No one can deny we are in a bad run at present, Southampton FC have never in their history lost 6 straight League games and it might be 7, but there are mitigating circumstances including injury, VAR suspensions and the general state of football in the pandemic, but we can get through this.
The vultures are circling with every footballer and want to be pundit whose names you had long forgotten, being rolled out across the media to try and create a headline, but the truth is this is a difficult time but not a disaster.
Yes we would have preferred to not have lost the last half dozen in the League, but we have to move forward and not backward.
Ralph Hasenhuttl is the man for the job, he will make mistakes, every manager does, but when I look across the Premier League I see few managers who consider that they are in a work in progress project and not just a short term job.
I would not change Ralph for any other manager in the Premier League, of course there are several more successful, but they have won trophies due to having the money to buy big and we cannot compete financially, it is not as simple as just spending £100 million on transfers and you are in the Top 4 and Champions League, ask Everton they have done that every summer for the last 6 years and have achieved no more than Saints in that time.
We are better off now than we were at the same stage in terms of games played last season, but back then we were already out of the FA Cup.
We will need a good run going forward to force our way back into the top 7, but it can be done and a realistic target for the season is still top 10 and getting to a cup final and that is the achievable target that we should be looking at as a club.
The owner and the board have come in for some stick from some sections of the fanbase and yes it is disappointing that after topping the League and being in 4th place 7 games ago, we now find ourselves slipping down the table, but we can look at the situation and see the reasons why that has happened, if we had been beaten at Old Trafford with a full team out and a bench full of experience, then yes we should be worried, but that was not the case, we should not dwell on it and move forward.
We have seen the big city lights and are now back in the sticks so to speak and that makes our situation feel worse than it is.
But the signs of recovery are there and we have a good foundation that can be built upon both in the final third of this season and going forward into next.
All that counts now is what happens next, I go to football to hope that we will win the next game and the one after that and so on and that at some point it will all fall into place and we find ourselves at Wembley challenging for a trophy.
Once the final whistle goes in a game it is the last game and not the next and it is only the next game that counts.
We as supporters have to ignore the detractors and concentrate on what the club is trying to achieve, we need to get our pride back, create a siege mentality and see how the club has improved over the last three years.
Back in 2018 after 23 games we had 21 points and were only a single point off the bottom 3, it was hard to see hope, but our spirit eventually pulled us through.
Spirit though is not enough, Mark Hughes was never interested in Saints it was just a chance to earn a few quid, but with Ralph it is different, we now have a team to be proud of, the only problem is that half of it is currently out injured.
So it the word of the old slogan we just have to "Keep calm And Carry On" our luck will change and this season might just turn out to be a great one !