In four weeks time Saints will either stand on the cusp of the Premiership or the supporters will be bemoaning a very good opportunity lost.
Saints stand as we speak eight wins from the premier league, of course with 14 games to go its hard to be accurate as to how many points will eventually be neededto go up, but I would say that 85 would be enough, if we win eight and assuming we get at least two draws out of our remaining fixtures then we will be there.
Eight of those fixtures take place between now and the end of March although only three of them are at St Mary's.
Reading for one have dragged themselves up behind us with a good run of straight wins and we now need to do the same and reopen that gap, to be blunt if we can put in a four game winning streak between now and the end of March then its job done, OK its not rocket science and if we alternatively won one and drew the next that would be just as good, but what we need almost as much as the points is a psycological advantage and therefor a four match winning run sooner than later will keep us up in the top two and indeed should see us pull away again.
The next four games are winnable, trips to Watford & Leeds whilst not givens are well within our capabilities and if we notch up to away wins on the trot that sets us up nicely for two straight home games against Ipswich & Barnsley, I would surmise that if we could get 12 points from these games then a significant gap between us and the other teams behind us will have emerged and putting ourselves past the 70 point mark with ten games left would put real pressure on them
At present I have stated we need 8 wins from 14 games, assuming that they win their games in hand and that is far from certain, that means that our chasing rivals need to win 9 from 14, that in itself leaves little room for error, but if we put our winning run together now the bench mark has been set and pushed out further for the likes of Birmingham and Reading to name but two.
If we could get this four match win under our belts we still have two winnable games left in March Millwall away and Doncaster at home, plus two that if we draw them at least, would knock back two promotion rivals in Hull & Blackpool, a realistic target scenario for this 8 game spell would be 6 wins and 2 draws, a tough target, but very very much within our capabilities, reach for it and get it and we would be only two wins from the promised land, of course this would be the dream scenario, however the minimum target should be 16 points from these 8 games, two points average per game as i have been saying from the start of the season, we would still be in the driving seat.
Less than that and we would be down amongst the hopefuls and although we still have as good a chance of automatic promotion as them it would now be as good as it could be, indeed as the season hots up it becomes about who has the nerve, last season we proved it was us as we hunted down Huddersfield, we have to prove we have that steely nerve again, this time from a winning position, if we get less than 15 points from the 8 games I feat that the advantage may well have switched to one of the chasing pack, so the sooner we break their nerve the better.
We go into this weekend with the ball firmly in our court, promotion is ours to lose, we have already thrown away one good chance this season to storm to promotion easily, we still have at least one chance left to do so, we do not want to waste that.