As Saints dropped to the depths of League One, we survived by having a siege mentality, we need to recapture that spirit on Saturday against Aston Villa.

When Saints failed to look anything like Promotion hopefuls in 2009/10 season, despite being the biggest spending club in League One, the supporters stayed with them and stayed behind them .

There is a lot of romantic notions associated with those times and the fact is that in that first season under Markus Liebherr's ownership we only averaged 20,982, a great average for that division, but there were 11,000 empty seats or more for most games.

The following season didn't start well and it was a long time before we got our promotion push going and it wasn't till the final stages of the season we looked like going up automatically , again with an average of 22,181 there were plenty of empty seats for most games.

But the hard core stayed behind the team, they stayed with it as they believed in what the club was trying to achieve and knew that it was not going to be done overnight, the supporters had not forgotten the dark days and were grateful that the club was moving up again.

Now after the disappointment of the defeat to Liverpool we need to take a reality check again, social media has been full of knee jerk comments predicting doom and gloom.

But the fact remains that we are moving forward all the time, we are chasing a third consecutive top ten finish and if we achieve that we will be succeeding, if we finish 7th or 8th again it will be even better.

But we supporters have to manage our expectations a little, last season and again the Capital One Cup has blinded us to how well we are actually doing, of course last night was terrible and a big let down, but in the grand scheme of things we are on target, we have just missed out on exceeding our own standards.

Therefore on Saturday the supporters need to do their bit, this is a time when we have to thank our manager and team for all they have done over the past 16 months or so by staying right behind them and supporting them all the way.

If we get on their backs then things could get worse, if we stay right behind them and show our support then we can get back on track and kick on.

This is not a time for recriminations, it is a time to be a supporter, to remember what the long term aim is, we need to forget the past, those players who have left are gone and support those who are here.

From the very moment Saints run out on Saturday we supporters need to show them we are right behind them from the first whistle to the final, we need to be the 12th man and the 29,878th man and all in between.

6 years ago we sat 21st in League One after our 10 point deduction and 5 years ago we sat 8th in the same division, if we had been asked back then whether we would have liked to be sat in 2015 10th in the Premier League with two consectutive top 8 finishes in the previous seasons plus two League Cup quarter finals behind us we would have been delighted, so there is no need to get overdramatic about it now.

Lets get behind the team on Saturday, we have some important games coming up, win them and we will rocket up the table, lose them and we will lose ground. We have to ask ourselves what do we want, if what we want is to get satisfaction from another defeat so we gan froth at the mouth about certain individual players, then the answer is to scream abuse at them from the opening minute to the final whistle, then we can all go home with a smug smile and say I told you so.

But if what we want is to see our team win football matches, then we need to show just what the word "supporter" actually means, we need to back our team, all our team and help them through a sticky patch and come out at the other end.

We did that last season at a similar time, we now need to do it again.

Photo: Action Images via Reuters