Many Saints fans may have a few delusions of grandeur at the moment, but the first aim should be to get off to a good start and make sure we aren't dragged into a relegation fight.
There is nothing wrong with having realistic targets in fact every one should have them be they the Chairman of a football club in the Premier league or an individual who just wants to improve his lifestyle.
But any target should involve gradual progression through a series of steps rather than massive leaps forward, of course some steps are bigger than others, but in any situation a good adage is that when you build a house you put in the foundations first and then build on them with the roof going on last, try to put the roof on any earlier and it wont work.
So Saints season this year should be a series of small targets which individually will all drive towards a far bigger one.
The first target then should be to get off to a good start, as we know last season we got off to a terrible one and that left us not only playing catch up for most of the season, but even when we dragged ourselves clear of the relegation battle, we still had one eye over our shoulder right until the last week of the season, although in fairness such was the league that we were far from alone in this and that perhaps tells us something.
Last seasons hard start last season in terms of fixtures wasn't as damaging as it could have been though, defeats to Man City, Man td & Arsenal usually happen during a season to most clubs, it was just that for us they were 3 of the first 4 games, in fact the most damaging defeat of that opening four was the one at home to Wigan.
This season we of course have a far easier opening spell, but the problem with that is that with all four teams being ones likely to be around us come the final table, unlike a year ago, we cant afford to lose them,.
So three points against West Brom was just what the doctor ordered, our first target for the season has to be to maintain a healthy 1.5 points per game average against the other 13 teams who are not part of the big six, if we do that then relegation should not be an issue given that we will pick up the odd point or two against the big guns.
This being the case then a good start for Saints in the opening four games has to be six points, the win at West Brom has put us well ahead and if we now follow that up against Sunderland with a home win, then we would have the six points needed from the opening spell in the bag and a great opportunity to get well ahead of the game from the start.
Of course there are those that will say our sights are set that much higher this term but given how close the middle of the Premier is at the moment, it doesn't take a lot of extra points to hit the top ten, West rom in 8th were only 8 ahead of us, but we also have to temper that by the sobering thought that relegated Wigan were only 5 behind, the line between success and failure in the Premier League is now very thin.
But these figures show a clear blueprint for the season, build your season by that 1.5 average and then pick up points against the top six and you can strive towards a little more than just survival, of course this being football this isn't an exact science, last season 32 out of our 41 points were achieved against the bottom 14 clubs, that's way below the average needed, luckily we got 9 against the top six which kept our heads above water, but can we guarantee that every season, personally I would prefer to keep the points per game average higher against the sides around us than rely on beating Man City, Chelsea & Liverpool at home again.
So Saints targets for the season are clear, keep this good start going, in the long run its a good foundation and as we know in football confidence is everything, get the points on the scoreboard and then we can look to the next level, keep taking small steps throughout the season and they add up to big ones, three small steps in the grand scale of things will always be more valuable than one big one.
Saints can have a great season, but the message is lets hammer home this opening day win in fine fashion and leave a few clubs paying catch up on us this season, instead of how it has usually been with Saints in virtually every season of the 40 odd that I have watched and that is us chasing the rest every year.