At a football stadium near you on Saturday, the return of the must win game after a gap of nearly five months.

Im sure that someone will point out to me that this coming fixture against Aston Villa is not a must win game and statistically they would of course be right, in fact some teams may not have a must win game all season if they cruise to the title without any real challenger or sit in the middle without any chance of Europe or relegation.

But for Saints it doesnt look like this season will see either of those things, so for us its back to must winning and if we can win a decent number then perhaps we can enjoy the second half of the season.

But Saturday is must win not because of statistics, but because of the implications to the rest of our season and more importantly our own morale, last season we got a winning mentality right from the off and that carried us through some difficult games and meant that St Mary's was a virtual fortress as oppossing sides arrived quaking in their boots, already this season Saints are being talked of elsewhere as virtual certainties for relegation and four defeats on the bounce adds to that assumption.

What Saints now have to avoid is giving our opponents the mental advantage before a ball is kicked, on Saturday we have to beat Villa not just for the three points, although that will be most welcome, but to show the rest of the league we are not pushovers and to make the sides we are playing in the coming weeks wary of us instead of feeling superior before kick off.

There are those that will point to some of our performances in the four defeats and say we do not deserve to be pointless, to a degree they would have a point, which would be one more than we have, but the fact is we didnt pick up anything and in football you get nothing for being a game loser.

So on Saturday its a must win for our own confidence if nothing else, we need to go to Everton the following week with David Moyes talking about how dangerous we can be, not telling his team that we are a walk over.

We have started worse than this before and survived, but we dont want to go through all this again, for me Saints have perhaps 11 must win games left this season, that number of wins should be sufficient to keep us up aligned with a few draws, lets treat every game as one that can be won, get the winning mentality back, get the confidence back and in doing so push ourselves into mid table.   

Photo: Action Images

mg2104 added 15:05 - Sep 20 And owing to the randomness of football outcomes coupled with our ability to win against the best and lose to the worse (in and around us) - Saints have done this for as long as I can remember, you can bet your bottom dollar that we will lose some of our 'must win' games but beat other teams that we wouldn't be expected to beat.
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SingaporeSaint added 04:21 - Sep 21 Good article. This is a huge game for Saints - games are not played on paper but on paper it is one of the most winnable of the season. I agree the impact of a win on morle will be as valuable as the 3 points. For me it is a must not lose, we need to get a point if not 3 on the board and continue to build. Villa have some pace going forward so hope to see the defence learning lessons from Sat. That being said, it is game we should go out to dominate and should expect to win.

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