With the local derby coming up its time for both Saints players and supporters to be positive.
The diachotomy of footbal is that when his side is winning a football manager doesnt get too carried away, he knows that the biggest enemy is complacency and he usually concentrates on keeping his players on their toes by focusing on the areas that need work on rather than gushing praise of his team, he also knows that a winning team is a confident one and that confidence will not be dented at this stage as he works on the weaknesses.
By contrast a good manager will also know that when a team is going through a bad patch, his job is to remind them just what they do well and get them playing in that winning manner again, therefore in a bad run, a good manager will not be lambasting his players but rebuilding their confidence. Of course there is a time for shouting and screaming by a manager, but thats usually at the start of a losing streak, not during it.
For football supporters its often the opposite, when its winning, a team can do no wrong, they ignore the weaknesses because the team is winning so what do they matter, however when that team starts to lose games, the average supporter will start to moan, of course every fan has different tolerance levels, but in general the World over this is the case, again the fans will do the opposite of the manager, when a team starts to lose, the fans will initially put it down to bad luck or the odd off day, but if it continues then the griping starts, Im sure some of you will decry this theory and your entitled to your opinion, but I would counter by saying that it started on Saturday with the abuse that Bart Bialkowski has receieved, not just at the game but on message boards.
So going into our most important away game of the season, in respect of local rivalry etc, we need everyone to be united, we all need to be positive, we need our team on Sunday to know that we might only have a couple of thousand people in the ground, but there arre countless thousands more at home with confidence in them, that may sound a bit hard to do, after all most of us only see the players on a match day, but its about creating that aura of confidence and we can all play our part in that by talking positively about the game.
By this I dont mean the gushing praise that was a feature of our winless run, not the "We are top of the league" chants, these are often seen as arrogant, we need the quiet confidence of supporters who know they are watching a good team, in turn that reminds our players that they are a good team.
Im sure that Nigel Adkins will be telling them that, he will be telling them that every good team has a blip in a season just as every bad one also has a winning streak, he will tell them that we are top of the league for good reason and even when we have won only one of the last four, we are still top, he will also tell them that Pompey are where they are now for good reason and to be blunt it is because at this point in time they do not have the quality or depth of the squad that we have, if we play to our best level and Pompey play to theirs, then we will beat them, there is nothing to fear.
Of course the big worry for Saints supporters is the nightmare Bart Bialkowski had on Saturday, if he plays at Fratton then the travelling fans all need to be behind him as one, we should remember that he has had many good games for this club, without pointing the finger at Kelvin, we should remember the play off season of 2006/07, Kelvin had been appalling and was injured, in came Bart and played so well that Kelvin not only couldnt regain his place, but Bart played a full part in dragging us kicking and screaming into the play offs.
That story has two morals, the first is that Kelvin showed that its possible to come back from a position where you are the whipping boy of the supporters and prove yourselves to them and secondly Bart showed that when he has confidence he is a very good keeper, possibly better than Kelvin, the word though is "confidence"
So as supporters our job on Sunday and indeed over the rest of the season is to get behind the team for 90 minutes and give the entire squad confidence, those that will laugh and say that the fans dont influence results are sadly missiing the whole point of football somewhat and certainly werent at for instance the Saints V Blackburn game in the great escape season of 1999, when the crowd single handedly kep the team going at 3-1 down and rallied them to earn a draw and eventually stay up, they probably werent at Selhurst Park that year either.
Discussing our worries about the team on message boards does not make us negative, thats the right place to do it, we are only negative if we scream abuse at our own players at the game, so lets be positive, lets remind ourselves of just why we should be going into games with confidence, thats confidence and not arrogance and this season could turn out to be a very very good one.