Saints return to home action in the Premier League after over seven years, with their first ever League meeting with one of the clubs who replaced them.
The irony of Saints first home fixture of 2012/13 is that it should be Wigan who are the visitors, asthe Lancashire club were one of the promoted teams who took Saints place in the top flight after 27 years of continuos membership, the fact that we passed them on the way down meaning that our only meeting to date remains the FA Cup tie at the Dell in 1986.
In many ways this is a relegation six pointer, this isnt a negative attitude but our first target for this season is avoiding relegation, when we are achieving that we can start to think about taking further steps on the journey, so in this respect beating Wigan is a must.
Wigan are usually regarded as perrenial relegation strugglers, in many respects this is unfair, whilst undoubtably they have had some close escapes, they have also had some decent mid table finishes, many comparisons can be drawn between them and ourselves in the mid 90's, that being the case we would do well to remember just why we got out of trouble back then, we had battle hardened troops in the squad who knew what was needed and that could well be the case for Wigan today, some Saints supporters consider this an easy three points, not me, I think its a vital three points, but I dont think it will be easy.
Its vital as we need to get ourselves up and running in this division, those who read my article a week or so ago about points per game will know how many we need to be around after our opening four games and if we are to achieve that then this is the one we have to win.
At time of writing it doesnt look like Saints will have any new faces in the squad, so Nigel Adkins will have to go with what he has, that being the case there are several questions to be asked.
The first one is whether he stays with the formation at Manchester City, he may consider that with it being a home game against one of the lesser opponents of the Premier, that he can revert to 4-4-2, however Im not to sure that he will, as to be blunt he has a plethora of choices in central midfield, the formation used last Sunday enabled him to employ three of those, to go back to a four man midfield would mean some big decisions and having to leave decent players on the bench, so I expect him to stay with the 4-5-1.
At the back I expect no change whatsoever, even if he wanted to, Adkins has only got realistic cover at right back at presentgiven Clyne's performance at the Etihad, I wouldnt expect change there, so goalkeeper and back four will stay as it was barring any last minute additions.
In midfield its a bit more complicated, in the centre I would expect Schneiderlin and Lallana to stay put, but his first decision now is whether to keep Ward Prowse or bring in Steven Davis who looked good when he came on and scored a well taken goal, I expect experience to get the nod here.
But there could be more changes in midfield as Adkins shuffles his pack a little to accomodate Rickie Lambert up front, Lambert was benched last weekend for tactical reasons, however I expect his return for the same tactical reasons, the tactics being we are at home and will hopefully dominate a lot more than we did at City, we will be on the front foot most of the time, so therefore it will suit Rickie whose strength is doing all his work going forward and not defensively, to bring him in I dont think he will drop Rodriguez, I suspect that he will drop Rodriguez to a wide midfield role and that Jason Puncheon will be dropping to the bench to accomodate.
So I think Saints will line up as follows.
Davis
Clyne, Hooiveld, Fonte, Fox.
Schneiderlin Davis Lallana
Guly, Rodriguez
Lambert
The emphasis here is on attack, in Lambert and the two wide men we have players who can score goals and when you add Adam Lallana to that equation its a potent attacking side, the key though will be Billy Sharp off the bench, I expect this to be his main role, coming on in the last third of the game especially at St Mary's and hitting some vital goals, sadly for Sharp unless we play two up front I see it hard for him to force his way into the side, thats no slur on Sharp, it just highlights that in the Premier you have to be more tactical than in the Championship.
What we want at St Mary's tomorrow is a fuull house that gets behind and stays behind the team for the full 90 minutes, we will have to grow into this division, its a different animal than the Championship and League 1 and as Jos Hooiveld found out, players are looking to go to ground if you breathe on them, as i pointed out our job is to win points in the games that we can compete in ie the bottom 13 sides and then compete and pick up points when we play the top six, last week we competed against City and although we didnt pick up points we can console ourselves that we played well and there wont be many sides get a result as good as that at the Etihad in terms of defeat, but it all means nothing unless we win games against the likes of Wigan, with all respect to Wigan.