What would you consider to be a good distance between Saints and the clubs below them.
Promotion is a nervy business as we found out last year, however for those of us who remember the promotion year of 1978 for some reason last term seemed a lot less nervy than that year, perhaps last year there was the feelling of destiny, we knew that we were so much better than the teams challenging us and we stepped up to the plate at the right moment it didnt have the tension of our last promotion success.
The trick for a team vying for promotion is to keep ahead of the teams chasing them, a few weeks ago we were six points ahead of second and an even greater gap above third, however our recent poor run has seen all of that eroded so that we are 3 points behind West Ham and only 1 ahead of Cardiff, albeit with a game in hand, this is not as comfortable position as we would have really liked, so what should be the yardstick.
I would say that "comfortable" should be defined as the team behind always being more than one win away from catching up with you, meaning that if you have a poor result along the line it wont drop you down the league as we have found this weekend after being overtaken by West Ham, luckily enough we were still enough in front of Cardiff to make sure that rtheir last minute victory against Pompey wasnt enough for them to leapfrog us, but unless we beat Leicester tonight that wont be the case when the Bluebirds themselves visit, next week.
So our short term aim should be to push ourselves to the forefront of the league again by beating West Ham, restoring the foru point cushion between us and third and keeping that gap intact between now and May, it doesnt sound a big deal but its setting little targets like this that help football clubs achieve their longer term goals and of course for us that is getting automatic promotion.
If we win our next two home games then we will have taken a big leap forward, we will still be top of the league, but we would also be seven points ahead of Cardiff in third and thats the sort of gap we should be aiming for.
So our aims are clear and concise and thats how it should be, the next eight days are crucial, win both of these home games and we have taken a big step, a step that could put us within 8 wins of promotion, as it stands at present if Cardiff maintain a two point average, they would end up with 87 points, if we get these next six points that would leave them on 49 and us on 56, both with 18 games left to play, Cardiff then would achive 85 with the two point average, 8 wins out of our last 18 would put us within 5 points of that, it all sounds simple i know, but it was this sort of focus that saw us come from behind last term and hunt down and overtake Huddersfield, its a different situation this year, but the mathematics remain the same.