Saints take on Fulham at St Mary's in what is probably on the face of it our best chance of getting the single point that we need to ensure that we don't go down in the history books as the joint worst team in Premier League history.

Whatever Simon Rusk does in his Southampton career as a coach, he should be remembered for bringing a little stability back to the Southampton side, for the first part of the season we had the no variations allowed regime of Russell Martin that stifled individuality and meant that we conceded soft goals that really could have been avoided.

In the second half we had the madness of Ivan Juric who did not seem to ever know his best side or how to set it up.

Simon Rusk has already brought back a sense of normality, he has kept it simple and in the main stuck with a core group of players and kept the game simple so that everyone knows exactly what they are doing and for that matter allowing them the freedom to make their own decisions when the need arrives, whether that is hoofing the ball in a tight situation or trying to play a killer through ball if the chance arrives.

Of course things are not going to change overnight, we are not suddenly going to show that we were good enough to finish in the top 10 under the right manager, but we have shown that we might have stood a chance of staying up if it had been to two bizarre managers who had their own agendas and stuck rigidly to them.

In hindsight you can see why Saints stuck with Juric until the side was relegated, when we went down two years ago we made some bad decisions managerial wise, not just the appointment of Nathan Jones, but throwing in Ruben Selles.

Selles has since shown that he has what it takes to be a decent manager, at Saints he was being groomed to be a future manager, but he was thrown into the deep end and he wasn't ready and didn't have the coaching staff alongside him with the experience to help and it set his career back.

Simon Rusk is another who is still learning his trade and could well be a future manager at St Mary's, but perhaps not quite yet, however unlike Selles he doesn't have the weight of a collapse into relegation on his shoulders, so from this perspective, Johannes Spors made his first big decision in accepting that Saints would not get out of relegation, but letting Juric carry the can for his own mistakes and waiting for relegation to be confirmed before sacking him and putting Rusk in as a stand in.

That has meant that Rusk is under no pressure and what we have seen so far has been good, ok the Aston Villa game ended badly. but Villa are a good side in form, against West Ham we were unlucky to not be leading at the break and overall put in a performance that enabled us to equalise at the end and draw us level with that Derby County level.

Now we have to take the next step and get that vital point and the best chance we have is tomorrow against Fulham.

So from what I have seen from Rusk, I don't expect him to change much from the trip to West Ham, but I do think he should make two changes from the starting line up against the Hammers.

The two players who Rusk should consider replacing are Kamaldeen Sulemana and Tall Paul Onuachu.

Sulemana may just hang on to his place, he had a couple of good moments up at the London Stadium including rattling the cross bar, but overall his contributions are not enough, he is the "almost but if only" man, there is just not enough end product on the end of some mazy runs, they rarely end in scoring a goal or getting an assist.

But if Sulemana is 50/50 on whether he should play, then Tall Paul offered little last weekend, he worked hard, but he is a reactive player not a proactive one, his 4 goals have been in that mode, however he doesn't make runs that create openings, doesn't demand that a ball be played to him.

So Rusk has to consider his options and although he has some they are limited.

Personally I would return Tyler Dibling to the starting line up, under Rusk he went backwards, now is the time to get his confidence back up and show that we have faith in him, start him and give him the freedom to take on players and create.

Also is this the time to start Ross Stewart, only Rusk and his coaching staff know this, at West Ham he played only the final 5 minutes plus injury time, in the previous game he played over half an hour against Villa after another short cameo against Spurs that marked his return.

Will this see him start only his 2nd ever game for the club, his first being 6 months ago at Arsenal where he lasted just 27 minutes.

I think Stewart won't start, in that case play Cameron Archer and concentrate on getting him one on one on defenders, after he replaced Steward in that aforementioned Arsenal game, Archer showed just what he can do when he gave us the lead in that game.

So I would think that Rusk may be considering using Archer up front in place of Onuachu and I would not be against that.

So I am not expecting many changes, but we do need to make some, we have made progress in the last two games, but we have to keep making progress and not do the same things that got us in this position in the first place.

As I said at the beginning, this is the game that we need to get that point and for that matter make a point about next season, Fulham arrive on the back of patchy form, they have lost 4 of their last 6 Premier League games, although they won the other 2.

This has seem them drop out of the race for 7th place, one that now looks to have been won by Villa who have won 5 out of the last 6 and created an 8 point gab between them & 8th.

This means that Fulham have little to play for other than 8th and have seen their season slip away, so we have a great chance to get at least a point and a point is enough.

One thing I would like to see end at St Mary's though is this modern day trend of pouring out of the exits when things don't go right.

When watching Ipswich lose at the weekend at home to Arsenal 4-0, even when they went 3-0 down on the hour mark, very few of their fans left and when on 88 minutes the Gunners hit a 4th there was still no fire drill.

Ipswich are not in a much better place than us, they knew that this defeat meant that they were all but down, but they stayed in their places and stuck with their team.

Now we are down we are only playing for pride, up at West Ham most of the travelling 3,000 stayed till the very end and were rewarded with a goal, that could prove vital and more to the point they regained some of their pride.

Pride is all we are playing for now and there is no pride when the opposition supporters are singing "Is this a fire drill"

So we are going down, so lets go down with some pride in our club, our city and ourselves, Ipswich fans have it, so do Leicester fans, why should Southampton fans be any different ?

11 months ago thousands welcomed the team to St Mary's for the play off game against West Brom, a vast sea of red & white outsung Leeds United and then celebrated like we had won the Premier League.

Where is that Spirit of Southampton now, it was easy to go to Wembley and support the team, it hasn't been so easy this season, owners come and go, but the club remains a constant and so do it's supporters, this season is done, well almost save that single point, time for Saints fans to make another point !

All Photos Via Reuters

underweststand added 11:33 - Apr 25 At least Juric tried to "undo" that defensive-minded RM methodology, and Simon Rusk has seemingly convinced the players that they can mount attacks throughout the game without playing half-paced for the entire time. Basically we are looking for that one point more to avoid that mention in the record books, and have the chance to learn how to play attacking football again. West Ham may not have played their best, but we did and (with more luck) might have come away with all 3 points. Whether we get a victory on Saturday, or next week remains to be seen, but we should start with Archer, and / or even Stewart, so that we can see if they are best-suited for our Championship season, and with Onuachu coming off the bench (if needed) to ring the changes to justify the fee we will demand when he leaves.

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Colburn added 17:12 - Apr 25 Agree underweststand with all that except I want more than 1 point so we’re not 2nd worst either. I also put very little blame at the feet of Juric despite how odd some of his decisions were. Never have managers that we think do all the right things. Juric played Les much more which helped and had the squad stripped and given no help! Don’t understand why you keep digging at him like it’s mostly his fault. The club are more than 60% of the blame and the majority of the rest is Martin’s for me for his arrogant stubbornness with his ideology which basically gave us no chance when it was obvious the year before and to all pundits this year that he would destroy us with such stupidity of 100% possession. Van Dijk knows when you need to find row Z but our defenders weren’t allowed to. This is why we have f all points and the squad has such low confidence. Juric was on a hiding to nothing and had no English experience, not his fault. We looked more dangerous when we went 4 at the back last week and dominated play. I agree with Archer in for TP tomorrow but I’d also like to see Welington in for Manning who has been great as a left back at times but has no real threat going forward. I don’t think this is our best chance, I think they’re much better on the road than Leicester are anywhere.. I do like Simon Rusk and hope that he is involved in the next official management set up, I would consider giving him a go but he hasn’t really shown his hand in respect of what style he prefers to play, Spors wants a high pressing manager who is adaptable to all conditions.

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