SAINTS have made one of their worst home starts in Premier League history – and in 16 years at St Mary’s, ahead of Everton's visit on Sunday.

Mauricio Pellegrino’s under pressure team are already a point worse off at home than the Premier League relegation campaign of 2004/05, when they collected nine points from their opening seven games at St Mary’s.

Anything other than a win against the managerless Toffees on Sunday will see them continue to lag behind the home points tally of that fateful term.

So far, Saints have eight points – that’s three defeats, two wins and two draws – from seven games in front of their own support, despite a favourable fixture list.

You have to go all the way back to 2001/02 – Saints’ first campaign at St Mary’s – to find a poorer start to a Premier League season. That term they got seven points from their first seven matches at home, eventually finishing 11th.

Overall, they have not made such a poor start to life at home since the Championship season of 2008/09 – nine years ago – when the club were spiralling ever deeper into financial crisis with the team suffering badly as a result.

Under Dutch duo Jan Poortvliet and Mark Wotte Saints chalked up just six points from seven matches at St Mary’s as the team struggled to make an impact and were eventually relegated to League One.

In all, during the Premier League era (not that football began then), Saints have only ever made three worse starts to a season at home at this point.

The worst of those came in 1998/99, when Saints tallied just five points from seven games. After that, is the above mentioned 2008/09 campaign and following that is the disastrous start to life at St Mary’s in 2001/02.

This is Saints' poorest opening at home of this recent top-flight era and seldom have they scored fewer goals either.

It’s little wonder then that the St Mary’s faithful have started to turn, airing their discontent on several occasions this term as Saints struggled to progress under Pellegrino.

Their disquiet was cranked up a notch last time Saints were home, when Pellegrino’s strugglers lost to Burnley. That day the boo boys were out in force.

Saints now welcome the Toffees to St Mary’s and know that anything but a win will do if they are to avoid being dragged down the top-flight further. They are currently four points from the bottom three.

After one win in seven matches and back-to-back Premier League defeats, there has finally been recognition by the team that they are in a fight and need to pull together.

Cedric Soares expressed this in the Daily Echo on Monday. He said: "In these moments you need to come together and fight for it."