All the discussion over the weekend in Saints World was about missed offside's, goalkeeping woe's and of course the terrible injury to Jay Rodriguez, but perhaps the most significant fact has been overlooked.
Going into this weekend's fixtures Saints could still have been relegated, of course it was a very remote possibility, but technically it could still have happened if we had have had a catastrophic collapse in the final 6 games of the season aligned with a few freak results.
But after Saturday's games we were officially safe from relegation although ironically we had suffered our heaviest defeat of the season.
After Saturday's fixtures it meant that Cardiff, Fulham & Norwich are now unable to catch up with us as with only five games left to play they have a deficit of more than 15 points, they were joined on Monday by Sunderland who prior to their whopping at Spurs could have reached 49 points with a tremendous end to the season, but alas for the Mackems they can no longer catch us.
Of course the reality was that we were not going to get relegated and any lingering doubts of a second half of the season crash putting us in relegation trouble were dispersed long ago, but the real fact is that this is the earliest we have achieved mathematical survival in a Premier ship season ie with 5 games to go.
In our best ever Premier season so far of 2002/03 when we finished 8th we really should have been clear a lot earlier, but as we headed for a Cup Final our form dipped and we limped over the line winning only once in the 8 games leading up to the final day win over Manchester City to clinch 8th, in that season it was clinched with 4 games to go as it was in the following season when we finished 11th.
So now we can all rest easy in our beds till next season knowing that we are guaranteed Premier League football for a third season, with that now assured hopefully we will start looking to 2014/15 and what areas we need to strengthen in, with Jay Rodriguez out to October and the Osvaldo position unclear, sorting that out and getting in another attacker should be a clear priority.