Saints head towards Upton Park and East London looking to crash through the 40 point barrier at the earliest stage ever in their Premier League history.

Saints of course have spent most of this season looking upwards instead of down in the Premier League, but in recent years no club aside from around 4 or 5 big ones can actually start any season confident that they wont be dragged into a relegation battle, one good example of this is Newcastle who after finishing fifth two seasons ago, spent most of last season fighting a relegation battle right up to the final week of the season, to complete their roller coaster ride, this term they like Saints, have spent most of the time in the top 8 without ever getting dragged into the bottom half.

So the 40 point barrier is a psychological figure that most teams will look to get past as early as possible, whilst not a guarantee of avoiding relegation, it is certainly rare for a team to go down if they hit 40 points, every season most clubs will be looking at this figure as their first target of the season to hit.

So for Saints to be hitting it in February is a lot better than most Saints fans would have dreamed of at the start of the season, a draw at West Ham would see us attain the first target of the season.

This is the earliest date we will have attained it in our Premier League career, our previous best was in 2002/03 when we crossed the mark on 1st March 2003 with a 1-0 home win over West Brom, back then though that was our 29th game of the season whereas the game at Upton park will be our 27th, so we have the opportunity to beat our previous best not only by date but in the least number of games as well.

But we dont want to merely hit it, we want to smash past it, win at West ham and we will not only surge on to 42 points but we will keep Newcastle at bay and keep the pressure on Manchester United, I never thought I would be typing those last few words i can tell you.

But there is another record at stake as well and that is to win 3 away games in a row for the first time in the Premier League, the last time we did so in the top flight was in 1991/92, however that was the last season of the old Division One.

There is still a bitter taste in the mouths at the moment after the manner in which we lost to Sunderland, but we have other targets to chase, 40 points is the first of them.

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