SIMON Charlton has warned his old Southampton mates that Wanderers will be looking for revenge at St Mary's on Saturday.

The ex-Saint, who will make his first visit to the new 35,000-capacity stadium, wants to settle the score for a Reebok defeat that still wrankles.

And, friends or no friends, he is determined to make them pay.

"Nothing will stop me playing at Southampton," he said, determined not to let a lingering knee problem keep him out of one of the key fixtures in the survival scrap, "and, if we don't win there, there's going to be murder!"

The 1-0 home defeat at the hands of the Saints back in September was the first of a run of 10 successive Premiership games in which Wanderers failed to record a win. But, after ending that miserable run with victory over West Ham, Charlton reckons they have made the perfect start to the six-match sequence of games he sees as make or break in the survival stakes.

"Realistically, we looked at the Newcastle and Manchester United games and thought we weren't likely to get anything - although we definitely deserved something at Newcastle," he reflects.

"But these six games are the ones everyone - including ourselves - is expecting things from. We know it's going to be so important for us to get wins ... draws aren't enough.

"The good thing is that we are more than capable of getting them as long as we go about things the right way - playing as well as we know we can do. The manager knows that and the players know that."

Dropping into the bottom three as a result of the 3-2 defeat at Newcastle made it look like Wanderers had been in freefall since the turn of the year but four successive draws - against Leicester, Liverpool, Chelsea and Middlesbrough - was hardly disastrous.

They lost too much ground for their own liking but Charlton insists: "It was not a bad run but it was disappointing that nobody saw that ... except the stattoes. They just kept saying we hadn't won a Premiership game for however long it was.

"But we've got that win now and we're heading in the right direction.."

Charlton played more than 100 Premiership games for Southampton before being frozen out by the then manager, Dave Jones, and is looking forward to a happy return.

"I still speak to Matt Le Tissier every couple of weeks," he explains, "and there are a few other players there who were there in my time.

"But we owe them one. That was definitely three points dropped at our place after we'd dominated the game and I'm certainly going there looking to take the three points off them."