Now with their fate in their own hands, Saints need to go to the Hawthorns this evening and put all that hard work over the past couple of months into fruition, a win tonight takes us within a point of Wrexham.

On paper this should be an easy win for Southampton, but as we found out at Sheffield Wednesday, League positions are no respecter of form sometimes.

No one in the Championship has a better record in the last six games than us and only leaders Coventry can match the 5 wins and a draw in that period, conversely only Sheffield Wednesday have a worse record than West Brom, who have slipped into the bottom 3 after taking only 4 points in the last 6 games and Leicester beating Bristol City to leap above them.

But the Baggies woes go back to the start of the New Year, after winning their last game of 2025, they had hopes of a play off spot at least, but since then in 2026, a run of 12 games in the Championship has seen them fail to win any of them, drawing 5 and losing the other 7.

So the big question will be whether this game will be a wake up call for the Baggies or whether they are on a slippery slope that they will find hard to get off.

Tonda Eckert has revealed that his side have no new injury worries, Shea Charles & Jack Stephens were not missing at Fulham due to injury, they were rested and will be back in the squad for this game, so apart from Mads Roerslev & Welington who are more long term, the Saints manager has his full squad.

So the only real problem that Tonda has is one of complacency and from his pre match comments, it seems that he is well aware of that and he had this to say:

"I don't see that at the moment. I see a group that is fully focused on everything that comes up.

"If I ever should have the feeling that we are dropping a couple of per cent, I'll make sure that we raise that again because it's always nice to have a good form.

"It's always nice to win games, but the truth is we're just so far away still. I think we just need to realise where we are.

"We need to acknowledge that there are some good steps along the way, but it doesn't mean anything for the moment. We need to keep pushing.

It's just so much more ground that we need to make up, and it's not the moment now to drop."

So hopefully this will not be a problem tonight, however he does have a lot of thinking to do regarding the starting line up.

You would imagine that he will restore Jack Stephens after his rest at the expense of Nathan Wood, who despite having a great game at Fulham is behind Captain Jack in the pecking order.

Another consideration is the centre of midfield where with Shea Charles returning to the squad do you replace Caspar Jander who was missing at Sheffield Wednesday with Charles, who had a strong game at Hillsborough.

Out wide last time out in the League Katsu Matsuki got the nod over Tom Fellows, so could return, which leaves just the centre forward position for review.

Cyle Larin started at Fulham as he did at Hillsborough with Ross Stewart missing with injury, the Scotsman came on for the last 20 minutes at Fulham, but is it wise to start him, so soon after coming back from injury, we know the problems he has and that he needs to be managed.

So there could be 4 changes from the win at Fulham, although I think that perhaps only Stephens and Matsuki returning might happen.

Our task in this game is clear, anything less than a win is not going to be good enough, of course if we were to draw in some ways we would have taken a step forward in that we would have reduced the gap between us and Wrexham to 3 points, but the truth is we have a great chance here.

We have to win and get the psychological advantage on the Welsh team, just a point behind them and coming up fast on a team which is starting to falter a little.

The size of our squad is going to be crucial here, as the games come thick and fast we have the quality and numbers to deal with it as we showed at Fulham, do Wrexham have the same numbers.

But before we worry about all of this we have to beat the Baggies and as we know we have struggled at times against the teams lower down away from home, Blackburn beat us when they were in the basement, Oxford did on Boxing Day, Norwich and of course Portsmouth held us at Fratton.

We need to improve that record, we have made a good start on that despatching both Leicester and Sheffield Wednesday and we need to continue that run.

West Brom's home record isn't that bad, winning 6, drawing 6 and losing 5, indeed it isn't that far different to our own, we have won 8 drawn 6 and lost 3, however their record has been built on their form in the first half of the season, as mentioned they haven't won at home since 29th December, indeed anywhere since that date.

So on paper this is one we should win, Tonda Eckert seems to be very focused in all that he does and hopefully he will keep his team on the right path.

This is a crucial game, in a crucial week of the season for us, get this one done and take every game as it comes.

All Photos Via Reuters