THESE days not many are getting out and about so much but I was pleased to be part of a get together organised by Greg Baker, head of the Saints Foundation.

He got together those of us with the title ambassador this week.

I knew Matt Le Tissier and Franny Benali would be there but I was very pleased to see sitting next to me was James Beattie.

A player at Saints but not in my time. He has had a widespread career representing nine different clubs at senior level, bringing them a range of success.

He was a good goalscorer and played more than 200 games for Saints.

James was telling me now that he is doing coaching work at Wigan Athletic, which was around the area he was brought up.

We both of course talked about the differences in the game now compared to when he was a player. The size of the squads are probably double. He laughed about the wages being more than double!

We were able to also talk about what we found very hard to believe in that a youngster in Max Alleyne, who was apparently a highly talented Saints defender, presumably signed as a schoolboy.

Apparently, the fee agreed to take him to Manchester City was reportedly £1.5million when he was just 15 years old.

It has now been confirmed that he has joined Manchester City. I am sure lots of attention will be given to him because I have never heard of a transfer fee like that for someone who is still a schoolboy.

Looking at the league table, we are just more than a third of the way through the Premier League campaign.

It does not look good that Saints are towards the lower area, but hang on, if you added only four points to their total, they would be towards the edge of the top six.

There is no need to panic. I think Ralph will know better than anyone it is now more important than ever to try to win the home games.

So let’s try to win today’s derby match against Brighton, which I am sure will be attractive as they always are.

Fingers crossed it finishes with a home win at St Mary’s because we have a couple of tricky away games coming up against Arsenal and Crystal Palace.

Let’s hope we can do those short journeys to London in a more comfortable position.

We will also be looking forward to Monday, which is always a special day in the football season, with the FA Cup third round draw.

Saints of course reached the semi-final of the competition last season before losing out to Leicester City at Wembley.

Let’s hope they get a good draw to start. We can only ask they go one better than last year, which of course would mean the final.