This week Lewis Hobday reviews Sol Campbell’s first two weeks in charge of the Shrimpers.

The appointment of Sol and his backroom team was a rare and much welcome piece of positive news for us this season.

The vast experience and knowledge which our management team possess has provided an element of comfort around the direction of our club in the long term.

Given our current scenario, Sol’s football league and relegation battle experience also means that the appointment feels a lot more sensible than Henrik Larsson.

With the Ipswich game coming only a few days into Sol’s tenure, it was pleasantly surprising to see such a noticeable improvement in the team’s performance.

Especially to the extent that we arguably matched Ipswich for much of the game.

However, they ultimately deserved to win due to the many chances which they created, although not helped by our continued small but costly mistakes.

The improvement continued a week later at Sunderland, with another decent performance which kept us in the game for the entire 90mins.

Sunderland also deserved to win based on chance creation and the fact that we created very little.

What was most frustrating was that Sunderland’s goal came from one of their more difficult chances and was very avoidable.

However, many supporters (myself included) were happy with only a 1-0 loss – which speaks volumes about our season so far!

Unfortunately, Tuesday’s game presented a more familiar score line.

Our first half performance was again really encouraging.

However, a quick goal either side of half time changed everything.

There was a period at the start of the second half where we looked very defensively fragile.

Brandon Goodship’s goal fired some believe into the side and kept us in the game for 80mins.

Ultimately though, it was another embarrassing result.

Walking amongst the Sunderland and Portsmouth fans after both games really hammered home the reality of our scenario, from the perspective of other league one supporters.

Unsurprisingly, the feedback overheard was not very complimentary!

Our approach to the rest of this season must be to hope for the best and to plan for the worst.

In recent times, League One survival requires 50 points.

This means that we require 1.7 points per game for the rest of the season.

If you apply Sol’s record at Macclesfield to our remaining games, it will not be enough.

Ultimately, play-off/promotion form is required – with league leaders Ipswich averaging 2.2 points per game so far and Coventry (who currently occupy the final play off place) having gained 1.6 points per game.

Simply put, it is enormous ask for us to avoid relegation.

We must continue to believe until survival becomes mathematically impossible.

If we don’t show our belief until that point, the players will not believe, and we may as well give up.

Given our form, it takes a special fanbase to still take over 300 to Fratton Park on a cold Tuesday night, watch Portsmouth rifle four goals past us and still sing “We’re going up with the Bolton”.

It is the many examples of support like this which means that we all know that we will believe until survival is impossible.

Whatever happens this season, Sol and team are doing and saying all the right things so far and look to be a great step in the right direction for our club in the long term.

With the cancellation of the Burton game, this will give them a few weeks away from the league to further embed their culture and ideas.

Hopefully then we can start to pick up some much-needed points.

And if, against all the odds, we do manage to avoid relegation, that will be one amazing ride for us all and one must-buy season review DVD!