In the wake of Saints' weekend loss at Southend, Daily Echo sports editor Simon Carter gives his personal opinion on the current Saints situation.

WELL, just WHAT are we to make of George Burley's Saints side?

Four straight wins had catapulted them into the play-off zone amid a glut of goals.

In what seemed next to no time, Saints were sitting in the top six as the leading marksmen in the Championship.

Suddenly, the worries that were there a month previously - I'm primarily thinking of the goalleess home draw with Hull - were gone.

With Southend away to come and Norwich at home, it looked like the fixture list had delivered Saints a very good chance of embedding themselves in the play-off zone.

I guess we should have known better.

In football, outside of the elite clubs, things invariably go the way we expect them to.

Surely a trip to Roots Hall to face a Southend side who had only drawn six and lost 11 of their previous 17 league games would result in a fifth successive league win for Saints?

As we know now, obviously not.

It was a second Essex nightmare in a matter of weeks following October's 2-0 defeat at a Colchester side who followed League One champs Southend up last May.

"In football you have ups and downs," said Burley after the weekend shocker at Roots Hall.

"We've had a lot of highs recently, but unfortunately on this occasion it wasn't to be."

If Burley was really angered by the defeat at Southend, he obviously wasn't showing it to the media.

It was a similar tale after Saints had been beaten at Colchester. Back then he uttered something like "Colchester's not an easy place to go".

He's not wrong, but that wasn't the sort of comment Saints fans either like or want to hear.

Probably not the sort of comment Michael Wilde, Jim Hone and Leon Crouch and the rest of the Saints directors were over-joyed to hear either.

"Southend scrapped away and at the end of the day maybe deserved to win it," Burley also said on Saturday.

Those few words should be a damning indictment of Saints' performance.

Yes, you do have ups and downs in football. Saints fans, more than most, have come to appreciate that.

But Burley is missing a point.

He was allowed to spend £7m in the last transfer window, more than any other Championship manager apart from Birmingham's Steve Bruce.

But while Bruce's squad look capable of finishing in the top two at best and the play-offs at worst, you can't say the same about Burley's men.

For an expensively assembled squad (by second tier standards) to go to one newly promoted side whose squad cost next to nothing to build and lose can be considered unfortunate.

To go to a second one just a few weeks later and lose again is just careless.

Burley talked of Saints learning' from their weekend setback.

Didn't they learn from the defeat at Colchester?

Or for that matter, didn't they learn from the League Cup defeat at Notts County a few days before that?

"Coming away to a stadium like this you need to be strong and scrap away."

So said Burley last Saturday. He said it after the Notts tie and the Colchester defeat.

He obviously knows what these games will be like, and I'm sure he's told his players.

I'm not saying they aren't listening to him, but the unpalatable fact is they haven't been playing like they were taking all his advice on board.

"Fair play to Southend, but we weren't good enough to beat them."

So said Kelvin Davis at the weekend, another sentence that will shock shivers down the spine of all Saints fans - whether they are in the boardroom or the stands.

In a season of such financial importance to the club, Saints can ill-afford defeats such as the weekend one.

With every dismal defeat - QPR at home, Leicester away, Colchester away, Southend away - the prospect of banking the Premiership millions looks a little less achievable.

Beating the best team in the division at home means little if you then go and lose to the worst team less than a fortnight later.

Of course, Saints are not the only team whose only consistency is their rampant inconsistency.

Anyone who can put a decent run together can surge into the top six.

Yet only a few teams have managed that this season.

Derby hold the seasonal record for most successive wins - six - a run that has taken them from mid-table mediocrity into the top two.

Stoke and Birmingham have both won five on the bounce, a record Saints were no doubt expecting to equal at Southend.

Early-season leaders Cardiff are struggling to win games now while Preston, who briefly overtook the Bluebirds, have lost successive games at Luton (who at the time, like Southend, couldn't win for love nor money) and Birmingham.

Stoke have zoomed into the top five after being in the bottom six in early October. But Andy Griffin has now gone back to parent club Pompey and it will be interesting to see what happens when other loans such as Lee Hendrie and Salif Daio finish.

Meanwhile, Colchester are poised to break into the play-off zone. Now the division's top scorers, could the unfashionable U's sneak into a top six which everyone thought would be dominated by former Premiership clubs?

That's probably asking a bit too much.

But what isn't asking too much is for Saints to beat the likes of Southend.

They did the job convincingly at Leeds and Hull in their previous two away games.

The hat-trick was beyond them, and no doubt Burley is as frustrated as anyone.

Possibly more frustrated than anyone, though if he is he's not letting it show to the media.