Its the game we have all been waiting for, the "Race For 8th" showdown, a nation will watch Soccer Saturday with baited breath.

All joking aside sometimes a season comes to a point where its direction will be dictated by a single game, of course being football quite often there will be a few more turns along the way, but ultimately the result of a certain match will be a deciding factor come the end of the season, older Saints fans will look back and name a few home games against the Geordies that will fall into this category and now we have another one.

Saints season has had a lot of hope over the past 8 months, some of it has turned out to be false hope and some like the FA up defeat to Sunderland has been plain disappointment, but the good thing is we are still in the top ten with 7 games left and whats more we can still equal our best ever Premier League placing.

But if we are to achieve that then it really comes down to this game, come the end of the season it will more than likely be this single fixture that will make the difference between us finishing 8th & 9th with our Geordie friends in exactly the same boat.

Although both of us will still harbour hopes of catching Manchester United, I think that perhaps that gap will be a little too much for the both of us whatever the result at St Mary's

On the other hand I don't think that the teams behind us both will be able to make up the ground either, although if Stoke beat Hull at home then they will be a little too close for comfort for the side that loses at St Mary's or both of us if its a draw, however even a five point gap is a big ask.

So for Saints & Newcastle a season that promised so much comes down to a straight forward punch up between the two teams in the final seven games, the winner of which will finish 7th.

Saints already have a bit of an injury crisis going on with perhaps the biggest worry being Jay Rodriguez, however the real problem is that we have players missing in key positions and although we have the numbers and even the quality to put out a decent side, what we don't have is the variety and we will be very short of genuine pace out wide, the problem with this is we are going to be very narrow in our attacking play, balls will have to be played through the middle rather than out wide and it wont suit us.

On the positive side Newcastle have problems of their own, they will be without first choice keeper Tim Krul who is out for a number of weeks, which means that they will have to play Rob Elliott who has 9(1) Premier appearances to his name since joining the club 3 seasons ago from Charlton, ironically his debut in the Premier came against Saints last season in our 4-2 defeat up at St James Park, for those looking for a bit of hope tomorrow, those 10 games saw him concede 21 goals as Newcastle struggled against relegation and he has yet to play in the League for Newcastle this season.

Of course apart from the on field problems for the Toon Army there is the off field ones of ex Saints boss Alan Pardew, he can now return to watching the game from within the stadium but after his team talk will only be able to watch from the stands, what bearing that will have on the game is debatable.

But recent weeks have seen Newcastle seemingly bad one week and great the next, midweek they lost at home to Everton 3-0 and last weekend it took a goal deep into injury time to gain all 3 points, before that they had lost to Fulham coming on the back of a 4-1 win at Hull, they have struggled to find true consistency all season, in the short term they have taken 9 points from their last 6 games, exactly the same number as us, whilst in the slightly longer term since New Years day they have played 12 and taken 13 which isnt great by any standards, that compares to our 18 from 12 which is about our average for the season as well.

So we should have no fears about going into the game against them, we will have a partizan crowd and they will have only around 2,000 fans for the game strangely returning around 1,000 tickets available to them.

The crunch factor will be though how Mauricio Pochettino uses his depleted squad, I said earlier in the season about how he had failed to spread games over the squad as a whole and the price we paid at the end of November for that, since then he has used more players but that has been down as much to injuries than tactics, now he has to show that he knows not only how to use the squad, but that he can change tactics as if certain players fail muster then it will be hard to play his preferred formatio due to a lack of players who can play the attacking wide roles.

If Jay Rodriguez isn't fit then I would like to see some of the youngsters given a try even if off the bench, there is much talk of how good our youngsters are, but given that Shaw & Prwose established themselves last season really only Callum Chambers has made the breakthrough as a genuine first teamer so far, Gallagher being restircted in the main to little cameos, perhaps now is the time to see how good some of these youngseters actually are, Omar Rowe and Jake Sinclair are much mooted, both are 19 1/2 at this age you would have expected them to be making a bit of a splash but neither has yet to get near getting on the pitch in the Premier, indeed Rowe has 20 mins in 2 sub appearances in the league cup to his name and Sinclair only a single minute, they really should be starting to push on, perhaps now is the time to see if they are up to it or not.

One person who is highly rated is Matt Targett, if Rodriguez is out perhaps the time to throw him in and use him behind Luke Shaw.

So a tough game for Saints and just the right time to beat a side in the top half of the table at St Mary's for the first time this season, the highest ranked club we have beaten at home is 13th placed Hull City and that is perhaps why the season hasnt has been as good as it looked at some stage, with 3 of our last 4 home games against clubs above us, we have to beat someone higher than us or face perhaps getting caught by the likes of Stoke, West Ham or Villaall of whom are looking for a chink of light in what seems at present a big mountain to climb, we need to beat Newcastle and make sure they dont get that chink.

Photo: Action Images

ItchenNorth added 13:07 - Mar 28 In a strange way I'm kind of missing the drama had nervous excitement of the last few weeks of a season. Against Norwich it was all too easy (and the sun was out !) and apart from 5 minutes of panic at the end the atmosphere was very end of term / nothing to play for. I hope Newcastle give us a game tbh.
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Scummer added 13:54 - Mar 28 The Toon Army returned a 100 tickets? Surely the attraction "Will we finish 9th or will we finish 8th?" is enough to make the 660 mile round trip? Given how many points we have lost from winning positions, it is strange to think that we will be comfortably top half and yet underperforming. The last 20 minutes of the Norwich game were ridiculous and exasperating on one level, but in hindsight it would have been a slightly dull game without the defensive gaffes. (Weren't all five goals at White Hart Lane defensive gaffes as well?)

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cheltenhamsaint added 00:08 - Mar 30 I saw two different teams competing for 8th place in mid table obscurity today.. One team represented their fans passion, the other did not.. One manager is planning for the next match and one manager is planning for the summer. Thrilling!
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