What could have been a disastrous weekend was merely a drama rather than a crisis after Aston Villa losing last night completed a miserable weekend for all the other teams around us QPR excepted.

Most Saints supporters would have breathed a sigh of relief last night when they heard the result from Villa Park, Man City's narrow win over Aston Villa completed a miserable weekend for the bottom 8 clubs with only QPR of course winning and Sunderland getting a point at home to Fulham, this maintained the status quo and meant that no one really gained or lost from the weekends results.

For Saints it could have been much much worse if Villa and Wigan had won in that we could have found ourselves only out of the bottom three on goal difference and even now we are looking over our shoulders and with a tough run of games coming up in the next month, to be blunt we will be doing well if we are still out of the bottom three in four weeks time after our trip to Reading, it will be perhaps the result of that game that determines whether we face a nervy end to the season or if we can pull away.

The table shows how it could be oh so different though, if we had beaten QPR it would have done us the world of good, six points clear of relegation would have been a big ask for any of the other sides to catch up at this stage of the season, I know it is "If only" but if we had also held on at Wigan then it would be almost game over, we would have then found ourselves 9 points clear of the bottom three.

This just shows us how tight the bottom of this division really is and how we can ill afford to keep on conceding these sloppy goals, no one is outclassing us or outplaying us including Man Utd at Old Trafford, but the fact of the matter is that only five points from the last six games is not good enough given how we dominated all six games for long periods, 11 goals conceded and in fairness probably virtually all of them could have been prevented with better defending and not losing concentration at vital times.

Perhaps the loss on Saturday will focus us for what is a difficult trip to Norwich City, I certainly hope so as defeat there will put us in trouble.

Photo: Action Images

SanMarco added 10:47 - Mar 5 Yes indeed - I cant think of a game where we have got more than we should have (except possibly Villa away) but many games where we really should have got more. I agree that sloppy goals have been the major cause and if we do go down then the failure to address obvious weaknesses during both transfer windows has to be looked at. I think we are better than the teams below us and we have a reasonable run-in so let's not sink to gloom and doom after one poor result. The Sunderland game was worse than Saturday and we went on a reasonable run after that...

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REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 13:50 - Mar 5 Saints blew their golden chance of pulling away from the drop zone. We're deep in the sh1t now! Norwich (A), Liverpool (H), Chelsea (H). Can you see us getting anything from these games? Maybe one point? Two if we're lucky? We've only won 2 out of our last 12 league games. That isn't good enough. But you look back and in this time we've played well in most games. There's just been too many games where we haven't got the points we deserved. In the majority we've blown it because of defensive mistakes. Let's face it, none of our centre backs are good enough for this league and will continue to get caught out. They spunked however much on Ramirez when for that price they could've got two centre backs better than what we currently have. Now our only goal is to stay up and its vital that we do. Stay up and then buy some friggin defenders in the summer. Hopefully whoever decides on the transfers has learnt their lesson! I'm sure Poche will be keen to get some quality centre backs in there and will push for reinforcements. Cortese then needs to complete the right deals, something he’s seemingly failed to do in the last year! So its gonna come down to: Reading (A), West Ham (H), Swansea (A), West Brom (H), Tottenham (A), Sunderland (A), Stoke (H). We'll need 4 wins out these games, which would represent our best run of form of the season. I hope the players/manager are up to it. As Nick says, do the same things and you’ll get the same results, and if we continue to fail to get the points we deserve then we’ll probably go down. Poche is stuck with the squad he’s got so we can only hope that Forren comes in and is quality, and Shaw remains fit so Fox doesn’t have to play. Shaw and Clyne are our only reasonable defenders, the rest are error prone. If Forren is good enough then he could make the vital difference and help solidify our defence, but it’s a big ask of someone who’s never played in the Premiership. So its probably going to be a few very uncomfortable months coming up for us Saints fans.

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StChristophe added 14:21 - Mar 5 QPR's gone and there's no point worrying about it now; we picked up three bonus points against Man City to be able to take that loss on the chin. Agree with Reedy that we'll be doing well to get one or two points from the next three games, but despite this, we should just about be OK if we can beat West Ham & West Brom - these two games are likely to be pivotal. Fortunately for us, there are four teams that are probably marginally poorer than we are, although we may well need to beat Stoke on the last day to be sure. Wigan v Villa that day will be a huge game...

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SaintJez added 16:33 - Mar 5 Liverpool and Chelsea will be a struggle. We need to make home advantage count for something in those games and try to make the crowd the "extra man" - something we certainly didn't do against Chelsea in the cup! It was like a morgue that day. However, I don't see anything in the Norwich team to suggest we shouldn't go there looking to take home all 3 points. One smash and grab victory over Everton aside, they've been poor this year and are in false position in the table (in my view) due to their good start. I firmly believe we are better than them in midfield and they don't have the raw pace up front that causes us problems when we over press. Will be crucial to defend set pieces properly (how I wish we marked posts!) and then just play with confidence, without fear, and take our chances when they arrive.

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Whatsforpud added 00:05 - Mar 6 What might come to our rescue is our goal difference - better than most around us. Worth a point at the end of the season. Not something you could imagine after the first couple of months.
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aceofthebase added 07:52 - Mar 7 This was the only remaining game where 3 points should have been a formalitity. The Pox blew it! Lucky if we stay up now.
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