It is amazing just how much a couple of games without winning can turn normally sane football supporters into an irrational frothing at the mouth beast.
If you read some of the comments on social media sites and Saints message boards, you would assume that Saints were bottom of the table without a win to their name, rather than 12th and with a late winner against Villa they actually would have been 7th this morning.
So all this frothing at the mouth is in reality not about sub standard players, lack of quality or anything else, the fact that Saints were actually one solitary goal of being in the top 7 should tell Saints supporters something and that something is that if it is only one goal that was the difference between mid table and being 3 points behind Tottenham in 5th, then there is not a lot wrong that can't be put right with a win or two.
Ironically we ave been in ths position before, the very same people who are now frothing at the mouth and claiming that our current team is not a patch on last years are the same ones who this time last year when we hit a similar crisis where telling everyone how Sadio Mane was the worst signing since Ali Dia and that last years side wasn't a patch on the one before.
Go back a year earlier and those same people were telling anyone that cared to mention that Nathaniel Clyne wasn't all he was cracked up to be, a year before that and Jay Rodriguez was the biggest waste of money.
There is something about this time of year and Southampton Football Club and a sizable minority of its supporters, the team always seems to have a blip around early December and it sets off something in some of our fans.
Of course the majority are the silent majority, but the minority seem to be the ones howling the loudest the moment we drop a point or two.
What Saints are trying to do is build a foundation that won't collapse at the first crisis, the first part of that is making sure that Saints are a top ten club year in year out, we have had two consecutive seasons in the top eight, which is a good start, but we still need to keep building which is why if Saints were to finish ninth or even tenth this season, I would not see it as going backwards, but as cementing our progress.
When we have that foundation then we can start looking at taking the next step forward and that is trying to break into the top five and higher.
But we cant just do that overnight, three years ago our former Chairman talked of Champions League etc within a very short timescale, the problem was that there was no firm plan to achieve that, there were talks of a firm plan, but having a good training ground and a few good youngsters is not what gets you into the top four these days.
In truth what does get you into the top four is money and money alone and that has been the case for a decade or more with that monopoly rarely broken.
Tottenham are touted as having a good season, yet the reality is they only sit five points above us as i write, Liverpool were in crisis six weeks ago, yet they are only three points behind Spurs and would hve been level if it hadn't been for the defeat at Newcastle on Sunday.
So those who are shouting on social media about a lack of quality in the squad, need to cut the club some slack, some signings take a little more time to gel than others, sometimes things don't go to plan, but we have to take into account that, its a marathon not a sprint, after all this squad that is lacking so much depth and quality is the same one that a little over two weeks ago was unbeaten in over two months in the Premier League and was well placed to challenge for the top 5 and the Capital One Cup.
Of course it hasn't gone quite as we would have liked, but we should look at the margin of error, that solitary winning goal if it had come against Aston Vlla would have propelled us up the league.
So we need to keep calm and appreciate the things that have been going on under Katharina Liebherr, Ralph Krueger and indeed Ronald Koeman, all three of them must wonder what some of our supporters are like, the moment things don't go to plan and they are being screamed at, some seem unwilling to cut them some slack, to give them credit for what they have done in a relatively short period of time.
For what they have done they do deserve to be trusted, to be backed and to be appreciated, what they don't deserve is to be abused.