It seems an eternity since our last game, but with the trip to Villa put back to Monday evening, Saints fans have to sit back and watch the others.
The good thing is that whatever happens on Sturday and Sunday, Saints will still travel to Aston Villa second in the Premier League, the only question will be how far behind Chelsea they will be and whether the chasing pack have lost ground or made it up.
The results of the other fixtures will determine whether a victory for Saints in the midlands will see us pull away or need the points to keep us ahead.
First fixture of the weekend concerning us is Chelsea at home to West Brom, sadly its hard to see any other result than a home win so the likelihood is we will be playing to try and keep the Stamford Bridge club within reasonable distance.
Next up is Manchester City hosting Swansea, this is one of those fixtures where literally any result will benefit us, a home win will see City within a point of us, but it will also leave Swansea who start the weekend in 5th, 7 points behind having played a game more, if we beat Villa then a 10 point gap would be massive. Usually in these situations I prefer the draw, it means that four points have been dropped between the two clubs better than a mere three.
In 4th place sit West Ham and they visit Everton, given that the Toffees are a team that
usually finish between 6th-8th we could do with them not picking up a head of steam so another draw in this game would be best for us, a win for either club wouldn't be a disaster though.
Now we get to Arsenal who play Manchester United in the Saturday evening kick off, again a draw would be best for us as I feel that a win for either side would see them get a bit too near to us for comfort, if I had to choose one side to win though I would say Arsenal, im sort of resigned to Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal being good enough for the top four, that being the case then we need to see Liverpool, Man Utd, Everton & Spurs dropping points, I think we have the resources to fight off the likes of West ham and Swansea in a battle for a position in the top 5, but Im not so sure about these four, purely from a historical basis, the longer they go without putting a run together and the longer we can keep winning, the harder it will be for them to catch us.
Which leads us on nicely to the Sunday fixtures Palace V Liverpool & Hull V Spurs, tough trips for the Liver Birds and Soccer Chickens, defeats for both coupled with a Saints win would leave them floundering in our wake 13 points behind us and would give us a big springboard for the five games left where we start to play the bigger clubs and will ultimately go a long way to determining what we will be looking to achieve in the second half of the season and whether it is chasing a Champions League place or merely perhaps a top five finish or less.
So this sit back and wait weekend is crucial to us and come 10pm on Monday evening we will have completed near to a third of the season, if we have increased the gap between us and our rivals then that will be a very satisfactory way to end the first segment of the season and start the second.