Saints travel to Upton Park looking for their first away win in the league in six months.

Having been beaten in each of their three outings so far in the Premier league as well as their last away trip in the Championship, Saints aim to avoid a fifth straight away loss as they go up to London to face the Hammers, ironically their last away win was at London, well to be precise London Road Peterborough back on April 17th.

Whilst it cant be denied Saints failed to buy properly in the transfer window and that the squad is not as strong in some areas as it should be, the fact is it still has enough quality about it to get results at places like Upton Park, our problems so far have mainly been self inflicted, woeful defending, a lack of concentration and poor selections and substitutions, but the good news is all of these are things that can be dealt with within the squad.

Saints task for the next 2 1/2 months till the transfer window opens is to pick up enough points to keep our heads above water in the meantime, if we are to do that then the odd point at places like West Ham not only keeps the total kicking along, but keeps the Hammers looking over their shoulders, in some respects we have to ignore league positions and look at the points we have, personally I would rather be 3rd from bottom at this stage with 8 points and a lot of clubs within 2 points of us than 4th from bottom as we are with half the league well out of reach and a few clubs down there with us like Liverpool who to be blunt are not in a million years going to get relegated.

So the task for Nigel Adkins is simple and one I have covered in another story on the site today, get a solid foundation based on protecting the full backs and getting behind the ball, if we stop teams from scoring we are winning the battle, at the moment we need to score 3 goals a game to win and no team even Manchester United are capable of doing that too often.

I think Saints can get a point at Upton Park, in fact i think they can win, but to do that they need to be solid and start to make their own luck by concentrating for 90 minutes and not keep making stupid errors.     

Photo: Action Images

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