Saints travel to St James's Park on Saturday knowing that in the coming weeks they must improve their showing on the road or risk seeing themselves drop down the League.

Its a little harsh to base the fact that Saints need to improve on the road on the last two away games, after all Chelsea and Arsenal are two difficult places to go at the best of times, however Everton showed their mettle by going to the Emirates and gettng a point, whilst West Brom got a draw recently at Chelsea, so as tough as those games are, when you set yourselves high standards as Saints have done this season, you cant use excuses you have to live up to them.

But it isn't just the past two away games that Saints have faltered in, draws at Stoke and Manchester United not to mention a defeat at Norwich have only been seen as good results due to the wins at West Brom & Liverpool to give a grand total of 8 points from our 7 away games.

Saints currently sit 8th in the League, on home form however they sit 6th in a table compiled purely from home results, in away games though its a different matter, in that statistic they are 13th with an average of .83 points per game, it is in this area that we need to improve in our 3 road trips before the end of the year, if we dont we will almost certainly fall out of the top 10, especially when you couple this with the fact that our next home game is against Spurs who are joint top of the away form league, averaging 2.17 points per game, winning 4, drawing 1 and losing 1 of their 6 games away from White Hart Lane so far, put bluntly their visit will be statistically the hardest game at St mary's we will have faced so far, therefore its imperative that we not only get something on Saturday in the North East but pick up points at Cardiff & Everton as well.

But it wont be easy at Newcastle in the last six games the Toon are top of that table as well, winning 5 and losing 1 of their last half dozen games, in contrast Saints are 15th, our last six games seeing us only pick up 5 points, this is worrying as .83 per game ironically the same as our away average for the season is relegation form, hard to take given that only four games ago we were top of the form charts and playing for the chance to go top.

All that seems a distant memory showing just how quickly things can change in football, but having stopped the slide against Man City on Saturday, we now have to show that we can keep that going.

But the fact still remains that at the start of the month i stated that December would be a month that by the end of it we would know just what way we were going in the league, if we are to harbour hopes of a top ten finish then we have to start winning on the road, or at least picking up points against those teams we see as our rivals for a league place, if Newcastle beat us they will go six points ahead of us and we will truly be isolated from the top seven clubs, our job now is to go to Newcastle and get at least a point, not great but it moves us forward and keeps them in sight, we then have to go to Cardiff and win, the Bluebirds have the second worst home record so we have to exploit that, then we go to Everton another good home side and one at which we traditionally do badly at, if we still want to be in the top ten come New years Day then we also have to get something there, of course its not an exact science but I would suggest that anything less than 5 points from these 3 games could well see us not only drop out of the top 10, but lose ground with the top 6 altogether.

When you set high standards you have to live up to them, this season some have talked of Champions League qualification, realistically the last few weeks have shown we dont have the squad to do this both in terms of quantity and quality, however I still see 10th as the realistic aim with 8th as the absolute extent of our ability, this being the case we should look at hanging on in there and being in a position in the New Year to go on another run and keep on track for that, if we do then we will have taken giant strides forward, the best football clubs are built on solid foundations and not on boom or bust seasons.

Photo: Action Images

richardmdcooper added 14:18 - Dec 10 8 points from 7 away games = 1.14 points a game. The 0.83 is just for the last six games I think
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slynch added 15:08 - Dec 10 What should they do to improve their away form that they are not already doing?
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SaintNick added 15:19 - Dec 10 Score more goals for a start, 5 in 7 games, 1 of them from the penalty spot and 2 from corners is just not good enough
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slynch added 16:01 - Dec 10 Everyone already knows that a football team needs to score more goals than they let in. I asked what you think they should do about it.
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sheffieldsaint added 17:28 - Dec 10 Never mind all that , what about nominating the best goal ever at st Mary's by us. That should cheer us up.
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geecee added 11:17 - Dec 11 Try playing Ricky up front by himself as a target and holding man when we are away from home. Bring on Osvaldo during the second half, if we need him.
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