I think a great sigh of relief went all around St Mary’s this week, particularly from manager Ronald.

He will know better than anyone that in a season you may play well but not win, whereas you can play well and win. There are also there are two other stages where you play badly and lose and play badly and win.

He will be absolutely delighted to get the win, no matter how late the goal came, or how well the team played on the day, because it halted a run of not-too-good results.

It also maintains the position of the club, which it should be remembered is higher than where we finished last season when everyone was so pleased.

No matter what happens in the remaining fixtures the team looks on course to at least be above the eighth position of last year and will also acquire more points. In anyone’s book, for a club outside of the obvious big Champions League battlers, this is a huge success.

I can’t remember any clubs who had such a good season and within the space of the summer break half of the outfield regulars went out the door.

Let’s bear that in mind and look forward to all the remaining fixtures.

As we all thought the big boys are making a move.

Mourinho and Pellegrini seem assured of the top two places and the battle is certainly on for the remaining two Champions League spots, which of course is what the owners, the people who put so much money in to assemble such big squads of players, expect.

The chase in on between the usual suspects of Man United, Arsenal and Liverpool for those places, so for us to be linked with them is terrific.

One other point which has interested me are the criticisms that Mr Van Gaal is getting, some of which I think he asks for with his after match comments. I don’t know the man but he seems very touchy and doesn’t take too well to semi-critical questions which he gets from time to time.

He couldn’t understand how the home crowd started to boo when the ball was passed back to his goalkeeper.

The problem was that it started with a corner to his team which was not crossed into the penalty area as most are but was knocked short and after two or three more passes finished back with a defender on the halfway line who passed it to the goalkeeper.

Many years ago before there was so much continental football shown on our TV and very few European footballers in the league.

A lot of us, managers included, used to look at the way those teams played with the pass, pass, pass from goalkeeper, to centre half to midfield players etc. We thought that would never go down with the British supporters.

Things have changed dramatically, with most of the big teams having more continental players than British and half the managers are from abroad.

The crowds have become used to that type of football now.This season I think I have heard more criticisms of that method, not so much because of what I described at United but the lack of shots that used to go in from outside the penalty area, whereas teams now appear to be trying to pass the ball towards the six-yard box before a shot.

At the end of each month there is always a goal of the month competition shown on television and nearly every time each of the ten or so shortlisted are shots from over 18 yards out.

It’s as if it has become so rare that people gasp with astonishment when the ball flies in.Of course in the early days I am on about it was a regular thing for midfield players in particular to have shots.

I think the public now are saying that attractive passing football is one thing but they’d rather have a bit of each.

Percentage of passing looks good on paper but as I’ve said on other occasions there’s no point in having 60 or 70 per cent possession when it’s mainly in your own half, enabling the opposition to get back and defend and at the end of the game you’ve lost.

It might be that we can look forward to a mixture. Now most of the managers and players are getting used to what our supporters like, as opposed to what they’re used to abroad.