As the season enters the final third of the season and Saints try to extend their unbeaten run, we take a look at the weekend of Saturday 10th February and whether we can expect any of our promotion rivals to slip up.

The race for the two automatic promotion places is starting to hot up and last weekend Saints got into second place and held it on their own merit, whilst it is true that promotion is now in our own hands, the reality is that any help we can get from our rivals dropping a point or three would be very welcome and here we take a look at what they are up to this weekend.

Our interest in the afternoon's fixtures in the Championship starts with the televised game kicking off at 12.30 on Saturday, Ipswich Town are now two points behind us and have played the same number of games as us, 29.

They host fellow promotion hopeful's West Bromwich Albion, the Baggies sit in 5th just a place behind the Tractor Boys, but the points margin is 11 points.

That is a big gap, so West Brom will be more interested in widening the gap behind them by winning at Portman Road, looking over their shoulders there are 4 teams within 4 points of them and behind them are 3 more teams within 7 points, automatic promotion is still far from certain for the Baggies, so they have a lot to play for against Ipswich and hopefully they will get something.

Next up Leeds United host Rotherham United in a Yorkshire derby game, we saw at first hand how bad the Millers are when we easily disposed of them last weekend, they are yet to win away in the Championship this season and they have picked up only 4 draws in their 14 away games, there is not a lot of hope here, so if Rotherham can look to salvage a bit of Yorkshire pride in this game it would be good for us, but I am not holding my breath.

Perhaps the club who we are least bothered about, at the moment at least in the top four are Leicester City, they have played a game more than us as we go into the weekend, but they are 11 points ahead and that is a big ask as we go into our last 17 games of the season.

They are at Watford and like Rotherham we have played them in the past week and they were not impressive at St Mary's on Tuesday evening, however that was a side with 7 changes from their usual League starting line up and they did give us a decent game a couple of months at Vicarage Road and were still in the game late in injury time to pick up a late late equaliser, perhaps they can do us a favour on Saturday.

So overall we have to do our job this weekend and assume that our rivals are going to do theirs,

Photo: Action Images

Bowlercow added 10:57 - Feb 8 11 points behind Leicester with a game in hand Win that it's 8 Beat them in March it's 5 Remember what Reading did to us in 2012 For now though concentrate on our own game and as Russ would say be the best version of ourselves that we can be
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WanderingSaint added 11:56 - Feb 8 16th March we'll win away at Leicester and go top of the league. COYS!
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SaintPaulVW added 14:09 - Feb 8 Difficult not to take notice of what other teams are doing but all Saints can really do is maximise the points taken from our own games. Having said that I'm sure there will soon be a few mind games played in the media by ex Leeds players. Hopefully Russ can rise above it. Gary Lineker can do one as well if we start eating into the gap with Leicester lol.
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