Saints are going into the business end of the season and now have seven games that will shape how the club will be next season, we supporters need to be united not divided.

Football nowadays is full of shock horror headlines and supporters screaming about meltdown everytime their team suffers a minor setback, a good example of this was the aftermath of Manchester City's defeat at Crystal Palace earlier in the week .

Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror perhaps summed it up

"Websites ran pieces documenting the club’s “spiral into trouble”, a national talk-radio station did a phone-in on the theme 'It’s all going wrong at Man City, who’s to blame?' and newspaper match reports had a funereal tone, with one claiming “the travelling fans want the old City back.”

Which fans would they be?

The ones who started supporting them seven years ago when the money arrived and who only know City as serial trophy-winners?

Or the ones who remember the bad old decades, and who still have to pinch themselves when they recall the two league titles they’ve won in the past three years or hear their team described as one of the richest in the world?"

Now some of that, obviously to a lesser degree sounds depressingly familiar, we all remember last summer when so many predicted relegation and worse and although all of that was soon calmed down by Ronald Koeman's transfer business and the excellent start to the season, it bubbled under and in recent weeks has started to explode again.

At Everton on Saturday this was emphasised by a significant number of individuals and i do stress individuals screamed abuse at Graziano Pelle throughout the game "Pelle You're a C***" being the scream of choice for a sadly large minority, the real irony is that most of the Pelle haters are proclaiming Sadio Mane as the new messiah and it isn't lost on some that most of these same people had a favourite frothing at the mouth scream back before Xmas, very similar to their current favourite.

Brian Reade's article makes a very good point and that is that their is a new breed of fan these days in the Premier league, one to whom nothing is long term, on Saturday yes we lost, Pelle didn't score but he was no worse than anyone else on the pitch, the fans screaming at him, didnt consider the role he played in the first half of the season, or indeed the role he has played in the second half, all they look at is whether he has scored goals, of course Saints have a problem in this area at present, but that isn't solely down to Pelle, football is a team game.

Of course football fans have always have scapegoats, its just these days the abuse is more pronounced, perhaps im generalising but sometimes you have to have experienced the bad times to appreciate the good ones and certainly even when we were going down to League One or indeed were failing to go back up at the first attempt despite spending more money than the rest of the division put together, the supporters stuck with the team and players.

But having set the scene we have to look at the reality, a Saints side with Pelle leading the line is still 7th in the Premier league and only one point behind Liverpool in 5th place, yes the promised land of the Champions League has faded and 8 points at this stage of the season is just too much of a gap, but the plain truth is that this is still shaping up to be our best season in the Premier League, indeed our best season since 1985 which was in itself our 2nd best season ever in terms of league position.

We are on the verge of something massive in terms of a club our size achieving Europa League qualification through the league, rarely do any clubs outside of the top 7 of last season break into that section of the table, occasionally Newcastle or Villa threaten but in the last decade or so it has mainly been a monopoly .

Indeed since the first season of the Premier League when Norwich and QPR finished in the Top 5, only one club that has never won a top flight title has managed to finish in that top five, that being West Ham United in 1999.

That shows the enormity of what Saints can achieve in these last seven games and indeed it shows the enormity of the task ahead.

So if we are going to achieve that we need a united fan base, Saints support this season has been great both home and away, I havent seen many sections of an away ground so vocal as our own Northam End and indeed not many have another two vocal sections as we do on either side of the Northern End, away from home it has been good as well and that is perhaps why those who have abused Pelle and to a lesser extent Mane earlier in the season have been outshouted, however the undercurrent is there and it needs to stop.

In these final seven games we need every voice behind the players out on the pitch for Southampton Football Club and that means all of them, inquests can be held in the pub after or on message boards, but at the games we need to create a wall of noise and total support that spurs the team on and helps them rather than hinders.

Personally if Saints finish 5th I do not care who scores the goals, but what I do know is no one is going out on that pitch trying to miss, strikers win matches, if Pelle scores in the last minute of tomorrow's game against Hull to turn a draw into a victory, he might not score again all season, but those two points might make all the difference and what we need all our players to feel is the passion of the crowd behind them, those who say crowds don't make a difference were not there on that day in 1984 when Steve Moran scored at Pompey, or at Selhurst Park in 1999 or the Dell two years later when Le God had that dream ending for the old ground.

So let us not be divided as supporters,lets be united as one, yes it seems like we are failing because undoubtably the last 3 months havent been as good as the first half of the season, but we are still in a great position, lets help the team make history, lets not hinder it, let us be Southampton United for the remainder of the season not Southampton Divided !

Photo: Action Images

landsdownsaint added 10:29 - Apr 10 The city fans I know still go dewy eyed whenever Main Rd & feed the goat are mentioned!
0

Southampton Polls