FESTIVE cheer is in short supply at St Mary's at the moment. In fact, it's hard to find any cheer at all.

Another tepid display against Charlton, another chance for three valuable points gone and a terrible game for the fans at Boxing Day. Merry Christmas? Not really.

With about 70 minutes gone, one moment seemed to encapsulate the mood.

Saints had again gone on a fruitless foray up-field and gave the ball away cheaply.

Harry Redknapp glanced up to the skies and walked back from the edge of the technical area to stand in front of the dugout.

As the play developed in front of him, he could hardly bear to look up, instead putting his face into one of his hands and shaking his head in disbelief.

You get the sense from everything he and Jim Smith, and Paul Sturrock before him, have said that there is a genuine sense of disbelief.

One inspired by just how bad Saints can be sometimes.

It's no fun knocking a team when they are down. Everybody wants this Saints team to succeed, to stay up and recapture the glory days of a year-and-a-half ago.

But the reality is that this side is a pale shadow of that one. This side looks like it will be lucky not to be relegated at the end of the season.

There is a lack of confidence and that's a major factor.

There's also a lack of quality. In fairness, that problem has been obvious for a long time.

That makes it all the more galling when Rupert Lowe writes in his programme notes: "We have a solid group of players.

"This time last year, they were fourth in the table and, since then, we have added significantly to the squad."

Harry Redknapp has already made his views quite clear - added in quantity but not sufficient quality. And everybody at St Mary's will tell you the same.

It's time to get out of this head- in-the-clouds land and look at things in the cold light of day.

Bringing in Redknapp has given Saints a chance of survival.

But he needs to work with players that he feels are good enough.

There's no point in saying how many players have been added as hardly any of them are able to get in the team.

Instead, it's time to take that risk and that gamble that Saints appear to fear so much.

They need to bring in quality next month. If not, they will probably be relegated.

If those words from Lowe sound hollow now, imagine how they will sound with Saints playing in the Championship. Big squad, but relegated.

This is not to say that Saints will be relegated.

Fortunately, there are other bad teams in the league. Just to say that halfway through the season, the warning bells are ringing so loud they are almost deafening. If the warnings are not heeded, then it won't take long before it's too late to do anything about it.

Enough of what Saints have done in the past. This is about what Saints do now.

Whatever policies they've had in place in the last year have been a disaster in terms of the performance of the team, so now is the time to review them and update them.

If everybody wasn't depressed enough, the game against Charlton would have finished them off.

It was a truly awful game of football - probably the second worst this season... after Charlton v Saints at The Valley.

The game was a physical battle, littered with high balls and towering headers.

Saints kept a clean sheet and got a point in a game they really needed to win.

But they were lucky to get that as Charlton probably deserved to win.

In the first half, Antti Niemi saved from Jerome Thomas when he was through one-on-one, while Shaun Bartlett put a free header against the bar and Danny Murphy and Hermann Hreidarsson also threatened.

For Saints, Danny Higginboth-am and James Beattie made Dean Kiely produce two stops.

In the second half, Saints abandoned their policy of three up front. It was a good try from Redknapp but didn't work out.

Matt Oakley - what a great sight to see him back - lasted an hour in his first game for 15 months.

But there was little else to report apart from two saves from Niemi, a Rory Delap blast over the bar and a scramble in which the ball seemed determined not to go in for Saints.

Let's hope next Christmas is more like 2003 than 2004.