Saints have to bring themselves back to earth after the magnificent win over Sunderland on Saturday when they take on Stoke City at St Mary's.

The problem for Saints when they take on the Potters on Saturday is that they have now set the bar a couple of more notches higher after drubbing the Mackems 8-0, and as older Saints fans know from some hard lessons, inevitably after a great result comes a big drop back down to earth.

But under Ronald Koeman there now seems to be a quiet confidence in the tam not to mention a grounded realism that should hopefully enable us to keep our feet on the ground and not believe our own hype.

Last season a win like this would lead to great talk of Champions League etc but under the Dutchman you have the feeling that he takes every game as it comes and that by doing that he keeps his players feet on the ground.

Of course Saints will start firm favourites to win, but Stoke will not roll over with the same lack of commitment that Sunderland did, as a team we will need to start again and do the basics, the romp of the final 20 minutes on Saturday needs to be put behind us and the steely determination of the first 20 minutes, do that and there is no reason why we should not march on.

Photo: Action Images

IanRC added 11:38 - Oct 21 Agree entirely. Stoke have some fairly uncompromising defenders and it will be interesting to see how we do against them. That said they are not the fastest and if the tactics are right we should have nothing to fear.
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SonicBoom added 12:14 - Oct 21 Well I hope we don't replicate the first twenty minutes! We started way too slowly. I think the Shawcross penalty will help us. Surely he'll keep his hands down this week as the cameras will be on him although Hughes thinks he did nothing wrong! Might make Pelle's life a little easier than it might have been.
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schatfield added 13:00 - Oct 21 Stoke had a good win last week. This will be a tough game. Got a feeling away from home for them they will park the bus, so it could be a tricky one.
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Winchsaint added 14:33 - Oct 21 This definitely has banana skin written all over it, but I hope the crowd stay behind the team even if we do struggle to break them down or dare I say it go a goal behind. We have to keep in mind that even if we lose we will STILL be third thanks to our awesome goal difference now (how good might that be come the end of the season if we end level on points with a few other teams around us!). Obviously no one likes to see us lose but 3rd after 9 games on 16 points is still a pretty good place to be.

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ChristchurchSaint added 20:15 - Oct 21 Although this is a potential banana skin match, I think that RoKo would have already bought the team back to earth. I always liked Nigel Adkins' philosophy of " the match is over, let's move on to the next one". I'm sure that that has carried on under RK and he will be focussing on Stoke's dangers to us , but also their weaknesses and how we can take advantage of them. If nothing else, Saturday's game will have installed a lot of confidence, but these days the over-confidence of the past is not so much of an issue.

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Jesus_02 added 22:38 - Oct 21 It will be interesting to see if we start with the same 11. It was suggested that fatigue from the international break benched Wanyama and Mane. Personally I think that the same starting 11 would be ideal against Stoke. Long may not be scoring but he certainly works the defense and together with Tadic and Pelle they all offer a different type of threat.
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aceofthebase added 11:11 - Oct 23 This could be a game for Gardos to play in, He will be able to stay on top of Crouch. It's also right that he gets some games otherwise we might not be able to retain him.
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