Saints travel to South east London tonight to take on Millwall in the Capital One Cup and insist they are taking the cup competitions seriously this season.
Perhaps a pivotal moment last season came when Saints faced Sunderland in the FA Cup, with a great chance to progress and perhaps to have at least emulated the eventual exploits of Hull City or more, Mauricio Pochettino showed he had no respect for the cup competitions, the Saints supporters or even the club when he put out a sub standard team which went out with a whimper.
That was perhaps the moment when some Saints fans started to doubt his commitment to Saints and there are those that think that he already had an ulterior motive in mind and he didn't want a Saints FA Cup win getting in the way of that.
This season however the view being emitted from St Mary's seems to be a lot more positive, club's are starting to wake up to the fact that as wining the Premier League or indeed even getting into the Champions League becomes nothing more than a pipe dream for most clubs, that the cup competitions can not only be a chance for glory but a passport into European competition.
What Pochettino and those calling the shots at the club in the first part of last season failed to grasp is that if a club is to be successful then it needs to make steady progress, if it is to improve its standing in the game then it needs to build gradually and part of that process is a run in the cups and qualification for the Europa League that was then sneered at, it is a lot easier to sign a quality player if you can offer them some form of European football.
Tonight we go to Millwall and this with respect to the London club is a good chance to progress, it looks likely Saints will put out a strong squad, but it does also give us the chance to play a couple of the players who havent had a chance so far, thus Saphir Taider looks set for his debut as does Florin Gardos.
I would hope that Saints will put out a spine of the side from the first team and back that with a couple of the youngsters hungry to to well, the likes of Lloyd Isgrove spring to mind there.
It would also be good to keep Pelle in the team, h needs a goal to keep a section of the crowd off his back and he will want what is known as the sauce bottle effect, ie you bang on a tomato sauce bottle sometimes for ages without anything coming out and then suddenly when it does, it pours out, strikers thrive on goals for confidence, Pelle will be no different.
But the end result should be that we want to win, we as fans want to go to Wembley and we want to play in Europe, the next logical step for Saints is to do this via one of the cups, the first opportunity is tonight at the New Den a place we have done well in cups before.