DELL legend Nick Holmes is convinced Saints CAN bounce straight back into the Premiership if they go down this season - but Harry Redknapp staying on is the key.

Redknapp has so far refused to confirm whether he will definitely be at St Mary's in 2005/06 if Saints' 27-year life in the English top flight ends in the next few weeks.

But Holmes believes he MUST stay if his beloved club are to recover their pride.

"There's been too many changes in the last few years at the top," said the current Salisbury City boss. "You have to have a bit of stability. You can't keep on mucking around with the management.

"The club couldn't wish for a better management team than Harry, Jim, Kevin Bond and Dennis Rofe.

"If the worst happened and we did go down we've already got a great team there to help us come back up.

"Harry can do what Lawrie McMenemy did - the club went down in Lawrie's first season as manager and he wasn't flavour of the month in Southampton, but he stayed on, we won the Cup two years later and went from there.

"You need the stability we had with Lawrie."

Lifelong Saints fan Holmes, who played over 500 games for his only club, remains hopeful that the club can avoid a dreaded drop.

"Of course I'm still confident," he said. "It's still in our own hands. If we win all three games we'll stay up and I fancy if we win the next two that'll be enough.

"The players look a little nervy but they couldn't wish for better people to pick them up than the management team - they have all been there.

"They are all bubbly characters and they will know how to handle this."

"Harry and Jim are exactly the right men for the job - the people at Portsmouth forget what a great job they did there in three years."