Saints are looking to get back to winning ways in front of a packed stadium of empty seats when they take on Brentford this evening at St Mary's, can they have another good League Cup run, in what is our best chance of glory this season.

Ralph hasenhuttl has already intimated that after a pre season interrupted by an International break just before it kicked off that he will be looking to play a strong side and progress in the competition.

This is music to the ears of Saints supporters who are hoping for another good cup run this season perhaps matching reaching the final as we did 4 seasons ago.

There are likely to be a few tweaks to the side that played at palace on Saturday, I expect Fraser Forster to be given a run out in goal and I would not be surprised to see Moussa Djenepo start and Michael Obafemi to feature as well.

At the back I would think Jannik Vestergaard might be given a run out, with Ralph still seemingly unsure who his best 2 out of 3 is in the centre of defence.

Brentford of course came very close to being a Premier League club themselves last season, they were in the driving seat at the end but blew up and had to make do with the play off's losing the final to West London rivals Fulham.

This season they might not be the force they were, top scorer last season Ollie Watkins has already departed to Aston Villa for £28 million and his 25 League goals will be hard to replace, an opening day defeat at Birmingham saw them fail to score.

So Saints will go into this game with confidence and manager Ralph Hasenhuttl is looking to get his squad back up to speed, with only one friendly in the short break between the end of last season and the beginning of this, the team looked a little disjointed at Palace and the manager will be looking for them to shake off the cobwebs.

If Saints win they will face the winners of West Brom or Harrogate, so the incentive is there to do well in this competition.

Photo: Action Images

KriSaint added 21:35 - Sep 16 We are into stoppage time and we are losing 2-0. Really, really poor performance. What is going on?
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ElijahK added 23:01 - Sep 16 Sorry but that game was DREADFUL! I mean the fact that we’ve played two teams that could be in the championship next season yet haven’t even SCORED A GOAL! let alone goal is just RIDICULOUS! I mean the sort of football we played was just like the sort we played under Puel, having loads of possession, yet we’re really sloppy and did absolutely nothing with the ball! I mean it certainly doesn’t help that we’ve done bugger all this transfer market and basically signed nobody (as Salisu we’d got before it even opened, and we were always going to get Walker-Peters after his loan)! Or even bothered for a position in which was also shown up agin tonight, which is a central midfielder as we’ve only got one decent one (Prowse), a young still learning midfielder (Smallbone) and one that used to be good but has been really poor recently and been messing up more than he hasn’t! (Romeo)! Sorry but unless we can get another central midfielder then I really struggle to see us avoiding a relegation battle, if not relegation itself!

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ElijahK added 23:03 - Sep 16 Worst part is that we played our best flipping team for both games and couldn’t even score a goal!
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sandywelsh added 23:48 - Sep 16 Brentford made six changes from the team they fielded at the weekend and we made 0ne. Just shows how poor our squad depth is. I think the 0nly time I heard Redmonds name was when he got injured to many players just didnt turn up. To make things worse Stephens today signed a 4 year contract extension why was he given this? I would be happy if we signed a new commanding centre half to play along side Salisu and Stephens never played again. Why did Forster not get a start maybe after tonight he might on Sunday.

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