Will George Burley be Pro Active against Preston.

Saints go into the game against Preston North End in fine form winning 3, drawing 2 and losing only 1 of their last 6 matches, however North End will also be feeling in confident mood after their result at near neighbours Burnley.

But the question on Saints fans lipe will be whether george Burley can be Pro Active rather than Re Active, remember Glenn Hoddle his strength was that he would make changes because he could see what the way the game was going, last week at Coventry the side looked lethargic, yet t took the manager too long to change the side and although it can be said that in the second half we looked good and created a few chances, in the first we were appalling and lucky only to go in at the beak a goal down.

Too many players last week had an off day and for some of them it wasnt their first in recent weeks.

Of course we dont want the tinkering to the level's that Burley has operated in the past, but no sometimes you have to make changes for a variety of reasons, both tactical and form.

One change that should be made is the replacement of Jason Euell in midfield with Jonh Viafara, most would agree that Viafara has been one of the better players this season, but amingly Burley prefers to play Euell ahead of him, now fans can accept that sometimes the manager has to make decisions, but the fans can see Euell is not playing well and its fast becoming another case of last season where the team fell apart due to Burley insisting on playing Pele and Wright in the centre of midfield to the point of self destruction, we dont want to see this happen again.

Saints now go into a very difficult Xmas programme and as we all know its these games that sort out the men from the boys, on paper the Preston game is the easiest of these games, so it is important to get off to a good start to the festive period.

As you know I like to compare form to last season in the belief that if we can do the same or better against each individual team then we can move forward and at least make the play offs.

Last term we managed a solitary point against the Lancashire side, the home game saw Saints dominate the game only for Kelvin Davies to let through a tame shot under his body to gift a point and its this type of error that we hope to cut out.

Certainly in recent weeks the defence has looked better, Andrew Davies and Alan Bennett have formed a decent partnership build on the basis that both are prepared to get stuck in and both are prepared to battle for the cause, indeed we have only conceded four goals in our last six games including three clean sheets and when you contrast that to the  10 goals conceded in the previous six things are starting to get better.

Non Cynics though would say the defensive improvement goes back those complete dozen games, if you take out the five that Sheff Weds knocked past us then we have only conceded 9 in the other 11 and that is pretty good.

But all these facts and figures count for nothing unless we get three points against Preston, we are capable of it and for the first time in a year positive things are being said by the club, so there is no excuse on that front, so lets go out and show we are capable of promotion.          

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