Can Saints make it four away wins in a row and in doing so get into the home straight to the finish line to avoid relegation ? We take a look at our chances here.
Saints travel to Selhurst Park in confident mood despite the defeat to Wolves where another defensive horror show cost us points.
But they will hope that was a blip and they can put that behind them and get back to the task of putting points on the board and getting clear of the relegation zone.
That is made harder by injuries with Jan Bednarek, perhaps the most stable player in the defence looking doubtful due to an achilles problem, Ralph has many options to replace him, both obvious and not so obvious, but none are as good as Bednarek and that will be a major issue.
Hopefully though it will have highlighted just how short we are of quality in the centre of defence and that needs to be dealt with in this window, even if it is just with a loan deal for a temporary fix.
Saturday also highlighted as I have been saying all season, our problems in the defence are still there, it is just some weeks we will get away with it like the recent home game against Spurs and others like the visit of Wolves we won't and will get exposed.
Ralph says he will rotate for this game as he did for the trip to Chelsea and it will be interesting to see what he does, this could mean a return to the side for Che Adams who showed his battling qualities at Stamford Bridge and at Leicester as a sub.
It could be that both Ings and Long are rested and Adams and Obafemi resume their partnership from our last trip to the Capital.
The focus has to be on getting points to make sure we are not dragged back into a relegation battle, we have built up a good cushion we do not want to blow it, the task is to hit 40 oints and that means another 12 points from 17 games, that's basically .71 points a game, even a draw is a positive move forward this evening.
To break that down 3 wins and 3 draws from 17 games should be well achievable but the sooner we do it the pressure is off and we can look to next season.
We will suffer blips along the way but the key is as Ralph and his team have done is to stay calm, stay focused and keep fighting.
Tonight will be hard, Palace are good at home where they have lost just three times, all in the period of October/November where Man City, Liverpool & Leicester all triumphed, but they are not a team that scores a lot of goals, only 22 all season home and away, but they don't concede many either only letting in 26, only Liverpool, Leicester and Sheffield United have conceded less.
Our next target is to get over the 30 point mark then we are in the home straight, if we can do that tonight then that would be great, but we have to be prepared that it won't be, so a draw would not be a bad result in the grand scheme of things.