Starting at 20.00 hours tonight the following 26 hours will define whether Saints are going to be comfortable in the final two weeks of the season or its going to be tight.
Saints fans will be looking up to the North East tonight to the tadium Of Light and Sunderlands game with Stoke City, given that Stoke are a poit ahead of us and probably just about safe, there is only one result we want and that is a Stoke win that will leave the Mackems still two points behind us and the side most likely to be overtaken by a Wigan resurgence, A Sunderland win however will leave us very exposed to Wigan's late surge, it would leave only Newxastle and Norwich behind us and all eyes would now go to Wigan on Tuesday night for their home game with Swansea City.
This game should not be underestimated, if Wigan win their game in hand over us they would overtake both Norwich and Newcastle and be only a point behind us, but more importantly they would be a side with momentum and given that they are in the FA Cup final on Saturday, they will be able to sit back and watch the weekends proceedings knowing what they need to do.
If both sides win it will be a big problem for Saints, of course our fate is in our own hands, but on the back of two straight defeats and four games without a win things woukd be very very tight.
Ideally both will lose although the chances of that happening are not as great as two home wins, but if it did that that relieves some pressure off of Saints, although the problem is that we would travel to a Sunderland side on Sunday who would be in a desperate position.
I have always said that in a relegation fight if you are more than three points away from dropping into the bottom three then thats a good thing, a Sunderland & Wigan double in the next 26 hours could leave us open to being in the bottom three going into the final game of the season as Wigan dont play at the weekend then that wont happen over its course, although with Norwich hosting an up and down West Brom side and Newcastle at QPR its likely they might overtake us on Sunday but it could happen on the Tuesday night when Wigan make up that game in hand, the only good thing being that it is at Arsenal so unlikely.
Whatever way we look at things though its not good, a couple of weeks ago people were talking about tenth and above, now most of them would take 17th.