Saints take on a Hull City side who see this game as vital to their survival in the Premier league and will be fighting for their lives.
My recent concerns about Saints defensive frailties are much maligned by some on here who seem to think that letting in an average of 1.8 a game over the last 10 Premier League matches shows that we have a very capable centre of defence.
I am not going to go into the details here, but the simple factor is that if Saints can't keep clean sheets then they have to win games by outscoring the opposition and if the opposition is getting 1.8 a game then we need to be scoring 3 goals to win a game.
Indeed of the four games we have won out of the last 10 in the Premier League, in three of those wins we did score 3 or more goals, and in the other six we not only managed to keep only two clean sheets, but in three of the games scoring three goals would ot have been enough for a win.
These stats perhaps tell you all you need to know about Saints defence and the reality is that unless we change it the likelihood is that we are going to need to score at least three times tomorrow to beat Hull City.
Of course we do have the firepower to do so, but we cannot keep putting pressure on ourselves to HAVE to score more than one goal.
I will be very interested to see the line up that Claude Puel puts out tomorrow and how he intends to tackle a Hull side with their tails up and who have won 4 of their last 7 Premier League games to drag themselves out of the bottom 3 and looking for the first of what will probably be two wins needed out of their last four games to make sure that they survive.
The good news is that they like us have conceded 18 goals in their last 10 league games, so they are far from being watertight, the bad news is they have scored 16 in that time, so are more than capable of scoring against us.
All in all then it is looking like a goal feast in store with two sides who can let in as many as they can score.
From our point of view if we want to finish in the top ten then we have to win this game, on paper it is the easiest of our final six matches and will give us a little more breathing space.
Claude Puel is now coming into the business end of the season and it is crucial he starts to show he knows what he is doing, in recent games there has been too much indecision and wrong selections and substitutions made, he has seemed content to sit back and hope things work out rather than make tactical changes that make it more likely that they will.
Surprisingly it is almost a sell out tomorrow, as of Friday afternoon there are barely 100 seats left, most only single seats dotted around the ground, tomorrow will either be a big step forward for Claude Puel in turning many Saints fans round in their opinion of him, or it could be the start of a backlash.
On reflection this season has had many great moments, it has had perhaps half a dozen games that have been classics, that are up there with the greatest in Saints history, ie the Semi at Liverpool, the EFL Cup final at Wembley, the games against Inter Milan, but conversely it has had some awful moments, many of which perhaps should have been avoided.
That has meant that the great times have been passed over in peoples memories, this season feels like one of failure, we have had a good team but too many times it has failed at vital moments, some like the injury to Virgil Van Dijk have been unavoidable, but sadly too many should not have happened, be it our failure to replace Fonte in January that became a crisis when VVW was injured, our poor showing in Prague when a reserve team was put out or the last ten games or so when we have been like a leaky sieve at the back.
Often it is the final games of a season that help define it in many peoples minds, last year the mediocrity of mid season was wiped from the memory as we stormed to a top six finish, Claude Puel has to make sure that he does not wipe out what should be some great memories by failing to motivate his side to another decent ending.
Three years ago a top ten finish was seen as a major triumph, now it is expected.