Now Graziano Pelle has got the burden of such a long spell without a goal off his back he can concentrate on helping fire Saints into Europe.
Graziano Pelle was always going to have a hard job stepping into the boots of Rickie Lambert and there have been many this season who have expressed the opinion that we would have been better with the man called SRL in our team than the Italian.
But that would have been very short sighted in the long term and more than that we needed to move on as a club, the reality of the situation was that Rickie wanted to move to Anfield, he could have said no, that being the case we needed to back our new man not hark back to the old, most did but some found it harder than others.
Pelle after an initial couple of games where some supporters gave him little more than the opener at Anfield and 15 minutes of the home game against West Brom to make up their mind he wasn't any good, started to win people over after scoring in the third game.
But his recent barren spell has lead people to judge him on his lack of goals rather than his contribution to the team and for some it was always going to be a question of judging him against Rickie lambert.
But even judging him against Rickie he still comes up favourably despite the 15 game barren spell in the League so far Pelle has scored 9 Premier league goals against Rickie's 13 last season, however you have to take into account that Pelle does not take penalties or free kicks all of his goals have come in open play as such, I havent got a totaa for how many penalties Rickie scored last season or free kicks for that matter, but I would hazard a guess that it was at least four in total.
This is an exciting time to be a Saints time, in fact the most exciting time in over three decades, we should not ruin it by getting on the back of a player who has made a big contribution to this football club thise season, but more importantly wanted to be here.
Pelle is in joint 7th place for the number of goals scored this season in the Premier, only 15 players have scored more than him this season, perhaps highlighting just how good a season he would have perhaps been having if he had notched only two more, if he had done that then he would have had only 9 players in front of him, if he had scored three more then only six players have scored more than 12.
On Saturday Pelle showed that he is not afraid to put the work rate in, even before he scored he was vital to Saints build up in the way he gets under the ball, wins it and holds it up, he never shirked even though he was being kicked off the park , the only difference between this and the previous goal less games was in this one he scored.
So for most Saints fans on Saturday it was very satisfying to see him notch that vital goal to kill off all Hull hopes, it was also good to see how the crowd got behind Pelle, certainly in my section of the ground the usual suspects who make loud noises about him were silenced by the majority, the end result was that the crowd puled the team through to a vital three points, no it wasn't the most bounciest of atmosphere's but the crowd kept going and behind the team and that brought its rewards.
So lets keep backing the team and more importantly lets keep backing Pelle, if we do then perhaps Pelle will start to be spoken of in similar terms as Rickie Lambert, no disrespect to Super Rickie, he should be welcomed back to St Mary's as truly one of our legends, but we have to move on as a team and Pelle is part of our future.