Southampton – fourth on 72pts<\/p>\n
When Southampton lost 2-1 at home to Hull on 17 January, they were marooned in 15th, winless in seven and four points behind Leicester City.<\/p>\n
Relegation was only six points beneath them and the play-offs a distant 10 points off, as questions were raised about whether Tonda Eckert was really the man to take the team forward.<\/p>\n
Three months on, Saints have not lost since and their run of 12 wins and three draws has propelled them up the table, while there is an FA Cup semi-final with Manchester City at Wembley on the calendar on Saturday, 25 April.<\/p>\n
No question, they are the in-form team and with a match to come against Ipswich at home, people are no longer wondering if they will make the play-offs but instead if they could carry all this form into that second promotion spot.<\/p>\n
“If Southampton are to go and get second, this would be one of the greatest stories ever in the EFL,” said McAnuff.<\/p>\n
“They were down and out. Watching them as a group, they were gone.<\/p>\n
“Now they’re still an outsider to get in the top two because of where they’ve come from, so they can attack every single game with freedom. That makes them dangerous.”<\/p>\n
Having risen up the league and knocked Premier League pair Fulham and Arsenal out of the cup, confidence is flowing at St Mary’s.<\/p>\n
Head coach Eckert has been able to tinker with his side in recent games, but his foot remains firmly on the accelerator.<\/p>\n
“It sounds boring because I keep repeating myself but we need to keep our heads down and keep working. It’s the only way,” said the German.<\/p>\n
“This squad is in a moment and a place where you can put on whoever you want to put on and they’re ready and well able to perform. That’s a big plus for us at this part of the season.<\/p>\n
“That’s all it comes down to at this stage of the season. When you step on the grass you need to be ready to perform.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southampton – fourth on 72pts When Southampton lost 2-1 at home to Hull on 17 January, they were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-536184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}