Saints fans were rightly up in arms about the 6-1 defeat at Manchester City, put the truth is that City are a team in form and it to put the blame all on Saints and give no credit to City would be unfair.
After the 6-1 defeat at Manchester City Saints supporters were up in arms about the teams performance and although it cannot be denied that our form this season has not been great, it takes two to tango and we were playing a Manchester City team bang on form and unbeaten in all but one game this season and in beating Saints making it their 9th win out of 10 games with the only blip being a draw at Liverpool.
So it is a disservice to City for anyone to claim that the defeat was all down to Saints, last night City scored 6 again, this time in the Champions League against Shakhtar Donetsk and although it could be argued that perhaps the Ukranian League is not the strongest League Shakhtar have still dominated it and played regularly in the Champions League.
Indeed in their previous Premier League game at home City had beaten Burnley 5-0, yes the six goals we conceded were not pleasing, but when you consider that City beat Huddersfield at home by the same score, won 5-0 at Cardiff and few teams have got away with a defeat of less than 2 or 3 goals, then we have to get some perspective and consider how much the Premier League has moved on over the past three seasons.
City score goals for fund against anyone, no one is denying that we were poor at the Etihad, but we have to take into account of a great deal of the reason for that was down to the quality of Manchester City.
So if we are to move forward and get our act together then this weekend against Watford we have to put the City game into perspective, when they are on form they are unplayable and a defeat at City at the moment is inevitable they have won 8 out of 9 home games in all competitions, Lyon in the Champions league being the only exception.
So this game was a free hit, we have to move on and concentrate on the winnable games coming up and the visit of Watford to St Mary's is very much one of them, there is a whiff of protest in the air and although I have not got a problem with that, it needs to be firstly directed at the right people and secondly it should be focused in a way that it creates energy to help the team and does nothing to hinder them.
If we think our problems are bad now then they will be far worse if we go down, we need to make sure that we get the points to stay up, that was the focus 25 years ago when we were in a far worse position than today and the protests then changed the club's history, they made the board sit up and take notice, but they also galvanised the support meaning we avoided relegation and that mean't that St Mary's could be built and the rest as they say is history.
We have to remember that we are supporters of the club first and foremost, again no one is saying that there aren't things wrong, no one is saying that there should not be protest, but we need to stop the whinging and create positivity, whoever has been in charge of the "club" I personally have always supported the "team" I want it to do well.
So the two games against Bournemouth and Newcastle showed improvement, they showed we can compete and stay up, but the Manchester City game was different, it has to be put into perspective and there has to be an atmosphere around St Mary's that can help the team to win.