Saints season once again stands at a crucial point after three games without a win, but is it really a crisis.
A fortnight ago things looked rosy for Saints and then suddenly Chelsea scored two late goals and Bournemouth rocked us and we were suddenly a club in crisis if you read the Saints message boards.
The actual reality is that now for us a crisis is dropping out of the top 10, whereas two seasons ago we would have been grateful to be in this position, three years ago we would have been ecstatic and in the best part of decade before that, it was nothing more than a pipe dream.
This shows just how far Saints have come and that being the case perhaps a reality check is needed by some.
Of course we should have aspirations and of course we should have ambition but these should always be firstly realistic and secondly achievable, of course a top five or six finish is all of these, but if we don't achieve these each and every season that does not mean things are all doom and gloom.
Each year the squad gets bigger and stronger, but the reality is that as we have more success, then the more the big clubs are going to covet our players and that is going to cause problems of their own.
So our ambitions should be dosed wit a touch of reality and that means accepting set backs with good grace and trying to use them positively.
A top ten finish will be a good ending of the season for Saints, we have to remember that that would be equaling our best ever run of top flight finishes, that being the case we are not under achieving, but doing as well as we have ever done in the league in our entire history.
That certainly surely cannot be described as a crisis !
So Saints will march on, of course it will be disappointing if we don't at least equal last season's 7th place, but it will not mean we are going backwards, far from it, this season has been another of steady foundation building, we are building something that lasts, we are not throwing everything a a couple of good seasons followed by meltdown, we all know how that plays out from looking down the M27.