Saints have just had their second best start to a top flight season, but can they go that little bit better than Saints best ever League team of 1983/84
Saints have won 4, drawn 1 and lost 1 out of their opening 6 games this season and in the process racked up 13 points, but this is still not our best ever start to a top flight season after 6 games, that honour falls to the side of 1983/84 who won 4 and drew 2 of their openers to pip this years total by 1 point.
The older Saints fans will find it hard for that years team to be beaten in terms of quality, they had a tough start
Nottingham Forest A 1-0 (Forest finished 3rd)
QPR H 0-0 ( QPR finished 5th)
Arsenal H 1-0 ( Arsenal finished 6th)
Liverpool A 1-1 (Liverpool finished 1st)
Sunderland A 2-0 ( Sunderland finished 13th)
Manchester United H 3-0 ( Man Utd finished 4th)
It could not have been a tougher start back then, out of the opening games five were against the other teams who finished in the top six, although like this year surprisingly this was not enough for us to top the table, that honour fell to West Ham with 15 points, the Hammers would eventually finish 9th.
But the seventh game in the season would be a game too far, we travelled to Aston Villa and went down 1-0 and this started a poor run of 9 games where we would only win 2 and lose 5, perhaps unknowingly at the time blowing the title in the process as at the end of the season we finished 2nd only 3 points behind Champions Liverpool.
So can Saints go one better than the team of 1983/84 ? Now even I would not claim that we could go one place betterand finish top of the league, however we could go one game better in the start to the season and beat Spurs, thus beating that start back then.
If we could do that it would be great on two accounts, firstly because we will have kept our good run going and secondly due to the fact that we will have beaten Spurs and our former boss Mauriccio Pochettino and that is always a pleasure, no matter who is in charge.
Like Saints of 1983/84 though it will be the next 9 games that will define our season, we now have some winnable games in the pipeline, our task now will be to win them and get a momentum going that will be hard to stop, the job for around 15 teams in the Premier League every year is to have a season where from the very off you are not looking over your shoulder at relegation, we found that last season and it enabled us to play without fear, if we can do that now in the next few games or so it will give us a platform to build on for the rest of the season and who knows what we can achieve after that.
Is Champions League qualification beyond us ? the answer is probably, but we can look to try and beat the 8th place we managed last year, of course its early days yet to try and predict that but the table shows that Everton might not be the force they were last year, Liverpool are struggling as are Manchester United, even Spurs are not convincing so far.
The message is clear, Saints could shock the Premier league by moving up a place or two and that would be real progress, not only that but it would send out a message not only to our own players but to those that we are trying to sign, if we could win a cup as well and get into Europe that could truly help us in making quality signings, all players like to play in European competition and if you can offer that it makes persuading those playersto join you a lot easier, put bluntly next summer Spurs will come a calling again, if we were to be in the Europa League and they weren't they would be more easily repelled.
As many know I rarely get carried away, I always believe in the Lawrie McMenemy approach of being quietly confident in your own abilities, know what you can do and what you can't do.
In 1983/84 Saints were not a fancied side, the previous season had seen them finish 12 after the summer of 1982 when although Peter Shilton joined we lost Kevin Keegan, Mick Channon and then Alan Ball, at the end of that season Chris Nicholl left as did Malcolm Waldron, it wasn't as in so drastic fashion as today but in the space of little over a year we had lost the heart of our side and the pundits were not predicting great things for us with a side that included "has beens" like Mick Mills & Frank Worthington alongside a bunch of kids, the only players who could be considered truly class and at their peak were Shilton, Nick Holmes, Steve Williams & Dave Armstrong.
But we astounded all expectations and maybe the Saints side of today can do the same, the Premier League has changed the game since those days though, back then it was possible for sides like Saints and Ipswich to challenge the big clubs, now money talks and the opportunities are not there as they once where, however we can continue to build and move forward and this season could well be talked about amongst the supporters of today in future years, as that great season 31 years ago is revered by Saints supporters of a certain age.