Rome wasn't built in a day is a phrase that has gone out of fashion with football club owners and also some of the fans, but for a club like Saints who can't compete financially with the big guns, it is about steady growth.
Four years ago on paper things looked rosy for Southampton Football Club, they had just completed their fourth consecutive top 8 finish in the Premier League, two Europa League Campaigns and had also played in the League Cup Final.
Bizarrely to football supporters across the land we sacked a manager in Claude Puel who had led us to perhaps the 6th best season in our history.
We didn't realise it back then but our success had been built on sand, the four consecutive top 8 finishes had been achieved by 3 different managers and we had lost direction.
Back in the summer of 2017 we had not quite reached rock bottom, but we very nearly did that coming season when Mauricio Pellegrino and Mark Hughes nearly took us down to the Championship and the re appointed Hughes in season 2018/19 looked set to achieve that if he stayed in that role.
In short on paper it looked good, but we had had a succession of managers in the past 4 years each of whom had their own ideas and signed their own players, there was no real blueprint.
Enter Ralph Hasenhuttl, who joined a club that had lost focus both on and off the pitch and some poor signings meant that his hands were tied due to a high wage bill on players who were not playing for our first team.
Hasenhuttl was appointed as he was the type of manager who was in it for the long haul, he was not just interested in the first team, but the whole structure of the club, he spent lockdown not like the rest of us watching Tipping Point on the sofa, but writing a structure for the club from the academy set up to the First team.
It was never going to be a quick and easy fix, it was always going to be about slow steady progress.
Over the past two years we have slowly but surely got some of those big salary's off the books and slowly started to rebuild the squad with some astute signings.
Last season highlighted the lack of depth in the squad in the second half of the season after topping the Premier League in the first, but we stayed up comfortably and also had an FA Cup semi final appearance.
The summer saw some astute signings and looking at the squad you could see how much it had changed for the better over the last couple of years, yes it had lost Danny Ings, but every player has to move on sometime and his departure brought in cash to strengthen the squad.
So although there is still work to be done and positions to be filled in the squad, at the start of the season we could look forward to the season with a little confidence, but the moment the fixture list came out it was clear that the opening 8 games would not be easy.
We would play 3 of the top 4 sides of the previous season and with West Ham it would make 4 of the top 6 and overall 6 of last seasons top 10. leaving just Wolves and Newcastle United, both teams who had finished above us.
It would not be an easy start, the same 8 corresponding fixtures last season yielded just 2 points.
An opening day defeat at Everton revealed some deficiencies, but 4 consecutive draws showed that we had improved in some areas, the defeat to Wolves was perhaps the most disappointing result of the opening spell, but we had not played badly, just failed to create and take chances and fall to a sucker punch.
Defeat at Chelsea seemed to bring out the critics in the fan base, they ignored the fact that we had taken the current European Champions and Premier League leaders to the last 6 minutes before they could beat what was a side down to 10 men and the knives came out.
But although the final League table usually doesn't lie, the standings in the first half of the season often do and although we sat 4th from bottom with one game left of that opening 8, we had had a far more challenging fixture list of those around us.
In certain respects the game against Leeds united was make or break, by the end of it we could potentially be in the bottom 3 or we could be heading away from the relegation zone.
At the start of the season i highlighted these 8 games and surmised that although it would not look good in terms of the League table that 5 points perhaps even as low as 4 would be a reasonable return from the opening 8 given the opposition.
The most pleasing aspect was perhaps we competed in all of the games, we were in with a chance of winning all of the those games right up until the final minutes, at Everton and Chelsea at least a draw looked likely as we approached the final 10 minutes.
We were a team that still had spirit and was playing for it's manager, unlike Leeds on Saturday who put in a gutless performance, that could not be levelled at Saints in any game this season, yes lapses of concentration cost us, but never a lack of fight.
The win against Leeds though made it 7 points from 8 games and a solid start to the season if we take everything into account, but now the real work begins, we have put in place some good foundations and now we have to build on them.
Having got some good points on the board though, now comes a run of winnable games, Burnley, Watford & Norwich in the next 4 are games that will set the tone for the season, we win them and we move right up the table, lose them and we undo all the hard work.
Sandwiched in the middle of this run is Aston Villa at home, that again is a fixture that will show us where we can finish in the table, beat the other three and we show we are not relegation candidates, beat Villa and we start to suggest we can push towards a top 10 place.
These 4 fixtures are vital to our season, because when they are completed we go into another run of tough fixtures starting with Liverpool away and then 7 toughies in December.
But first we have to dispose of Burnley who have yet to win a game, but remain a side who are hard to beat as Manchester City found at the weekend, the type of side we don't like to play, who sit back on their own penalty area and pump the ball forward and catch teams on the break, this was the case for us against Wolves and we have to show we have the discipline not to let them take advantage of lapses in concentration.
So although some will say otherwise we have done some good work this season, not perfect, but enough to have given us a foundation we can build on going forward, now we have to step up a notch.