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Can Saints Have A Storming Finish Into 8th And Make History !

Its been a season of highs and lows, but two straight home wins would almost certainly see Saints finish 8th in the League and secure our best ever run of top flight finishes.

The Dichotomy of this season has been that although so many consider it down there amongst the "worst ever" due to some dire home matches in the Premier League, it has also seen some magnificent highs.

The casual observer would look at Saints and think that this was a great season and the supporters would all be happy, after all take out the top 7 and every other club in the country would have preferred our season to their own.

But it cannot be argued that at times the football has been dire, yes there have been some reasons beyond the control of the manager, but he also has to take a chunk of the blame for his team selections and judging by the side he put out at Middlesbrough on Saturday he still has some weird and wonderful ideas about what constitutes building a successful and perhaps more importantly consistent season.

But the quality of the squad is still good enough to see us up there in the top ten with two wins to go and after the teams around us dropped points at the weekend, it means that now we could finish as high as 8th but conversely as low as 12th.

That could slightly improve this evening, if Watford should fail to win at Chelsea then they would be unable to catch us and 11th would be guaranteed.

Tomorrow our chances of finishing 8th could improve if Manchester City can beat West Brom up at the Etihad, if they can do it by two goals then we would move up into 8th with a better goal difference, but the more they can score the better our chances of staying above the Baggies.

On Thursday Leicester host Tottenham and we must hope that Spurs win to dent the Foxes chances of catching us. By then we could already be guaranteed 10th though, a win over Manchester United would give us a goal difference of at least 7 better than Bournemouth who ironically travel to Leicester on the final day.

So the task for Saints is to do something that they have not managed once this season, that is win three games in a row, if we can beat United and follow that up against Stoke City then almost certainly that would see us achieve 8th spot, at worst we would be 9th on goal difference if West Brom did manage to beat City and then win at Swansea on Sunday.

If we manage that, then despite the issues this season, this would still unarguably be up there as one of our greatest seasons in our history.

Firstly it would see us achieve four consecutive top ten finish for the first time ever, secondly it could then be said that only 1976 was a better season in terms of achievement.

That year was unarguably our greatest given that it represents our only major trophy win.

So what other seasons could be considered better than this one, in terms of league position there are a few contenders, but perhaps not as many as some would have you think, but in my book the second best season would be 1983/84 when we finished 2nd and nearly won not only the League but if we had won the FA Cup semi final we could have done the double.

So after that its debatable, but I would say that after these two you have to look at league position and then add on a major final to make it a season where we came close to winning something.

So that leaves just two other seasons in contention, the first 1978/79 and the second 2002/03.

These are the only other two seasons where we got to a major final, the first saw us finish 14th in the League and then lose to Nottingham Forest at Wembley to the same 3-2 score we lost to United this year.

The second saw Gordon Strachan take us to Cardiff for the FA Cup Final losing 1-0 to Arsenal to add to the 8th place finish in the Premier League.

There are those that would argue that perhaps last season's sixth place because it had European qualification was a better season than this, but whilst I would agree given style of play and enjoyment, I think we have to go on how near we came to a trophy to judge.

So given the two other contenders for 3rd place in history I would say this year will be above 1979 due to the fact that we will finish higher in the league than back then.

So its a straight fight between 2003 and now, I would say that 2003 just about edges it in that at the moment we haven't obtained 8th so can't compare just yet, but even if we could an FA Cup final is a better achievement than a League Cup one.

So although some do not wan't to hear this (That is sad in itself and tells you something) this season could end up us the 4th best in our history since joining the league in the 1920's.

The sad thing is that it could have been and should have been so much more, it cannot be argued that there have been many issues both in our control and beyond it, from the Jose Fonte situation and the failure to replace him, injury issues and of course the managers system.

That has left a feeling of "what if" rather than the euphoria that our accomplishments this season should have brought, three years ago finishing 8th was seen as brilliant despite the fact that there was not only not a cup final but no European qualification either.

Now there is a feeling of doom around the place even though it is our 4th best season ever, a feeling that with a good squad in place we have done it despite Claude Puel not because of him.

Wherever Saints finish this year it has been a good season, not one that has entertained, although I would say that there has been more than a air share of classic games, Inter Milan for example and given that most League seasons only have about 4 true great games in them anyway, I would have traded a season of Premier League classics for the Liverpool semi, Prague and Inter Milan.

The board have a big decision to make, Claude Puel on the face of it has had a good year, one that would have seen Mauricio Pochettino or Ronald Koeman hailed for, yet he is under fire, to be blunt he is under fire for good reason at times his team selections have been appalling and Saturday showed that he still has strange ideas about running a squad, yes he got a result, but the result isn't the be all and end all when looking at his own personal performance as manager of Saints.

If Claude Puel can now for the first time win three games in a row for Saints we should be 8th, however although we should step back and consider that the seasons has not been as bad as we have perceived, that does not mean that all is well at the club and that changes do not need to be made.

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