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Saints Need To Get Fans Back Onside With A Home Win

Saints dug in and got a draw at Wolverhampton Wanderers, appreciated by the travelling supporters, but the bulk of the fans only see the home games and if we want to get everyone backing the team we need to win at St Mary's.

It has been over six months since we won a game at home, ironically against Wolverhampton Wanderers on 13th April last season, since then we have gone 6 games without a win although only two have been defeats and the other four draws.

But most Saints fans judge the progress of the team on what they see and that is only the games at St Mary's, so it is understandable why they are starting to get restless. However the disappointment of the performances at St Mary's has to be tempered with the fact that Saints are very much a work in progress at the moment.

With many supporters having spent a lot of the last couple of years moaning about those in charge of the club and now having seen those bearing the brunt of their ire having left, it is a period of change within St Mary's, there is no point whinging about the mistakes of the past, we now have to look to the future and hope that those coming into the club can improve things.

But that will not happen overnight, the aim is to stay out of the relegation zone and then build on that, OK it is not the ambitions that we had back in 2016, but then again there are very few clubs outside of the big six who have consistently been in the top 8 year in year out.

Our owners have born a lot of criticism of late, but that is based only on the fact that they have not invested multi millions in transfer fees, but ask yourself what club owner has outside of the big six.

Everton are living proof that an owner who spends big is no guarantee of success, that the best way forward are clubs that are sustainable without an owner putting in large amounts of money.

Owners rarely invest money without it being a loan and when they want that money back then that spells trouble.

Gao has not done much at the moment, but none of what he has done so far has been bad, he has continued the way that Markus Liebherr envisaged for the club, a self sufficient business paying it's own way.

But the fans care most about results and in many respects judge a football club purely on this basis, if it is winning games then it must be well run, if it is losing them it must be poorly run.

That is far from the truth and although things aren't great at the moment, they could be far far worse and we have to give those who are now responsible for running the club the chance to prove themselves rather than condemn them out of hand.

So we need the team to show us that things are getting better, we all know we have a major issue in the centre of defence, we can do nothing about that till January, we have to accept that and look to help the team get through a tough couple of months.

A win against Leicester City on Friday will go a long way towards that, it won't mean that things are all rosy again, but we have to see some good football and get the crowd on side again.

The default message of support for the team needs to stop being the anguished cry of "For F***s sake Saints" and needs to be a positive one of encouragement, not everyone is a singer, but everyone can say "Come on Saints" once in a while.

So the team needs to get us enthused and back on side again and if they start to do that then we as supporters need to do our bit as well, the atmosphere at St Mary's has not been great so far this season, but six months ago when we were beating Wolves, Spurs and Everton it was as good as it has been in several years, let's get that back and in doing so kick start our revival.

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