Can Saints grasp a possible chance to put some real daylight between themselves and the 2nd and 3rd placed teams in what is on paper their toughest away game for a little while.
Saints travel up to the KC Stadium hoping to make it a fourth successive away win on the bounce and to extend their unbeaten run to eleven, in truth Hull's home record of late hasnt been fantastic, since the turn of the New Year they have played seven games at home in the championship, in that time they have managed only two wins and ten points, their only defeat coming in the first game of that run against Derby County.
In four of those games they have failed to score, so the inference is clear, Hull might be a tight side at the back but going forward they are no great shakes, perhaps in some respects the polar opposite to Saints on the road, their short term form is not great either, in the last six games they have picked up only a solitary win, that being a 3-0 away win at cardiff, drawing the other five with three of those being 0-0, in fact if you add the draw with birmingham seven games ago into the equation, then four of the last seven games have been scoreless at either end.
Hull's unbeaten run is similar to ours although it stretches back eleven games and not our ten, in that time they have scored 12 goals and conceded only 3 compared with our 18 scored and 5 against, it would be a brave man who predicted anything other than a draw, although this might suit us more than them.
So Saints task is clear, they need to go out and take the game to Hull, if we fire on all cylinders then they havent got the goals in them to keep up with us, its time to start acting like Champions on our travels, in our last two games at Leeds and Millwall respectively, we might have taken all six points, but we looked very ordinary, we need to show the swagger that we did at Watford and let West Ham and Reading, wonder how the hell they are going to catch up with us, dont let them see any chink in our armour.
Back in our last promotion season to the top flight in 77/78 it was a thumping 3-0 win at Hull that propelled us into the top two and took the spirit out of both Tottenham and Brighton making the realise that we werent going to lose it at such a late stage, whilst its likely that wont happen with so many games left, if we just keep winning the ball is in our court, beat Hull, follow it up by beating Doncaster and we then travel to Blackpool knowing that its probably do or die for one side in the Hammers V Royals game played earlier that day.
We have been very fortunate in the way certain sides have not taken their opportunities to overtake us earlier this season, now is the time to show that we arent going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
With Tadanari Lee unlikely to play I think Nigel Adkins has to keep a tight side and one with consistency in its selection, too many players are still being replaced at half time and thats not a good sign, what I want to see at Hull, is our usual back four with a solid midfield similar to the one that won us plenty of the games earlier in the season with uly on the right.
Up front its time for Builly Sharp to show us just what he can do, he has been the forgotten man as such with the emergence of Lee, but lets not forget this is one of the most prolific scorers in this division, he can score goals, so lets get him on the pitch and doing what he does best.
Again Adkins has to use his bench well, De Ridder is best used from the bench, lets play to his strengths and cosistency in selecting the subs is crucial.