Great guest blog from CHARLIE BOWMAN-MILLAR
This weekend the match at St Mary’s is one of the tougher games of our run in.
I must admit I can’t help but feel like the win last weekend was a mirage, papering over the cracks of the last month or so.
Personally, I feel that our defence is a far more solid unit when both Federico Fazio and Jan Vertonghen play.
They are experienced, they’ve won trophies at their retrospective former clubs, and the former’s aerial prowess and strength is nicely combined with the latter’s abundance of pace compared to Fazio.
Southampton have the best defensive record in the league this season, so the focus is likely to be on the Spurs attack, led by Harry Kane with Christian Eriksen creating chances and chipping in with goals from a deeper position.
Nacer Chadli was the other scorer at St James’ Park last week, with a decent finish despite the fact that Tim Krul should have probably done better.
Whilst Southampton have an ageing Kelvin Davies in goal at the moment, I wouldn’t expect him to be as easy as Tim Krul to beat, especially when one remembers the nature of Eriksen and Chadli’s goals. Jose Fonte is the captain of Southampton and he is a good leader in their impressively resolute back line this season.
Saints record (Saints first): 1-2 Stoke, 2-0 Hull, 0-1 Everton, 2-0 Burnley, 1-1 Chelsea
Spurs record (Spurs first): 3-1 Newcastle, 0-1 Aston Villa, 0-0 Burnley, 4-3 Leicester, 0-3 Man Utd.
As you can see, both teams have had patchy results of late; maybe winning one game before losing the next. However the one difference between the teams that I fear is Southampton’s tendency to not concede many goals whilst maybe scoring a decent goal or two of their own as well. Spurs don’t struggle to score goals, but tend to concede silly, sloppy and at times comical goals that would give the chuckle brothers a run for their money.
In other words, I think it’s a safe bet to back both teams to score!
There are some injuries and bans affecting both teams: Victor Wanyama is banned, Fraser Forster, Felip Djuricic and Jay Rodriguez are both out long term. Toby Alderweireld is a doubt after picking a shoulder injury away at the Britannia Stadium. As has been the case for pretty much all of this season Tottenham’s injury list is much smaller, with Kyle Walker out for the rest of the season after he received a foot problem away at Burnley, and Mauricio Pochettino has confirmed that Hugo Lloris is in contention to return, after being out for three games.
The game is on BT Sport 1 and here are my predicted line ups:
Southampton: Davis, Clyne, Fonte (c) Yoshid, Bertrand, Shniederlin, Ward-Prowse, Mane, Tadic, Long Pelle,
Tottenham: Lloris, Dier, Fazio, Vertonghen, Rose, Paulinho, Bentaleb, Lamela,, Eriksen, Chadli, Kane
