Ralph Hasenhuttl is going into the last game of a long season with one aim and that is to break the 50 point barrier, something that the club has not achieved since 2016 under Ronald Koeman and rarely in the Premier League.
Ralph wants to finish the season with a flourish and hit 50 points a landmark they will achieve if they can draw with Sheffield United on Sunday, but the Austrian wants all three to finish in fine style.
He said:
"There are still three more to get, so let us get those because 50 points is the target now.
"It’s amazing, especially when you see where we were coming from in October.
"It’s been an unbelievably long and strange season but now we are in a fantastic position and have the chance of another win.”
The last time Saints hit the half century was in 2016 when 63 points was enough to hit sixth position our highest League finish since the mid 1980's, the fact that a win over Sheffield united will bring us within 11 points of that figure is remarkable given the low point we found ourselves in back in October and November.
Last year we ended up on 39 points a slight improvement on the 36 points in 2017/18 which saw us come close to relegation, Claude Puel's season saw an 8th place finish secured with only 46 points a total already beaten, although this years table is far different than 3 years ago.
Ronald Koeman's two seasons were the glory years with 7th and 6th place finishes achieved with 60 & 63 points respectively and it should be noted that Mauricio Pochettino's only full season when he finished 8th was secured with 56 points, a win over the Blades will bring us only 4 short of that total.
In our first season back in the Premier League we got a respectable 14th with 41 points a number we have already smashed this season,
So out of our 8 seasons back in the top flight this is going to be our 4th best points tally whatever happens on the final day.
Even going back to our 13 season stint in the Premier League before our relegation in 2005 we rarely hit the 50 point mark in a 38 game season although we achieved 50 in 92/93 from 42 games and 54 two seasons later again from a 42 game season, but even the latter on a points per game ratio would only equal 48.85 points, lower than this season.
If we can get the three points on Sunday then we will equal the 52 points in 2000/01 our final season at the Dell and a 10th place finish.and Gordon Strachan's points haul in finishing 8th in 2003/04.
This perhaps puts Ralph Hasenhuttl's job into perspective, a win in the final game will see him have the joint 5th best season's record out of 26 season's in the Premier League.
This shows that after a shaky couple of years we have the foundations to move forward again, we have dropped so many silly points this season we could easily have beaten Pochettino's total in a season that is generally seen as being a good one.
So reaching the 50 mark would be a great and fitting way to celebrate coming back from adversity and showing that the past is now firmly behind us and we can look forward to the future with confidence.
Time to give the board and football club the benefit of the doubt and start to believe we can achieve things again.