The day is nearly dawning, after three months of furlough Premier League football is about to return, so what can we expect from Saints ?
If you take a look at the Premier league table Saints are in that grey area, 7 points clear of the drop zone, but not quite at the point of safety.
This being the case it is important that Saints restart the season a lot better than they usually start one, they need to get points on the board and pull themselves completely clear, in essence the task is simple, we need a minimum of 6 points from our final 9 games, something that should not be a difficult task, but we need them early so we don't get sucked down.
Before the break the season was one of defensive mistakes, indeed in our final match we shot ourselves in the foot once again with a late gifted goal to Newcastle, if we had held on for the draw then the table would look a little better and our task a little easier.
Indeed when you think that in 3 of the 4 home games before lock down we gifted goals to Burnley, Wolves where we were 2-0 up and Newcastle, just a point in each of those games would see us going into this final quarter of the season with hopes of a top 10 finish, but our lax defending means we are still looking over our shoulders not upwards.
But we can change that in the opening three games and it is important that we start off on the right foot at Norwich, they will come out of the traps without fear, this is last chance saloon for them, lose this one and they will have one foot back in the Championship, win it and they will be on a roll and sensing a Great Escape.
So we have to be tight at the back, there are several questions Ralph Hasenhuttl has to find ansers for, firstly there is who plays in the centre of the defence and then who plays right back.
Before the break we had a to 10 team going forward and a bottom two defence.
The earlier we get points on board the quicker we can start to plan for next season, but first we have to hope that Wednesday night's games go in our favour, Manchester City beating Arsenal would be good, but the other fixture is not so clear cut for us.
If we had those aforementioned thrown away points we would have wanted Villa to have beaten Sheffield United, but as it stands we probably need the Blades to do the business or a draw.
The countdown to the comeback has started !