Southampton Football Club now has its eyes on only one aim for the rest of the season, nothing else matters, everything fades into insignificance if we dont achieve this aim.
Four months and nineteen games ago when I implored Saints to keep winning and build up an unassailable lead in the race to promotion, I was quite often hit with the responces that I was wrong to deman this, that we were eight points clear, that it was the best time ever to be a Saints fan, that I should just chill out because we didnt expect to do this well anyway and several other more choice phrases, we then had an awful ten game run and some of the same people again retorted that I was wrong to berate our form, that it had been a great season watching great football.
Well whilst i can concur with some of their points, the plain fact of the matter is that football clubs are there to firstly win games and secondly to try and win Leagues and Cups, it doesnt matter what level you are playing in, what matters is how you do, managers dont sent out teams to firstly entertain, they sent them our to compete, win and if its attractive football then thats a bonus.
So here we sit top of the league and on the cusp of a return to the Premier League, its tense now and how we wish that we had gained even a couple of more points from that ten game run that added only eleven to our points total, thirteen would have been a poor return, even fifteen, but if we had them now we would have so much more breathing space, of course that chance to storm to the league title has gone, but we now have another.
So in these final ten games we need to focus on only one thing, winning, of course we wont win all ten games, but if we win five of them plus a few draws then that should be enough, not certain to be enough, but if we can win those five games sooner than later then the pressure on West Ham and Reading will be immense, as it stands now Reading have to basically win one more game than us, so if we win five out of ten then they have to win six, same for est ham, assuming they win their game in hand then they have to beat our points total by at least one, so for instance if we win five and draw 3, then they have to either win six and draw 1 or win 5 and draw 4, and whilst we have to concentrate on our own form as its totally within our hands at this point, every game that our rivals fail, brings us a step nearer promotion.
Promotion is now all that matters, thats what this season will ultimately be remembered for in the long run, long after we have forgotten who was player of the year or individual games, we will remember either the great promotion run or how we blew it, we have to make sure that its engraved in the history books as the former.
So like last season, its knuckle down and tick off our wins and Reading and West Ham's dropped points, every game will make the race a little bit clearer, but lets remember what we are hear for and thats to win promotion, nothing else, nothing more, we are not here to single out individual praise or perhaps more poignantly individual abuse on the field, we are here to support a team effort and that means doing our part as supporters, getting behind the team during games not just when we are winning and when its easy, but when they really need it and thats when they are struggling, but being a supporter doesnt stop there, we need to help fill St Mary's, encourage more people to go to the games, last season its surprised me that in the run in we got nowhere near filling the Stadium till the final game,we dont want that to be the case this year, in truth it probably wont be in the fact that Doncaster and Pompey are twinned so should be relatively full, Reading will be a crunch game and with Coventry being on the last day it should be full, but we wstill need to turn the atmosphere into a positive one, on all fronts.
So we know what we need to do both on and off the pitch, lets concentrate on our goal for the season, Markus Liebherr had a dream there should be 32,000 people now at every home game helping it being achieved