Saints recommence action in the Premier League knowing that they are getting closer to that 30 pont mark where safety starts to come into view.
Ask any seasoned Saints relegation veteran from the 1990's and they will tell you, the trick to survival is to get past the 30 point mark as early as possible as that gives you a psycological adavantage.
Despite widespread belief to the contary Saints are still on that delicate ledge where if they fall one way they could find themselves right back in the relegation mire, but if they put their foot on the pedal and have a surge forward then they can put themselves in sight of the safety line.
The first step of that is passing the magical 30 point mark, to do that gives you a huge psycological advantage over the clubs in the relegation battle, at this stage its hard to put an exact figure on the number of points needed to stay up, but 37-38 is a best guestimate as it stands at the moment, with 12 games left for Saints and 11 points needed to hit that total its fair to say its completely in our hands.
hat we need now though is a little surge, our next two games see us play two clubs below us and if we can walk off the field after playing QPR and have over 30 points on the board then thats a good target to aim for.
As it stands we three wins out of our last 12 games would almost certainly see us safe, whilst it could be as low as two as long as we win a few, the first task though is to come through the trip to St James Park unscathed, a draw there would set us up nicely for the visit of QPR who could find themselves under great pressure by then and be in last chance saloon, four points out of these two games would almost certainly see us not only well over the 30 point mark, but well clear of the bottom 3 and just as we loked up at teams like Stoke, Swansea and West brom a few weeks ago and thought that their little surges had taken them out of any lingering doubts of relegation,, four points from the next two would do exactly the same for us.
But cross that 30 point barrier and we are in the home straight, of that there is no doubt, we will be able to see the finish line and aim for it, seasoned relegation campaigners will tell you, the trick in the premier League is to get safe as quickly as possible, then you can start to plan for next season, too many people at the moment are starting to count their chickens before they are hatched, a dangerous occupation in the Premier as Birmingham found out a couple of years back and indeed we experienced ourselves when we though we had dragged ourselves out of the mire come the end of March and then saw a terrible run drag us right back down.
Get these points on the board early and then we can sleep safely.