A great night for Southampton Football Club in their quest for a return to the Premier League as they despatch Hull City at the KC Stadium. Proving promotion is won not just at home, but away as well
Many months ago I expressed concern about our away form, as we turned into the New Year and we stood with only three wins on the road and a record that contained many missed chances to pick up points at the likes of Doncaster, Bristol City & Burnley, I posed the question that we would need to win at least eight away games to secure promotion.
Sitting here now I havent been far wrong, although it is our home record that has built the foundation for our challenge, ultimately its been winning the last four away games that have made the difference from being contenders to being five points clear, a win two draws and a defeat would have been about average for us on the road in the first half of the season, that would have given us five points out of four games, reasonable as long as we won every home game, but that in itself would be an impossible task, however take those seven points off of our current total if we had merely achieved that set of results and to be fair it could well of happened given the way we played at Leeds and Millwall and the league would look much different tonight.
But we have won all those four games, we have found a combination of form and luck on our travels and we have made the surge at the right time as both West Ham and Reading start to falter, w ehave the psycological advantage now as well as the points one, we now need to hammer it home and hammer it home hard.
What we have given ourselves is leeway, but what we dont want to do is repeat what we did back in November when we had similar leeway, then we took our foot off the gas and paid the price, we now need to still play like every game is the last, every point is precious and every game is must win, of course mathematically it isnt, but we blew a great chance earlier in the season to storm to promotion, we have earnt a second through hard work, lets not make the same mistake twice, yes we might well have exceeded our own expectations, but having reset our standards, lets keep meeting and exceeding them.
I have always kept on about setting targets, number of wins needed and focussing on two points per game average, we need to keep doing that now, in my calculations set back in November the wins needed has now reduced down to three, I dont think Im going to be far out once the final reckoning comes on May 28th, but lets rack up those wins sooner than later, we must win on Saturday and then repeat that at Blackpool, if we do bearing in mind that Reading will have a tricky home game on Saturday whilst West Ham not only travel to Burnley on the same day, but Peterborough on the Tuesday night to make up their game in hand, then by the final whistle at Bloomfield Road we could well stand on the very cusp of the Premiership