After a disastrous Easter weekend where Russell Martin seemed to lose the plot in his team selections, Saints have to now forget about automatic promotion, lick their wounds & pick themselves up and concentrate on guaranteeing a play off spot.

The last 6 Championship games have seen Southampton go from favourites to go up automatically, to looking over their shoulders at the chasing pack behind them.

Those 6 games have seen 13 goals conceded and just 7 points picked up, if that form continues, then with 8 games left we could be in danger of getting pipped at the post for even a play off spot.

Even if we were to win every one of those 8 games, that would give us 98 points and to be blunt the chances of us doing that are remote.

The fact is I would say that arguably we have the best squad in the division, the problem has been that Russell Martin considers that in Jack Stephens he has the best player in the division and has changed a winning formation in order to accommodate his captain and in doing so, through no fault of Stephen's himself, at least not directly, he has upset the balance and turned us from just about the best defence in the division into the worst.

But what is done is done, we have to hope now that the manager has learned the error of his ways and is ready to motivate his squad in the final run in to make sure that we get off this slippery squad and into an upward trajectory again.

So the first part of that job is to cement a place in the play offs, as it stands we are on 74 points from 38 games and Coventry are on 60 points from 39, that means that the most they can achieve is 81 points, just 7 more than we have at the moment.

There will be some fans worried that we can achieve even those 8 points to take us to the magical number of 82.

But this could be achieved by next Tuesday when Coventry arrive at St Mary's, if they were to lose at home to Leeds on Saturday that would help us but even if they won that game and if we beat Blackburn and then beat the Sky Blues on Tuesday, then that would leave us on 80 points, but more importantly Coventry themselves would only be able to end the season on 78 even if they won all of their remaining 5 games.

However it should be noted that in this scenario, Preston may themselves still be able to achieve 80 points, but given we have a 28 goal difference advantage on them at present, this would all but see us uncatchable with any team outside the top 6.

So from this perspective achieving the first of our revised objectives is do-able very quickly and that has to be the aim.

But we want to do better than that, we need to make sure that we are as high up the table as possible, but also go into the play offs as the form team.

The defeat at Ipswich was a blow, but in play off terms it could be an advantage to be out of the equation so early, it gives us time to regroup and put the disappointment behind us, we have the games to do that.

The likelihood is that the team out of the current top 3 who miss out on the two automatic spots are going to be devastated and they will have little chance to get that out of their systems as they will then be straight into a play off game, indeed we still have a hand in that automatic promotion chase, it could be us that seals the fat of Leeds United on the final day.

Photo: Action Images

Bowlercow added 13:46 - Apr 4 It's no coincidence that our loss of momentum has coincided with the start of the rumours about Wilcox going to ManureI hope the club hold their nerve over this Make them wait until we have a replacement 7 points from the last 6 games is not good but that very same average would guarantee us a play off place Which position we finish in is irrelevant really because it is a lottery But at least we will have a ticket

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kenchilds70 added 15:02 - Apr 4 Perhaps Russell Martin should switch to a cup game mentality every game. Clearly his in game management is pretty poor as it was during his reign in South Wales. Picking a team based on a showing at training is now a luxury SFC can ill afford. How many games have been surrendered due to poor/ill timed substitutions. With 8 games left and 24 points begging we should be targeting 15/18.......We need that momentum to take into the play-offs

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WestSussexSaint added 16:18 - Apr 4 Nick, give it a rest with the Stephens bashing. I see you pointing the finger at RM’s selection of Stephens but the results in the most recent two games were not down to the selection of Stephens nor the tactics employed for his use. We dropped points against Boris due to woeful finishing with Che Adams largely the main culprit compounded by poor marking by KWP and THB for the late equaliser. Against Ipswich no one was complaining about the tactics given we dominated the majority of the match. Two sloppy goals were again down to other players not closing down and Bazunu not making saves he probably should have. Is Stephens the best player- not by a long way. But neither is he or his selection the core reason for the dropped points either. It would be nice to have a balanced view of the team performance on occasion.

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Boris1977 added 18:53 - Apr 4 Are sports republic actually interested in promotion ? They are a very curious organisation with interests in lower league European clubs where financial security probably isn't as high profile as it may be in top flight divisions. Maybe that's suits their business play book.
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Boris1977 added 18:55 - Apr 4 Apologies, I meant financial scrutiny isn't as high profile as in Europe's top leagues
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Bowlercow added 20:22 - Apr 4 Boris you raise an interesting point Buy young,develop and sell is there stated business plan. Can they do that from the Championship? Definitely but we will need to wait and see
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