Have voted we will stay up, but my true position is possibly stay up as I haven't lost hope yet but am concerned.
Good call , people are always incredibly bias when it comes to their team as they feel they know more as they see them more often than others fans do and they also can not bare to hear their team is crap , I would criticise Southampton on here but never on another board as its just not the thing to do . Other clubs fans would have us straight back down as it stands and who would blame them ? Its not as if our performances have indicated otherwise is it ?
Hinges on the next 10 games for me. We need to stay in touch until January, shore up our defence in the transfer window, and then push on from there. For the record though, I voted yes.
Yeah this is what I think. Just going off a sample of my mates who are not Saints fans, none of them think we will survive atm. Most agree with a lot of peoples opinion on here that we need to stay within touching distance of safety until Jan then strengthen the defence to have a chance of staying up.
I think you'll stay up as I think there's at least three teams worse than you: QPR, Norwich, Reading, Aston Villa.
I disagree to an extent. I think the performances in some of the games (City, Utd, half against Villa, Fulham and Spurs) have indicated that we can compete at this level. The results haven't indicated we will stay up, and seeing as this is a results based game that is why most will have us as certainties for the drop.
I agree that atm those 4 teams are at least on a par with us if not worse. I can't see QPR struggling for the whole season though, too much quality in that squad. I'm hoping they haven't gelled by the team we play them in a few weeks though.
Team spirit and fan support were important in great escape seasons. If it comes down to the last few games between teams of similar quality, team confidence will be very important. As Nigel quoted recently: A house divided against itself cannot stand.
We have then only played 50% of this season well , we need to do better than that to stay up , we can't really say we have been unlucky as we have fully deserved some of the hammerings we have had . The only game I can think of where we actually fully deserved something was the United game and we gave that away .
They appeared as fighters because, they not only had PL experience, they had experience of saving themselves. Most of our players (like us fans) have had recent experience of being top dog...we have to relearn to be tough together.
We will go down unless we can keep Ramirez fit for the rest of the season when he gets back .With him fit I feel we can win almost all the games the teams low in the table and be comfortably safe
Being objective... As said earlier, as it is going at the minute I can only see us going down. We need a change in fortune and a real lift BEFORE January and then boost the defence.
its not looking good is it, lets be honest. its difficult to be objective with your own team. if we stay up, we'll have proved a lot of people wrong, put it that way.
Right at this moment, we're going down. But we've got a nice-ish run of fixtures coming up now (as nice as fixtures can be in the PL), we've got Ramirez and Cork to return from injury, and we've got the January transfer window. So who knows? As the echo point out, it's quite eye-opening to think that 7 of our 9 fixtures have been against top 9 opposition so far. And in one week's time, that will read 8 out of 10 vs top 9 opposition (assuming no-one else breaks into the top 9 over the weekend).
In a scrap ? Hurlock or Schniederlin . Ruddock or Yoshida . Dowie or Lee Benali or Fox You sort of see my point here ?
Most people I work with predict relagation for us........the same people who also told me would not get promoted last season and the season before. Get gaston back sort defence out in jan and make sure we are not adrift by Xmas and we will do just fine.
I dont know what you are on about , you seem to think I think Ramirez is Mexican or Korean or something
I have been confident up until now that we will be ok, but doubt is starting to creep in now. Results have largely been worse than performances and while that suggests that we can compete if we can somehow stop making individual defensive mistakes, it's difficult to see that changing now. We need a boost, some added confidence. I'm hoping the return of Ramirez will be that boost. This season is on a knife edge. It's clear that we just don't have any strength in depth and a few injuries to key players and it could be game over. But we are not cut adrift yet and whilst we are in touching distance of the teams above us I'd like to think that we have enough to pull through...just...I hope.