Saints fans seem to have fallen into two camps recently, those who believe that a top nine finish is doable and those that prefer to remain cautious till we are safe.

Both groups do of course have one thing in common and that is that a Saints win against West Bromwich Albion will bring both of their wishes a little bit nearer, but for the first instance, a win for Saints aligned with a a result or two going our way could see us mathematically safe come 10pm on Monday.

Beating the baggies would take us up to 42 points and you would think it would be to Wigan we would look to first and yes if they were to lose at home to Spurs it would leave a big mountain to climb, but with four games left they could still hit 43 points, unlikely but not impossible.

Simiarly if Aston Villa were to lose to Man Utd this evening and then follow it up by losing at home to Sunderland next Monday night, then although they too could technically get 43 points from their remaining three games, it would actually leave us safe, you see the final day of the season sees Wigan host Villa and that means that at least one of them has to drop two points, that being the case, mathematically we cant plunge into the bottom three.

So Saints are literally a week away from safety, yes I am sure that 42 points would see us safe whatever happened, but personally I like to see it in black and white and be 100% sure.

Its been a long season and im sure that most of us would have taken being safe with just one game to go, let alone three, indeed after our first four games, most would have taken being 1-0 up in the final game of the season going into injury time and needing those three points for survival.

But lets not count our chickens till they hatch and hatch they might do next Monday night.  

Photo: Action Images

patred added 17:34 - Apr 22 42 points is an enormous amount to get just to be safe normally. I always reckoned 40 points would do us. I sometimes dispaired that would get any where near that total, especially changing manager mid stream when resullts started to go for us. It was a risky move. Mopo for all we knew could have flopped But hey..as it happened he turned out all right.. if you listen carefully, you can hear the sighs of relief coming out of the boardroom

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moran89thmin added 18:11 - Apr 22 Yea well obviously we won't know exactly how many points we actually needed until the last game is over! It's just that 42 is the earliest achievable total for us IF certain results go our way like the man says. Over the last 10 seasons, it averages out that 36 points is enough for survival. This varies from season to season obviously - West Ham were famously relegated with 42 points in 02-03 and 31 points would have been enough in 09-10. From the start of the season I thought that if we averaged a point a game then 38 points would see us safe but I'm not arguing with 42 if results go our way elsewhere...

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redblooded added 20:38 - Apr 22 in all honesty looking at the bottom clubs this last weekend, I think they have given up the ghost. Once they concede a goal they go to pieces, I cannot see Wigan getting many more points. saints are well safe and no more points are need for survival. I could be wrong though?
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SaintJez added 08:47 - Apr 23 well.. Betfair currently has us at a massive 140/1 to be relegated so, if you wanted a silver lining, you could cover next year's Championship season ticket for less than the cost of a pint of beer should the worst happen. Not that I advocate betting against our own team ofcourse! I'd like to see Saints push on past that 40 point mark and see how high we can finish. In all likelihood, the loser of the final day clash between Villa and Wigan will be the 3rd team to go down. Should be an interesting summer at St Marys as Pochettino builds the squad to his liking. Looking forward to seeing who arrives.

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webberg added 12:32 - Apr 23 We've all seen Saints snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and until we have another 4 to 6 points, I'm being cautious. My predictions say that any one of Villa, Wigan, Stoke or Sunderland could go down with Harry (it wasn't me driving officer) Redknapp and Nigel A. Personally I would not be sorry to see any of them go. However I don't really want a pumped up Stoke at our place needing to win to stay up.

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