Saints are now scoring goals but contrastingly are leaking them at the other end, will Martin Caceres be the answer.

It cannot be denied that Yoshida and Jack Stephens hve put in the proverbial 110% effort in recent weeks, but the stark reality is that effort alone is not good enough at this level of football and that has showed in the number of goals that Saints have leaked since they came together after the injury to Virgil Van Dijk.

Taking away cup games they have been the central defensive partnership in 4 full Premier League games and in those matches 6 goals have been conceded, most of which could have been avoided, add the 3 at Wembley and it has not been as watertight as Claude Puel would have liked, especially as all 4 of those Premier games were against opposition below us in the table.

On Sunday however we now come up against Tottenham Hotspur, a team with the best home record in the division, the joint tightest defence and one of the highest scoring teams overall, it is going to be an uphill task.

The good news is that Everton showed a week or so ago that they are not impenetrable and now without Harry Kane they will be missing their top scorer, but that will not be enough.

We have to tighten up at the back and cut out the lapses in concentration that have cost us dearly in recent weeks.

So will Sunday be the right game to bring in short term signing Martin Caceres, he has been in full training for a month now and has got some games under his belt in the U23 league, if he is not ready now then he will never be.

However the question for Claude Puel is whether the free scoring Spurs side is the time to give him his debut ?

I would say it is, if only for the fact that his undoubted quality and experience will trump the lapses of concentration we are suffering at the back.

We have to do something different in the back four or we will get the same results and that means leaked goals and trying to outscore Spurs is a lot different from outscoring Watford.

So my opinion is that we need to bring Caceres in for this game, fitness wise should not be a problem and his experience and quality will make up for a lack of match sharpness, we signed him for a reason, a very good reason and if we are not going to play him, what was the point in doing so.

Photo: Action Images

landerwal added 12:07 - Mar 16 Cancers with over 200 appearances at top the top level in Europe plus 68 International appearances including 2 World Cups versus Jack Stephens with 4 Premiership appearances. Who to select? No brainer!
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Steve_N added 13:08 - Mar 16 How does the saying go - "If you always do what you've always done, you always get what you've always had", i.e. continue to concede goals. Spurs, even without Kane, are dangerous going forward. If CP doesn't start MC soon, nothing will change at the back. Tough on whichever one of JS or MY is dropped as they both give 100%, but CP has to select the best players available to him.

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Whiteknight added 13:17 - Mar 16 As landerwal said - no brainer!
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Sanguin added 14:39 - Mar 16 Everyone’s saying it’s a no brainer, but I’d like to play devil’s advocate and make the case for why Puel may choose to stick with Stephens. We honestly don’t know whether Caceres would be any better than Jack Stephens or how Caceres and Yoshida work as a pair. All we do know is that Caceres is here on a short term contract and Jack Stephens on a long term one. Given that we have very little left to play for and no real risk of relegation, it may make sense to continue to blood Stephens in defence and reassess our defensive options at the end of the season. I agree that Caceres is undoubtedly a better player than Stephens and I had hoped Caceres would play in the League Cup Final. But we have a bit of history with Redknapp bringing in ‘better players’ on loan and we all know how that ended up.

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SaintBrock added 13:10 - Mar 17 Sorry Sanguin but your judgement is flawed on this issue. Carceras has two 90min appearances under his belt now without breaking down or suffering any reaction to his injury at all and as his quality is assured he must play. Stephen's has been the weak link of our current defensive central partnership and is the one who must step down. Stephen's was thrown in at the deep end and did his best to make a good fist of it but bucket loads of goals have been leaked in during his tenure and his impact has been nothing like as impressive or stand-out as Sam McQueen's for instance to warrant further "take a chance" outings in the first team. He is a cover player at best but now we have a world class payer of the calibre of Carceras in our squad and ready to play so we play him, end if story! It's a results business and Puel is not safe yet.

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