It has been a reasonable weekend so far for Saints with regard to how the other teams around us fared, but what should Saints fans hope for in tonights big game.
I would say that most Saints fans would be hoping for a Swansea win tonight and that is the way im thinking, however its not as clear cut as it first looks in that it all depends on whether you are looking up the table or down it.
Saints first task this season is to finish 7th as a minimum, that being the case a Liverpool victory tonight would put us within 2 wins of that being virtually achieved, an 8 point lead over 8th place with 8 games to go is a big gap, an 8 point lead with 6 games to go would be virtually impossible for any club to make up.
So a Liverpool win tonight and a 10 point lead over Swansea in 9th who would be 10 points behind would see us looking only at Stoke as a club who could probably still catch us.
However we want more than that, a draw would be a decent result in that it would mean Swansea would still be 9 behind but Liverpool would be only 2 ahead, given that they host Manchester United on Sunday that would give us a great opportunity to leapfrog them again by beating Burnley.
if that happens then that would be an interesting fixture at Anfield in that a draw for Liverpool would put them level with us on points but behind us on goal difference and United would be within 4 points.
But better still would be a Liverpool defeat tonight at Swansea followed by that draw against United, that would put 5th place firmly within our our hands and given United's upcoming fixtures would keep them well in range.
This is a crucial weekend, of course we can only do what we can do, but in the next few weeks we will have the opportuniy to get a top four finish well within our capabilities, but as it stands we have to rely on a few results going our way and then we need to do our stuff.
This is the business end of the season we have 8 fixtures before we travel to Manchester City,all are winnable, if we can put together a good winning streak that might give us the impetus we need.