Its an important week for Saints and they arent even playing.
Saints promotion hopes could tonight either get a big boost or a large blow, although due to goal difference we wont drop out of the top six whatever the results.
Perhaps the most important game is the fixture that sees Bristol Rovers host Bournemouth, Saints currently sit five points behind the Cherries with two games in hand, but the name of the game is points on the board and an away win in Bristol will see Saints still able to leapfrog the Cherries by winning those three games in hand, but thats a bigger ask than the curent situation and time is starting to run out. Sadly for us Bristol Rovers have slumped to the bottom of the table with an apalling run, perhaps a draw is the best we can hope for, if they can get that the initiative would be back with Saints being only six points behnd Bournemouth with three games in hand.
Charlton are perhaps the biggest danger to an automatic promotion spot for Saints, if they wn at Hartlepool that will put them two points above us and on the same number of games, a draw will make it game on, but the fact that Charlton are suddenly up there with us shows how much ground we have lost over the past few wweeks.
If MK Dons beat Leyton Orient at home they too will be on level points with us, but they will have played three games more so at present should not be considered too much of a threat. Likewise Oldham who if they beat Carlisle could go level with us, in their case they will have played two games more, but again it emphasis how close things really are.
Finally in games that affect us Yeovil host Peterborough and we need the Glovers to beat the Posh and leave them floundering in the promotion push.
Tonights fixtures emphasise just how close the promotion race is and how Saints have lost ground over the past few weeks rather than gained it, tonight wont see us drop out of the top six,but the stark facts are that anything less than a win at Spotland on Saturday will almost certainly see that happen, just over a month ago, things were looking good for Saints, they had hauled themselves into second place for a brief time and looked ready to finally kick on and start to dominate as the quality and quantity of our squad should really be doing.
However since the great win at Oldham its all gone a litte awry, not massively but enough to show us that its not going to be easy, in that time we have played five league games and gained 8 points, that just issnt good enough and whilst individual errors have continued to cost us dearly and not be dealt with, our rivals have stolen a march on us bby quietly getting on with the task of winning games, they dont seem to make the individual errors that have cost us so dearly of late, the problem is that when we win, we mainly win well as at Oldham, but too often we lose and mostly by shooing ourselves in the foot.
So we now find ourselves playing catch up, even before tonight we would not be in the top two if everyone won their games in hand, we would be third behind Brighton and Charlton and that is not a good sign.
There are those that accused me of having agendas against certain players, that is far from the truth, I will sit praying tonight that results go for us, it will be a big mental boost, however if they dont then we are suddenly into panic mode, our rivals are clinically winning games whilst we are faltering, it leaves us no alternative other than winning our next two games, both away from home, anything less will see us not only lose touch with automatic promotion but drop out of the top six.
At the starrt of January I said that in order to achieve automatic promotion we would need to average at least two points a game, that we should aim to be in a secured play off spot by the end of that month and in a secured automatic place by the end of Feb, that now does not look possible.
Thelast five games as i have mentioned have seen us pick up only 8 points out of a possible 15, that is not acceptable, an average of only 1.6 a game, not good enough for even a play off position, to be charitable since the start of January we have played 8 games and picked up 17 points, bang on the total we needed, but that only emphasises that the other clubs are not dropping points and we need to up our game, and that means that our upcoming away games are now crucial, four points would see us drop out of the top six, but we would still have the luxury of games in hand, six points would keep us up there, but failure to win even one of them would send out extremely worrying signals from the club.
To be blunt over the past few months we have not heeded the warnings on the pitch, we have continued to dominate most games but with a penchant to make silly errors at crucial times, our opponents will have seen this and will try to exploit this are we going to learn from history or repeat it endlessly !!