Southampton V Leeds United The Preview Tuesday, 18th May 2021 13:27 Saints take on Leeds United at St Mary's looking for revenge after a 3-0 defeat at Elland Road back in February, a scoreline that didn't reflect the game itself and a bad night all round with Oriol Romeu fracturing his ankle. Saints look to make it 3 home wins in a week with the arrival of Leeds to the South Coast, the first job is to ensure we don't finish bottom of the clubs who have not been relegated with the second being to try and move ourselves up the Premier League and finish as high as 12th. Leeds will be hoping to win their final two games and then have a few other results go their way and perhaps hit 8th place, but such is the Premier League in the centre positions if Saints were to win they would be only 7 points behind the visitors should they win tonight. Saints go into the game with more confidence that they have had since early December before our awful injury problems began and subsequent disastrous run of defeats.
Ralph Hasenhuttl has a few dilemmas tonight, he will have Oriol Romeu & Jan Bednarek both back from injury, so does he change the balance of the side for this one or keep the side that played so well against Fulham. He has to achieve a balance between playing his strongest team and giving those who are chomping at the bit to prove themselves a chance. Does he bring back Bednarek and if so who drops out Jack Stephens or Mohamed Salisu, does he stay with a back three or go back to a back four.
If he brings in Romeu does he play a central three or does he move Stuart Armstrong back out wide. The good thing is he has options in all departments and it is about using them to the best system available. Other than that it is only good news for Ralph, virtually everyone who played on Saturday could come off happy with their performance and they will all be keen to play and hopefully that will reflect in another spirited display.
Leeds have had a good second half of the season, but they are a strange side, they play an end to end game and that doesn't always suit us, as we found out back in February, but they can be just as bad as they are good sometimes and one thing that we do know is that the game is never over with them whether they are winning or losing, they can throw a game away from a winning position just as much as they can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. So I would be surprised if it was a low scoring game, Leeds have scored 57 goals and conceded 53, add our 47 goas for and 63 against and a goal fest looks on the cards.
A win will guarantee 14th place whatever happens elsewhere and that is perhaps a good finishing point given the second half of the season, but even a draw should ensure we don't end up in 17th bottom of the non relegated clubs, given that Brighton are facing Manchester City this evening. But we want and need better than 16th, not just to make it look better on the stats but to bring n some much needed income, with each place worth over £2 million, just a few places make a big difference.
It will be good to get back into St Mary's with something approaching a crwd present, when we played the previous two games at home the 2,000 made a lot of noise but they were only in one stand and it had a strange feel. Hopefully tonight with fans in all four stands it will be something like how watching football used to be. This will be the first taste of live football for around 2/3rds of the crowd tonight, it is finally a chance to support the team again and get back to enjoying the live experience of football in St Mary's again, whatever the result enjoy it.
Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
You need to login in order to post your comments |
   Blogs 31 bloggersSouthampton Polls[ Vote here ] |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.We in turn value your personal details in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
