After the international break, the Saints will play all five weeks of the season with no margin for error; they must win the majority of their games, especially when they travel to the three teams who are ahead of them in the standings.
Even if the Championship table isn’t very inspiring right now, we can close the gap if we win the games we still have left, the first of which isn’t until April 9 when we host Coventry City at St Mary’s.
However, we have three difficult games before then. Middlesbrough, who has been on a roll, will visit the South Coast on Good Friday. They have won three and lost one of their last four games.
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Then comes the first of the three major games, where we head to Portman Road to play Ipswich. Although they too have been on a roll after faltering in January, we have been competitive with them over the last five games, so if we defeat Boro, we should go there fearlessly.
The first of those matches is this weekend; Coventry, who also have aspirations of promotion, are starting four points out of the play-offs. However, they will be coming to St Mary’s with hopes of winning after defeating Leeds a few days prior and with an eye toward Wembley and their FA Cup semifinal matchup against Manchester United.
The schedule is filling up quickly now, with games scheduled for Saturday and Tuesday until the last week of the season. On Saturday, Watford is at home, Preston is at home on Tuesday, and Cardiff is on Saturday. On Tuesday, there is a big game against Leicester away, and on Saturday, there is a big one against Stoke at home. Following this, there will be the first week off in five weeks before the trip to Leeds United.
There is no margin for error, as the title stated; all we can do is work to narrow the distance and hope that those in positions above us drop a couple of games.
However, we control our own fate. Should Leeds, who lead the league right now, win every game they play until the championship game, They finish with 103 points; if we win our last 10 games, including a victory at Elland Road, we will finish with 103 points as well.
However, it must be noted that we need a few significant wins to close the goal difference difference. Leicester can only finish with 109 points, so we would need to defeat them and hope that they falter, allowing Ipswich to finish with 105 points.
Now that the season is entering its “make or break” phase, we have little—some would even say no—room for mistake, but we do have a large roster, and since our opponents are playing comparatively fewer games, this might be very important.
We should be in the playoffs no matter what happens over the next five weeks. As it stands, Hull and Coventry are both barely outside the playoffs with 58 and 57 points from 37 games, respectively. They can only score 85 and 84 points apiece, though that isn’t quite accurate because they still have to play each other.
Given that our goal differential is so much greater and would have widened with those results, we could almost ensure a play-off spot if we win our next two games and they both lose theirs over the Easter weekend.
Thus, we must enter the final five weeks prepared for combat; players like Kyle Walker-Peters will return from injury, and hopefully Ryan Fraser at some point, we have the firepower going forward, we just have to shore things up at the back, play our best team in every game and make the right substitutions when needed.
It’s been a roller coaster season lets hope that come the end of it we will have achieved our goals.