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It’s Now Crunch Time For Southampton In 2017/18

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Southampton have now passed the halfway point in April as the 2017/18 season draws to a close.

Games are running out quickly now and Saints are in desperate need of some exceedingly urgent help points-wise, but nobody is going to help us unless we start helping ourselves.

Five games remain in our season, we are five points from safety as things stand and it’s not going to be an easy run in with Leicester City, Bournemouth, Everton, Swansea and Manchester City still to face.

Let’s not forget the distraction of the FA Cup and a semi-final against Chelsea which will take another 90 minutes out of the players even presuming we don’t progress further.

Leicester away may not seem an easy place to start fighting our way out of the paper bag we sit in at the moment but we don’t have a choice anymore. To clamber from it we need something from this game plus more from our home game against Bournemouth to start building some momentum.

Our 3-2 defeat to Chelsea means we now see the real mental strength of the side. Do they take the positives and forge forward with that kind of performance minus the late panic, or do we flop without a whimper having capitulated the initial 2-0 lead?

Ideally, we will collect maximum points at the King Power Stadium and draw ourselves closer to Swansea. It wouldn’t exactly be ideal but if that gap could be closed to two points and we then took advantage to make our upcoming tie against them the decider, that would at least be something.

With us hosting Manchester City on the final day and Swansea facing Stoke…we can’t let it go as far as May 13 as Pep Guardiola’s side won’t allow themselves to be on the proverbial beech despite the title already being sown up.

We need to secure our future in the next three games really but that is a challenge of its own having failed to collect any points from our last four games. Four successive defeats have seen us concede three times in each match and Swansea and Crystal Palace already have a better goal difference – so we can’t rely on that to save us.

We’re long passed the point of pretty performances or entertaining football. We need a win and all three points, or at the very least stop the rot and take a draw hoping we can do better around the corner.

We have to hope that Leicester are ready for their holidays with European football no longer a real aim for them and Bournemouth is a local derby so thankfully form goes out the window there.

If we get anything from the Leicester game we will be more upbeat and we should be ready to scrap against our local rivals for a win. Four points out of the two games has to be the minimum. Six would really set us up for the final games and lift hopes – especially if results elewhere turn in our favour.

So come on you Saints and let’s roar the team on. We can still do it.

Writer: KRAZYB

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