This week’s Echo column comes from Stephen Goldsmith.

THE hope is still alive in us all, it seems.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who had that awful sense of despair leading up to the Southampton game last weekend. The content of any SAFC discussion would be very different had we lost the game; as huge “must-win” games go, that really was the big one.

We hate the phrase “must-win” over at Wise Men Say Towers as it goes, but there you go. We’re all being swept away in this pulsating end to the Premier League season.

At the bottom end anyway.

It will be interesting now to see how the players react to playing before the rest of the relegation rivals. Leicester’s win against them lot up the road piled extra pressures on the lads to get a result against Ronald Koeman’s side last weekend.

You can read the rest here.