With 12 games left last year Saints had every reason to be optimistic about where they would finish, however a lack of depth in the squad meant that they fell away in the final three months, however this year could be different.
A year ago Saints went into the final third of the season sat in fifth place and although they had only picked up a solitary point in the previous three fixtures, they thought they could kick on in the final dozen games.
The reality though was that the squad was stretched to its limits, some players like Graziano Pelle had had to play on whatever through tiredness and fatigue because Ronald Koeman had no real alternatives whilst others picked up niggling injuries or in the case of Fraser Forster a serious one.
This meant that in those final 12 games Saints would win only four games in picking up fourteen points, in fact as the season went on Saints got worse and after Forster's season was over, in the final 8 games there would be only 7 points won.
But this season Saints are much stronger in most departments, they can handle injuries and suspensions and perhaps just as tellingly they now have the luxury of resting players as was illustrated by Sadio Mane dropping to the bench for the trip to Swansea City and indeed not even being called upon to play, such is the options Saints have.
I said back at the start of the season that although Ronald Koeman was losing two key players in Schneiderlin and Clyne, that he was using the money in building a bigger and better squad, of course we were going to struggle to have replaced either player with one of equal quality at least immediately, but I was convinced that in the long run the fact that we had more quantity in the squad would win us more points over the course of a season, because we would no longer be so reliant on so few players.
Of course we would rather have kept both and strengthened the squad, but that is not always possible in the modern game with players coveted by so called bigger clubs the moment they have a dozen good games.
But now we are ideally positioned to have a finishing flourish as opposed to the whimper in which we finished last season, we can now change the starting line up according to the opposition, but more importantly we have options coming off the bench, something we did not have a year ago, especially in attack.
So we can head into the final dozen games this season with a lot more confidence and therefore a lot more optimism than we could have had a year ago.
The squad building is far from finished, the difference now is that the supporters are now waking up to the way that Saints work, a year ago we as fans were frightened of losing players, now although not exactly delighted as possibly losing the likes of Wanyama or Mane we can see just how the squad can be strengthened further with the money that would be brought in by selling them and just how that could benefit us overall.