Saints At Happoel Be'er Sheva The Preview Thursday, 29th Sep 2016 09:46 Saints are in Israel for their longest ever trip for a competitive match, can they make it a victorious journey. Claude Puel is taking a big gamble in leaving a quartet of his players back in England for the visit to Israel, Charlie Austin, Ryan Bertrand, Steven Davis and José Fonte have all been left behind as Puel looks to manage his squad with a trip to Leicester looming on Sunday. Some Saints supporters would say this is madness, but the French manager sees it differently and believes that he needs to look at the abilities of certain players to be able to play two games in so short a period sand use them sparingly. Certainly there is method in his madness, but there will be a backlash if Saints don't at least take a point from the long trip down to Be'er Sheba. Puel seems confident though that his squad is big enough in quality to be able to cope without these key players, although in the case of Charlie Austin it will leave us very short on attacking options. But it is a game that Saints can and should get something out of, with due respect to Be'er Sheva they are probably not a team who would fare well in the Premier League, the best yardstick we have in this respect is that Celtic knocked them out of the Champions League, with a 5-2 win in Scotland, although they went down 2-0 in Israel to make it a close tie. This being the case Saints should be confident of a result although given Be'er Sheba's impressive record since they moved to their new stadium draw might be as good as we can get. But overall Saints fans need to have faith in Claude Puel to get things right most of the time, of course there will always be hiccups, but we have to remember that football is always moving forward and we have to move with the times, we are used to playing our best side ll of the time, but that is not the European way where it is more squad based. Exciting times for Saints lets enjoy them. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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