Saints head up to the London Stadium to face West Ham United on the final day of the Premier League season playing for nothing else other than pride and £8 million in prize money depending on where they end the day.
This will be our fifth visit to what was the 2012 Olympic games stadium, our first back in September 2016 saw a 3-0 victory, but since then it has been all downhill with three straight defeats with the Hammers also hitting 3 goals in each game, so will the winners this afternoon keep up that tradition of score 3 and you win the game.
But that side being Saints doesn't look likely based on the season both sides have had, West Ham start the day in 6th place and a win will keep them there, but a defeat could see them slip to 8th, although to be honest it would need a big win for Saints and Everton to get a big win at Manchester City for the toffees to turn around a 12 goal difference deficit.
From a Saints perspective they are guaranteed not to finish in 17th, but they could end up anywhere between 16th and 12th, will we be able to pull a last day performance out to finish the season with a flourish.
Ralph Hasenhuttl has a few decisions to make and it will be interesting to see who gets the nod and who doesn't will Fraser Forster return in goal and will Oriol Romeu play or not risked for what is essentially a meaningless game apart from the money at stake.
This has been a disappointing season in the way it had so much promise for the first half and then completely fell away, but if we could hit 12th then although it would not feel like it , actually it will have been a decent one, 12th is just about where Saints lie as a club in the terms of size in the Premier League and throw in an FA Cup semi final, then if we had been told last summer that this would be the season we would have then we would have all been satisfied.
But it has not been a consistent season it has been boom and bust, but there is enough foundation in the squad to suggest that we can continue to progress and lets be blunt we have progressed from where we where this time three years ago when we went into the last day not 100% sure of safety.
Ralph Hasenhuttl has been in charge for 98 games going into this one, he has 35 wins, 20 draws and 43 losses, that equals 1.37 points per game average, over a season that would give us 52 points.
Compare that with the 98 games before he arrived, a period spread over 3 managers, Mark Hughes, Mauricio Pellegrino & Claude Puel, that saw only 22 wins, 33 draws and 43 losses.
Ralph's side has scored 131 goals as opposed to 98 under the other 3 managers, so it is clear we now play a more entertaining attacking game with the only downside that we have conceded more goals under Ralph, 161 against 141.
But overall we have moved forward, our issues this season were mainly due to problems before our control, injuries being a big issue and poor refereeing another.
So there is plenty of use for optimism going forward, this is the modern game throwing money around looks good, but unless you finish in the top four or perhaps the top seven then perhaps you have just wasted most of it.
We need to stop focusing on the things that have not yet happened and focus on what we can do, what would be progress next season for instance, a little more luck and consistency and we could push for a top 10 place and perhaps another cup semi final.
So let's just enjoy this final day for what it is, another season where we have achieved survival fairly early in the season and we have competed for a place in the cup final, lets get real that is more than half the club's in this division have achieved.
Some would say that this is not very ambitious, maybe not but it is realistic and that is where we need to start from next season, look to do what is realistic and achievable.