S-Clarke

It's been a bit of a dark season for midlands football in all to be fair, only West Brom are keeping it competitive.

I've quit my job, moved out and left my g/f. I will be spending the next few days camped outside St Mary's.

Nice to see a level headed hammer! Good post, and may the best team win...

This is all good fun 'n all, but we won't be in them.

I don't think they'll go down, but it's much closer than I thought it would be - and that's down to QPR, Blackburn, Wigan, Bolton etc winning games on the trot. Villa's run in doesn't look pretty on paper but they have the quality to get another win which is all I think it will take. It would be a great effort to lead 2 midlands clubs to successive relgations though....

That set the tone for sure, we never really looked back after that. Our start to the season was created by that game.

Yeah the first team are training at St Mary's this week I believe, nice to hear the work is moving on though.

What a performance from Lampard by the way.

That was incredible. How the hell did they manage to do that? Barca's season has truly fallen apart hasn't it? 3 defeats on the bounce for the first time in 9 years!!!

It's nervy, but it's bloody exciting. This is exactly why you support football teams, to go and fill the ground for such an important game. Sod relegation battles, sod mid-table nothingness - this is huge and very exciting, in a way I think we all need to embrace the buildup and enjoy it because as a football fan you don't experience games like this very often (Well not for us anyway)

Well, we're almost half way away.

I'm not sure, he looks very good when everything is going well and we're 3-0 up, but in a similar vein to Holmes I wouldn't really rely on him offering us much if we were struggling in a game. Just my take on it.

I would expect a right side reunion of Richardson and Guly.

Well exactly, from their point of view they have a couple of mountains to climb. So much has to happen in their favour.

There have been more positive deceive moments than negative, but I'm not surprised at the people focusing on the negative moments. For me, Leeds away was a huge, huge win. Millwall away was a giant victory. WHU at home was a terrific win. The point at WHU was well earned and deserved, after we came back from 1-0 down. There have been many many moments this season where we've pulled the rabbit out of the bag to a certain extent. There are more positives than negatives this year, and in the buildup to one of our biggest ever games I struggle to understand why certain individuals seem intent on focusing on the negative.

A nice positive post from a Bristol City fan, this should ease the nerves somewhat.

Don't tell me, Alpine is wrong again?

This. Everything is in our favour. Points, goals scored, goal difference, head to head, opposition, home record....etc etc.

A very optimistic and somewhat follish hammer. I think at the very very best Saints will draw with Coventry. So that means we need to bang a few goal in to make sure we better their goal difference.

I remember that, but in reality it was all over on the final day. There was never ever going to be an 18 or 19 goal swing, and I think they actually rested a few of their players iirc.

I think after seeing him just coast through games for 18 months, it comes as a bit of a shock to see him struggle - but he's not up against John Macken anymore, he's up against Maynard, Cole, Beckford etc...a complete step up, so he was never going to look as good as he had for the past 18 months. He's still been one of the reasons we've amassed 19 clean sheets though.

It's about a million times bigger than that game.

BBC Solent Sport ‏ @solentsport #saintsfc v Coventry on saturday has been selected for live commentary on BBC television

Exactly, that's what we're all getting at. Not big trophies, no, but notable trophies which show our rise through the leagues.

It's a huge playoff final really, winner takes all. Our biggest game for decades. This will be our best chance to get into the premier league for a long, long, long time and we need to grab it with both hands.