I HAD a wonderful Christmas, although it does come and go so quickly. I hope everyone else enjoyed theirs also.

It makes it much more enjoyable when Saints are winning, of course! On Christmas Day, we went over to our daughter Kenzie’s house which was great. We had a really good time.

I was working on BBC 5 Live covering Bournemouth’s 3-0 win against Fulham on Boxing Day so unfortunately, I was not at St Mary’s Stadium to witness the brilliant 5-0 victory against Swansea.

I could, though, hear it coming through on my headphones each time a goal went in. I was a very happy fan albeit not at the stadium.

It’s a great time of year. I think for players and spectators, football around the festive season is quite unique in many ways.

As a player myself, I used to enjoy it with the frequency of the games being a challenge.

Squads nowadays are bigger, and you see the rotation a little bit more whereas back in my time, there was pretty much a smaller squad and sometimes it was maybe more difficult to rotate players or rest players when one or two of us maybe needed a break.

I used to love playing. If you ask most players, they will say they would rather play games than be training so it’s always a great time of year.

Like everybody associated with Southampton, it’s such an exciting time at the moment. I am writing this before Friday's result against Plymouth.

However, I was looking the other day and it was 10 games before we got our first clean sheet of the season against Stoke City in October.

Compare that to now and we haven’t conceded in five of the last seven games. As a former defender, I am delighted about that.

Not only are we scoring goals now, but we are being much harder to break down, we are harder to score against and that is a fantastic ingredient to get right.

Sometimes you get one or the other. You might be keeping clean sheets, but you can’t score or vice-versa, you’re conceding goals but you’re scoring also.

We are doing both at the moment, so it is brilliant.

The atmosphere has been fantastic, and the away support has also been incredible. This season, I have been fortunate to see that and it has also been great to witness the amazing atmosphere at St Mary’s.

We are making it a difficult place to come now. Teams will know, quite rightly, that any game against us home or away is going to be a test for them.

Clearly, we have got our sights set on where we want to go as a club this year and the second half of the season is going to be so important now.

We are just starting to see Ipswich Town drop a few points here and there. That gap is closing and hopefully, we are able to kick on in the new year.

Finally, it is my birthday today. I imagine I won’t be celebrating too much because I am getting towards that age now, so hopefully Saints will have won last night.

I share my birthday with another former Saints teammate, David Hughes, who played for the club in the nineties so I will probably be dropping him a little message to wish him a happy birthday as well.

I’d like to wish everybody that reads the column and that supports Southampton, a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year in 2024. I look forward to continuing my column in the new year.