I say this every year bt its definately true, for around six weeks or so football fans across the country live in limbo, from August to May they know exactly what they are doing and when, but for this limbo period they year ahead cant be planned, for the more fanatic invitations to special events cant be accepted all until the fixture list comes out, now its here and everyone can plan ahead !
Although Saints kick off with a home game, from then on ts a tricky opening couple of months in that of the first 9 fixtures, 5 are away and of those 5, 4 are against teams who you would expect to be challenging for promotion, but if Saints can come through this period ahead, then it should set them up for the winter months.
Of course it will put pressure on Pardew who cannot afford a bad start as last season, but at least if the start isnt great, then at least we wont have wasted too many points in games we should have won, sometimes the fixture list is about timing, ie last season we went to Stockport early on and only drew, they then dropped off dramatically and although it was a poor result back then, you feel if we had played them in the New year we would have slaughtered them as did most teams.
The run in is relatively smooth, yes there are teams who you would predict would be there or thereabouts, but we are playing them at home and we finish at home against Walsall, a team who you feel will have little to play for at that stage.
At the end of the season a fixture list is technically the same for every side, each will have played the other 23 home or away, but luck does play some sort of a part, for instance Colchester won at Norwich 7-1 on the opening day, would they have een got a point if they had played there say three months later ? Sat here in the summer its hard to predict accurately just who will be in form when.
Saints of course start favourites and it should be the other sides that are frightened of us, I subscribe to the view that this is an advantage not a hindrance, as long as we go out and frighten the other sides rather than be too cautious.
Last term I feel that this was often the case in too many games, when we took the game to sides as we did at places like Bristol Rovers, we looked unbeatable, but all too often we would play defensively at Wycombe or Brentford, what cost us last year was the fact that out of the 4 relegated sides we only took 5 points out of 12 on the road, include the 4 teams above the drop zone and its exactly the same 5 from 12, for a team of our talent that was unnacceptable and it has to be said Stockport aside all of those games were played after our poor start, if it wasnt a question of ability then what was it, sadly it has to be said it was the fact that we were not up to it tactically and this is the reason why Alan Pardew needs a good start, he has to show everyone that he can turn the team from possibly good into genuine unbeatables as paul Lambert did at Norwich.
Two words will count this season Tactics & Confidence, everything else is in place.