Saints head into a crucial period.
There will be those that say that no game is a must win game, that there is always an escape clause right up to when it become mathematically impossible to achieve your aim whether it be winning the title, promotion or avoiding relegation, pedantically they are right, but a look back over most seasons usually shows that at certain times the season changes due to certain games and certain results.
Saints are coming into one of those periods, they arrive at it after a disastrous set of results and if anyone doesnt call 5 points out of six games for a side seeking promotion dissastrous then Im amazed at their standards.
Yes of course we are still top, but we are hanging on in there by the smallest of threads after this poor run, suddenly from a fairly comfortable position less than two months ago we have thrown away a great chance to surge clear at the top and to pu automatic promotion within 6-8 wins of being achievable.
We thus go to Nottngham Forest knowing that anything less than a defeat will probably see us lose top spot, but could also see us drop to fourth and with games coming up after that against fast improving and big spending Leicester, it could get worse.
So a bad run could see us on a downward slide and as many sides will tell us, when you are on that slide its hard to stop it, to be blunt so far its an eight game slide in total, if we have another three straight poor results then its virtually a quarter of a season and we will have to face facts that we arent as good as we thought.
The alternative is that we stop that slump now and win the next three games in a row, if we manage that then not only will we almost certainly be top but the momentum will be back with us and we will have gained ground on Cardiff at least.
The revival has to start somewhere and that has to be at Forest, we cannot afford to keep dropping points on the road, one win on the road in five months is bad enough at the moment, fail to win at the City Ground and it will become one win in almost six by the time we travel to Birmingham, it cant be put in any other way except the strongest terms, this is not acceptable to any side and the question has to be asked as to how we are so strong at home one week and so poor away the next and make no misteke our away record is more than just poor after 3 defeats in four games its worse than Forest's who as we know are in the bottom three, we have conceded more than Pompey away from home and indeed only six teams have got less points away from home than us.
So make no mistake Nottingham Forest is a must win game in the fact that we must prove to ourselves we can win on the road not to mention the welcome three points, in fact that goes for everyone of the next three, their is no room for error, by the end of January we will either still be up there or we will be looking back at almost three points of poor results and having to accept that something is badly wrong.
I have stated recently that Nigel Adkins is the man for the Saints job, this is one of those periods when he has to earn his corn.