Southampton travle to Selhurst Park to meet Crystal Palace knowing that only a win will be good enough after the last two games, if they get that win then the Premiership could be one win away, lose and its going to be a tough few weeks.
Saints have to go to Palace and not just win but win well, Saints are still favourites in the bookies eyes to win the title, but Reading have crept up fast and by the end of this week we will know the answers to a few questions.
After the first round of the weekends fixtures Saints have lost two points against both Reading and Palace, despite on paper having the easiest fixture out of the three, thats the case again with the trip to Palace and Reading facing a tough trip to Brighton whilst West Ham face in form Birmingham at home.
The task for Saints is clear, a win keeps us moving forward and even if the other two win its another game gone by, anything less and we will at worst have allowed West Ham to be right up behind us and at best missed a great chance to widen the gap again.
Nigel Adkins has to get his side playing football again and playing well, the key is the midfield, he just cant seem to find the right combination and in fairness to the manager, the midfielders arent performing with any consistency, we need to sort this out and fast.
In defence our central defenders are crumbling just as we need them to be resilient and keep clean sheets for us, five goals conceded in the last two games is poor and all of these goals should have and could have been prevented, indeed in our last five games we have let in two goals twice and three once with a couple of clean sheets thrown in, one of those was against Doncaster who barely threatened, we now need to keep a clean sheet at Selhurst, we dont concede and we dont lose and we make it easier to win, thats the short and the tall of it.
We can come back to form and we can come back to it at Selhurst Park but it needs everyone to be pulling together both on and off the pitch, we have six thousand supporters there with far more who would have gone if they could, a supporter who doesnt back the team and that includes not abusing certain players ie Guly and doesnt make some noise is a wasted ticket, so lets go there a nd recreate Delhurst park, if we do then its a big boost for the team, we have the firepower up front, all we need now is to have the foundation at the back.