from Arsenal and kept his 10th clean sheet of the season thanks to a number of fine stops.