After a superb week for his country where he scored two winning goals Graziano Pelle is now officially he best striker in the Premier League.
After his pair of goals for Italy thereby ensuring that they qualify for next years Euro finals in France, Pelle is now the top striker playing in the Premier League so far this season.
His least goals when added to the 7 he has hit in for Saints so far this season in the Premier plus 2 in the Europa League give him a grand total of 9 goals overall in all competitions.
This is one more than Sergio Aguero's tally of 8 although perhaps it shows the consistency of Pelle that of the Man City strikers goals came in one game against Newcastle.
So far this season Pelle has been magnificent and with each game he has upped his performance levels, there were many who considered the Swansea game his bet ever showing in a Saints shirt, but a week later he surpassed that with his display at Chelsea where apart from being at the heart of everything, he created the first two goals for Steven Davis & Sadio Mane with two pieces of sublime play and then won the ball to star the move that led to his own cracking goal.
Up to recently there have been some who revel in hurling abuse at the striker, I have mentioned on many occasions incident mainly away from home where our own so called fans have screamed abuse at Pelle, for some reason unable to appreciate just what he has brought to the team, strangely he seemed to have set off something in them that meant they could not just have. moan about him, but felt the need to scream foul abuse at him.
Hopefully now even those abuser might well be won round, perhaps it was that they were unable to accept the departure of Rickie Lambert and Pelle taking his place but maybe now they will change their view.
Perhaps they would care to reflect that at Chelsea, Pelle's display was perhaps the best for a Saints central striker in the past decade, given the standard of opposition and the game etc, I would put it forward that this display surpassed anything that Rickie Lambert achieved in a Saints shirt.
This is no slur on Rickie, who quite rightly is a Saints legend and had some brilliant games over all 3 divisions he played for us in. But it is pointing out to the doubters just how good Pelle is and how vital he now is to Saints both as a scorer andcreator of goals, but also as a link man in all our attacking play.