If Saints want promotion then they are all must win games.
Its an old cliche and one that was very relevant last season as Saints put together a superb winning streak to overtake Huddersfield at the final hurdle and storm to automatic promotion, but "Must Win Game" is a phrase that will need to be bandied aroud a lot in the coming months.
The truth is though that they are all must win games, no one has won promotion by drawing all their matches and that being the case Saints have to win more than their rivals.
The visit of Millwall is another toughie, but the most difficult game in a winning streak is always the next one, the London side have made a solid start to the season winning one and drawing two of their first trio of fixtures, to reinforce the reputation they have as being a resilient team who are hard to beat.
Saints task though is to beat them and continue to add to this magnificent run of nine winning league games stretching back to our defeat at Rochdale back in April.
Nigel Adkins has a few tough decisions to make as has been well documented in another article this week, but he himself has spoken of the need to be ruthless and to keep setting ourselves and achieving high standards and he will know as well as anyone at the Club that with a football team that starts and ends with the manager, it is his job to make sure that the side keeps performing and doesnt get complacent.
A wn against the Lions would send out a clear message to the promotion hopefuls and that is Saints are genuine challengers, many teams win their opening fixtures and then fade badly and in many cases dont make the play offs, we now need to make those teams with aspirations of the premier League look at us and wonder when it is all going to end, whilst as we proved last season, that often teams come up on the rails, equally Brighton showed that if you get off to a good start then its tough for the other to overtake you, even when you falter at the end as they did.
I would hope to see a big attendance at the game, Millwall will bring down a fair few, certainly more than visiting teams would bring in League 1, add to that our winning run and the fine football we are playing at present and it would be a travesty if there was a smaller crowd than for the Leeds opener, especially as this one isnt televised.
My head says Saints will win this one comfortably, my heart perhaps conditioned after 40 years of being let down says that the bubble has to burst sometime, hopefully these days Saints are far more methodical than they have been in the past and it will be head over heart.