NO Saints fan should have welcomed the weekend FA Cup exit.

No supporter, on hearing ref Jon Moss blow the final whistle to call time on a thrilling game, should have turned to their friends and uttered the phrase 'at least we can concentrate on the league now.'

If they did, they were wrong.

And this is why they were wrong.

The FA Cup remains the world's greatest club knockout competition.

True, some of the magic might have been distilled in recent years. The elite clubs are more interested in qualifying for the Champions League and those struggling to avoid the drop are more interested in staying up.

The financial rewards for staying in the Premier League far, far outweigh the financial benefits of winning the FA Cup (£1.8m for winning at Wembley).

Yet so much of the magic remains. Look at some of the weekend results - Bradford winning at Chelsea, Middlesbrough winning at Manchester City, Blackburn beating Swansea, Bolton drawing at Liverpool, even Leicester winning at Tottenham, And to that list of surprise results we can add Palace winning at St Mary's.

Palace's away record is not great, while Saints boast the best defensive record in the Premier League.

I fully expected Saints to progress to the last 16, and keep their incredible momentum going.

Even though Ronald Koeman has masterminded a remarkable challenge for a Champions League place, Southampton Football Club have not suddenly become a club that can shrug off an FA Cup exit.

Yes, Saints have a great chance of a top four finish, but it's not guaranteed. They still have 16 league games left.

Had they beaten Palace, Saints would have been two more wins away from an FA Cup semi final at Wembley. Three wins from an FA Cup final.

I know the 'prize' for winning the FA Cup is 'only' a Europa League place, but so is fifth in the league.

Fifth placed Arsenal are only three points behind Saints in the league - four if you include Saints' superior goal difference.

That is not a big gap, especially when there are still 48 league points to play for (six more points than Saints have at present).

Ok, Saints are now free to concentrate on the league while Manchester United and Arsenal remain in the FA Cup and Tottenham are still in the Europa League and League Cup.

Time, as always, will tell whether Saints being able to concentrate on just one competition makes the difference.

We won't know until May.

What we do know, though, is that Ronald Koeman- unlike his predecessor - was taking the FA Cup seriously this season, as indeed he took the League Cup.

Momentum counts for a lot in football, and Saints' momentum has now been halted with a shock home defeat.

We will see what affect it has, if any, when Swansea visit St Mary's next Sunday.

The Welsh club are off the back of a 5-0 home league defeat and an FA Cup loss to a lower division team, so their confidence cannot be high.

In the long run, Saints' FA Cup exit might not come back to haunt them. They might well finish in the top four and then nobody will remember a cold day in January when Alan Pardew finally returned to St Mary's and won.

At the moment, though, the loss should hurt.