Saints start the year with a home game against the team who inflicted the first defeat of Tonda Eckert's tenure as manager, we need to show that we have learned the lessons from that game and others.

It was a last minute goal up in South East London just over a month ago that condemned Saints to defeat and that highlighted issues in the team that so far have not been addressed.

This is not a criticism of Tonda Eckert, he is a work in progress and we will soon find out whether he has the confidence and nerve to deal with it.

For me that defeat highlighted a lack of leadership on the pitch, it was the last minute of injury time, we lacked organisation and discipline to close the game out.

That was also the case in the defeat at Oxford United and it could have been the case at Birmingham, when with injury time almost up and the ball going harmlessly into the corner and the home side seemingly content to keep it there, we pushed over the player and gave them a last chance to get in a free kick into our 6 yard box.

Need i go on more, after all I have spent 7 years highlighting this issue, it's not a Sport Republic thing, it seems to be a Southampton manager thing.

For this game Eckert will have to make do with what he has and what he has is team that has barely changed form week to week, we need to mix & match a little, we look tired and it was interesting to note that on Monday at St Andrew's for perhaps the first time, those that came on changed the game.

But this really should be in praise of Tonda Eckert, just two months ago on 1st November after a 2-0 home defeat to Preston, things looked bleak, if you had said then that we would win 6, draw 2 and lose 3 of our next 11 games, gaining 20 points in the process, most Saints fans would have laughed in your face.

Eckert has earned the right to ask us to stick with him and give him time, most Southampton supporters have done that.

Now we have to move forward again after a tricky patch, but in that time we have not been outplayed, all 3 defeats have been down to our own shortcomings, our own defensive frailties, in short our inability to mark players at set pieces, our inability to leave someone on the edge of the box at corners to clear up the loose ball and our inability to stay disciplined in the final minutes of games as at Oxford United.

So from this perspective it should be a simple task to rectify this and start moving up the table again.

Biut it won't happen unless we do something different, the back three personnel, of Harwood-Bellis, Wood & Stephens is not right, it is square pegs in round holes, it is not contrasting skills and these three do not complement each other.

If we sort this out then everything else falls into place.

It looks like it will be a full St Mary's to welcome Millwall, as I write only about 250 tickets are still available for this game, so it should be a red hot atmosphere as 13th place Saints take on the 5th placed Lions.

They start the day though, just 7 points ahead of us and that highlights the importance of winning this game, if we do so then we are right up behind them, if they beat us then a 10 point gap is massive.

That late goal up at the New Den cost us dearly !

However we should go into this game with confidence, Millwall success is based on their home form where they have won 7 drawn 2 and lost 4, away from home they have won just 4, drawn 4 and lost 3, not far off our record of winning 3 and drawing 4 on the road.

Their last 5 games though have seen them falter, although they beat Bristol City 2-1 at home on Monday night, that was their first win in 5 games, drawing 2 and losing 2.

Indeed their record over the last two months is not that impressive, their position is because of a 3 game winning streak of which we were the middle defeat, either side of that triple its a mirror image of the 1 win and 2 draws mentioned earlier.

So we need to go into this game with confidence, for perhaps the first time in a long time I would expect more than just a single change, there is also a chance that with the return of Elias Jelert we will revert to a back four.

Im sorry to harp on about the defence, but for me everything revolves around it, if they protect the goalkeeper and win balls then we win games, if they get the ball down and pass it early to the midfield, then we win games.

Contrastingly, if they fail to mark players and fail to win the ball, then we lose games and if they keep passing the balls along the back endlessly as they have done in the past few games then we fail to win games.

Football is a simple game and in our case it is a simple solution.

Have we been outplayed over 90 minutes in any of our 3 defeats, the answer is no, what we have had are lapses of concentration at key moment defensively, sometimes punished and sometimes not.

Cut these out and we will make the play offs with ease, fail to do so and we will struggle to do so.

So now in this January transfer window we will start to see our fate, hopefully Tonda Eckert will deal with the issues in hand and hopefully Johannes Spors will make an astute signing or two

Happy New Year to you all, may 2026 be a prosperous one, hopefully by May.

All Photos Via Reuters