Saints travel to the Midlands for a game that will determine whether they have any chance of overhauling the Baggies for 8th place in the league, but as normal we have more injuries than an episode of Holby City.
Saints hopes of finishing 8th rest on beating West Bromwich Albion at the Hawthorns on Saturday afternoon, a win would bring us within 4 points of them with two games in hand and a chance of a good run taking us up into 8th by the end of the season.
However a defeat would see us 10 points adrift and even if we were to win the two games in hand that would still be a big ask to make up the ground in a short period.
A draw would of course suit the Baggies more than ourselves and if that was the case I would rather be in their position 7 points clear of us than ours.
But the problem is that Saints go into this game with an injury list that wouldstretch the NHS to it's limits, definately out are the long term causalties of Charlie Austin, Virgil Van Dijk and Matt Targett, add to that shorter term Manolo Gabbiadini who is unlikely to return for this match and that in itself would be bad enough.
However there are also doubts about Steven Davis who damaged an ankle on Wednesday and Ryan Bertrand who missed that game with a hamstring issue.
Then it gets worse with Oriol Romeu, aguably our most consistent player over the season being suspended for two games starting with this one.
That leaves Claude Puel with a quandary.
The centre of midfield without Romeu and Davis would normally not be a problem, after all we have Hojbjerg and Clasie to come in, but neither of them have played much in the last two month.
Hojbjerg has come on as a sub twice since the end of January, 8 mins at Sunderland and 3 mins against Palace.
Clasie has featured just once since he started in the defeat at Swansea on the final day of January, that was 3 mins at Watford over a month ago.
So whilst both have been fit and in full training, neither will have match sharpness and that would be a big enough issue if we had to put one of them in let alone both, this highlights the full circle that Claude Puel's selection policy has turned, not only has he kept the same team week in week out barring injury, but in most of the games he has rarely used substitutes for long periods, most of his changes not forced by injury have been as in the case of Hojbjerg on Wednesday, a few minutes at the end running the clock down.
This means that suddenly with issues in the centre of midfield we are looking at players who are not match sharp coming in.
The up side is that we do have strength in depth, we can cope with this and hopefully fresh legs might be good for us and the players coming in have a point to prove.
Once again though I have to harp on about our centre of defence, for most of Wednesday night it was tight, but the reality is that there were far too many occasions were our centre halves were not tight enough or had lapses in concentration and this gave Palace changes that they should not have had and to be blunt should have scored from.
Puel has to be pro active here and look at the pairing and throw Caceres in, otherwise what was the point in signing him, or we can just hope that West Brom are just as wasteful as Palace and Bournemouth, each of which would have both hit three goals if it wasn't for poor finishing.
But on the plus side going forward we did look good on Wednesday, although I have criticised Puel for his lack of substitutions and giving players game time, on Wednesday it was difficult for him to take off any of his central midfield trio or the 3 attackers, all were having good games and creating chances and we had to keep faith with them from that point of view.
It paid off in the end and sometimes late wins like that kick start season's, Saints are the best side outside of the top six, but unlike Everton or West Brom we have yet to put together a run of straight wins, only twice have we won two Premier league games in a row, it is testimony to how good the squad actually is, that with so many issues with injuries and other off the field distractions that we are still 9th, indeed we are only four points short of our total of 41 points after 29 games last year.
Last year we had an amazing late run and we need to do something similar again, it will not get us to 6th or even 7th, but it can get us to 8th and we need to build on the confidence of Wednesday with a win at the Hawthorns.
It is hard to pick a team with so many unknowns at the moment in terms of injury, but I will say that in defence we need to sort things out, conceding only one goal in the last two games looks good on paper, but anyone who was there knows the lapses that we had and the chances both Bournemouth and Palace squandered after our poor defending.
I have nothing against Yoshida & Stephens, if they play on Saturday I would be delighted to see them put in a sterling performance and keep a clean sheet, but I want it to be through our play and not the fact that the opposition cant hit a barn door, that has not been the case in the last two games..
If we can beat the Baggies then for the visit of Manchester City we should have Gabbiadini back and then we can get a head of steam up and haul them in.