Saints travel to Leicester knowing that their next five Premier League games will either see them starting to pull clear or in deep trouble.
The key in a relegation battle is to keep your head, keep focused and not worry about what the other teams are doing and from this point of view Saints season is still very much in their own hands even if it doesn't seem that way sometimes after what looked a decent point at Chelsea also saw us drop into the bottom three.
Sometimes you have days like that though and that point at Stamford Bridge was unexpected and very much a case of a bonus point, if everything had gone to form in the New Year's raft of games then we would have been 3 points adrift, instead we are only two and now have the chance to start to show that all the hard work in training is paying off.
Ralph Hasenhuttl has made a solid start to his Saints managerial career, his first six League games in charge have seen him pick up 7 points, that's 1.16 average per game and that is solid mid table form.
The record looks even better when you consider that three of those six were against Big Six clubs, games where we were expected to get zero points and we actually gained 4.
In this run 1 in 2 games were against the Big Six, in the remaining 17 fixtures that ratio is now over 1 in 4 and that has to be a plus point.
But the Premier League runs on fine margins, the Austrian's first game in charge was a good performance at Cardiff ruined by a defensive error, the story of our last two years, if we had drawn that game then the table would look a lot better we would leapfrog Cardiff and be out of the bottom four.
But we didn't and we aren't, we can only look forwards and not backwards and the next five fixtures are now crucial.
Leicester A
Everton H
Crystal Palace H
Burnley A
Cardiff City H
Having mentioned that Hasenhuttl's points ratio is 1.16 a game if he maintains that we will have 35 -36 points and that would be tight but possibly would see us stay up, ideally we want to see that ratio increase and this five game spell is a great opportunity to do that.
From the top en of the scale we could win 4 out of the five and if we did that we would be within a couple of wins of safety, from the bottom end of the scale though a failure to take at least 6 points could be catastrophic and leave us looking at another great escape season.
We need to try and start this run of games well, ideally we would take 4 points out of the first 4 fixtures, it doesn't matter which order we take the points, but if we could get a minimum of this then that sets us up nicely for 3 games which are well and truly six pointers.
A home win against Crystal Palace is essential in my opinion as staying up is not just about beating the bottom clubs but beating mid table teams as well, it is one of the home games that with respect to the Eagles we should be looking at taking three points from.
Avoiding defeat at Burnley would also be a good result although a win would be better and then perhaps the most important game of the lot Cardiff at home.
In my opinion the bottom three will come from the following clubs, Huddersfield & Fulham I think will go down and then it is one from any of the following five clubs, Cardiff, Burnley, Newcastle, Palace & of course ourselves.
Palace have already made great strides in recent weeks especially with their win at Man City and that has pulled them clear of the pack behind them, they will be looking for a couple of wins quickly that will take them to safety.
I think Newcastle will join them so that leaves the question whether another club can push on quickly and make the relegation dogfight a little tighter for the clubs down there.
We have to be favourites to do that, we have to play all three of the other bottom clubs at home, we win all those games and we are safe barring a complete collapse.
But being favourites and winning games is not the same as getting the points on the board and we have learn't some hard lessons in the past two years and indeed this season, if we are to do this with ease then we need to get a central defender in during this transfer window and we need to do so fast.
None and i mean none of our central defenders have shown that they are of the quality needed and this has to be addressed, the draw at Chelsea glossed over the fact that although we defended stoutly and resolutely Chelsea still saw the whites of the goalkeepers eyes on four occasions and should have scored, Gunn saved us on three and the linesman's flag on the fourth.
This is our achilles heel and it hasn't been addressed properly since Van Dijk left and it has cost us dearly.
Personally I think Wesley Hoed alongside a decent experienced player would be our best bet although Ralph doesn't seem to agree with me, Bednarek is raw and needs experience alongside him and a leader.
So we go into this run of five games without that leader, Claude Puel coached us to 8th place with Yoshida & Stephens at the back by packing the midfield and protecting them with the end result we rarely attacked with numbers and stopped scoring goals, Ralph doesn't look like he will play that way, so we need to get someone in .
As I said at the beginning we are capable of winning three and drawing two of these fixtures, do that and we are on 27 points perhaps two wins from survival, but on the other hand if we lose three and draw two then it is going to be difficult to stay up.
These five games are crucial, but then again so is buying a central defender !