After the Everton game, which I think we will do well to get a point from - these are our fixtures for the next two months: Southampton V Fulham West Ham V Southampton Southampton V Tottenham West Brom V Southampton Southampton V Swansea QPR V Southampton Southampton V Newcastle Southampton V Norwich Makes better reading than our first four fixtures? If we can keep improving and the new signings settle in as well as they look to be doing....
I always was confident (at least until Darren Bent scored) that at some point round about now the team and Nigel would get far enough up the learning curve to start making an impression. The second half yesterday will have struck a chord with the teams we have to face in the next few weeks that maybe we aren't the pushovers that the press have been making us out to be. I actually think we might get something from the Everton game in all seriousness.
To be fair, after coming so close to beating the two manchester clubs and putting four past them....it's only wind-up merchants and idiots in the press who would have us down as "pushovers"
Obviously if you go on another team's forum and see how they think they will do against us, they'll all go for a three point banker. We have Everton first of course, who look excellent. But we can give them a good game. And I can always say I'm confident we will score a goal.
Trying to be realistic I think we could get the following: Everton V Southampton - 1pt Southampton V Fulham - 3pts West Ham V Southampton - 3pts Southampton V Tottenham - 0 pts West Brom V Southampton - 1pt Southampton V Swansea - 3pts QPR V Southampton - 1pt Southampton V Newcastle 1pts Southampton V Norwich 3pts 16 points would be a very good return I think. Putting us on 19 points from our first 14 games which would get us well on the way to a decent placed finish. we need to take a lot of points from this little run as a few of the clubs I would expect to be fighting out near the bottom are vising St Mary's in this little run.
I think we should aim for about 10-12 points from those games. This may sound cautious but a point a game will be sufficient to keep us up this season. Very few of these games are easy, look how well Fulham and West Brom are doing.
I would bet on 13 points from this coming period assuming we don't get any major injuries or suspensions
Agreed Chilco. I was fairly confident. In all honesty I would have been very confident, if not for returning to Not606 and seeing certain posters predicting doom and gloom for the last few weeks. I am normally quite positive, but I have to say that the edge had been knocked off me by the End-of-Worlders. Beating Aston Villa was more that just a good result. It was a bloody turnaround, because the players and staff can't have been unaffected by the recent results, media and fan talk. The fact that, after being soundly beaten by a rampant Arsenal last week, Saints really made Villa pay for the disappointment of the last few weeks. Confidence is now restored. Yes, it might take a battering during the season, but I hope certain posters will realise that it doesn't help in the slightest to bring the mood of the forum down to basement level. Yes, there is plenty of room for improvement, but there is no crisis.
We won't get too high when we win or to low when we loose. Take 5 positives and 1 negative from every game. Analyse it in the cold light of day then we draw a blue line under it and move onto the next one. We are together as one here at Southampton Football Club Oh and in relation to the OP I think that we will win every game....or at least we will endeavor to do so!
I think the season is beginning to pan out into a quite interesting fashion. The likes of Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea and perhaps Arsenal will all finish well ahead of the other clubs as always seems to be the case these days yet if you look down the table there are some intriguing results. Who would have expected Liverpool to be in the relegation zone even if there might have be some who would have shared my perception that they would find this season extremely tough. The question is to ascertain where Saints fit into this. I felt that there were positives about the likes the two Manchester clubs yet the failure against Wigan and the humbling against Arsenal suggested to me that we were doomed. However, yesterday's performance seemed to offer a "new" Saints and Ramirez certainly raised the expectations. I was staggered at how good he was and apart from the dodgy defending where we gifted the goal, Yoshida looked quite solid too. That said, I think it needs to be put into context. For the first 30 mins, Saints dominated the first half yet remained unable to put any efforts on goal. As good as Ireland started to get involved after the gaol. I felt Villa ended up dictating the game for the final third of this half. His absence in the second half allowed Saints the space to to dictate the game and by the time we were 3-1 up, it had the feel of an exhibition match. My point is this. I don't think we will play against many teams quite as poor all season as the Villa side we encountered yesterday. They lacked quality and their heads went down as soon as they went behind. The interesting thing in the coming matches will be which teams match our expectations and which teams don't. Wigan were extremely well organised and pressed better than I had anticipated. I went to that match expecting a home win yet saw Adkins' out-thought by his Wigan counter-part. It will be fascinating to see how things pan out over the course of the season but I feel the squad is now better than the one we started the campaign with. I think where we finish will depend on how poor some of our rivals are. On yesterday's performance, I think I would be worried if I was a Villa fan as their squad looks low on quality.
It is amazing how far confidence and a winning mentality can take you. I think that Southampton possess enough goal threat to keep ourselves above the relegation line, however we may take the occasional hammering.
