NOW is the time for Saints to be brave.

The players need to brave in the way they play, the manager needs to brave in his selections and the club needs to be brave enough to admit staying up this season is now the main priority.

Defeat at Norwich was a poor result and was probably avoidable. There are questions being asked over Steve Wigley's team selections and over the character of some of the players, much as there was after the Watford defeat.

Gordon Strachan always used to say that, when things got difficult, you found out everything you needed to know about people.

He also said when the chips are down, you need players to be brave in the way they play football.

That bravery - perhaps through a lack of confidence - has fleed Saints and Wigley needs to get it back.

Rather than get the ball down and play and use their best weapons to try and carve open Norwich, Saints pumped up high balls to the strikers.

That was not brave. That was the easy option.

Graeme Le Saux and Anders Svensson were two of the only players behind the strikers to try and play that brave way.

Getting players to be brave is the job of Wigley - firstly by selecting those who have the right mentality for the fight and also by giving everybody in the team a lift somehow.

Saints' side does have a lot of good footballers in it - play-ers who have shown bravery in the past and players who would not naturally smack optimistic high balls into the front men.

But the confidence seems to have eroded to such a low ebb that this is their automatic reaction when things are going badly. And, when Saints fall behind, these rarely look like tactics that will work.

Wigley needs to generate that confidence from somewhere.

One way is to admit reluctantly that now Saints face a battle for their survival and to cast them in the role of underdogs.

It's not what you want to do but perhaps it's the best hope.

Saints have done well this season when they have felt the pressure is off them, when they have been the underdogs, when they have had a siege mentality.

When the pressure has been on them as the favourites, it's more often than not gone wrong.

If Wigley can generate that mindset of getting the players to think they need to prove everybody wrong, then maybe they will get out of it.

He has tried steering a steady course and trying to get his side to play and it hasn't worked. How long can Saints afford to stick with that plan?

It isn't quite desperate times calling for desperate measures, but it's not far off.

It's now that everybody on the outside of the club can look in and see those who want to stand up and be counted - and those who don't