A look at tonights 4th round FA Cup replay against Millwall at St Mary's, when Saints have a great chance of progressing forward in the competition.
Strangely enough perhaps the biggest danger to Saints moving forward in the FA Cup is their own team selection and whilst i concede that this game is a great opportunity to not only give a few of the fringe players a game but blood a few youngsters, we shouldnt lose sight of what a great opportunity we have in this competition for a bit of glory.
The good thing about tonights game is that Saints do have a large squad and as they showed at both Coventry and Millwall, they have enough quality about them to change the side around and still get a result, however we have to be careful that we get the balance right and dont try to over complicate things.
Its great to see a few youngsters given a chance, but tonights game possibly could have more downsides to their developement than potential benefits if we are not careful, yes its good to give them a first team game, but if too many are put in and in the wrong positions then it could harm their developement and give the crowd a false impression of their true talent, many promising Saints youngsters were never really taken to heart by Saints fans because they were thrown in the deep end and didnt play to their potential in situations were even experienced pros were struggling to cope, when you look at how well the likes of Nathan Dyer, Leon Best etc are doing in the prem and how they were treated here, it does ring a few warning bells about settting up youngsters as the next big thing and then throwing them into a side that is below standard.
So Nigel Adkins job is to get tonights team selection just right, get a good balance of not only experienced pros, and in that respect i mean both current first team regulars and more fringe type players, but in blooding a few youngsters.
Adkins has to sent out the right signals to some members of our squad who arent getting a game, the likes of Danny Butterfield and Lee Holmes for example, they have to feel that if they play well they will get a chance at a game, at the moment they are probably very disalussioned in that it seems no matter what they do or how well they play they arent in the managers plans, thats not good for team spirit and its not good should they actually be needed to be called on later in the league campaign for games when experience is neccessary and not youth, I guess the message here is that showing off our rich vein of talent in the youth team is fine, but lets not lose sight of what we are trying to do this season and thats win football games, not be consoling ourselves after a defeat that we have a few good youngsters.
So I want to see Nigel Adkins put out a strong side tonight and strong doesnt neccessarily mean first team, but a well balanced line up to win the game.
So I would like to see something like this
Bialkowski
Butterfield, Fonte, Martin, Reeves.
De Ridder, Chaplow, Hammond, Holmes
Lee, Guly
Subs. Davis, Lambert, Lallana, Cork, Harding, Ward Prowse, Stephens.
I feel that would be a good balance between a strong spine of the team with first team regulars, good width with a few of the fringe players and a good balance on the bench where we have the firepower to come off if needed but also some young talent who we can bring on if we are winning comfortably, I think this is as good a side as we could put out, however I would say that the chances of Harding not playing left back are remote, but if we want to look to the future lets find out if our young left back ben Reeves is up to it rather than playing him out of position.
I do hope Saints take this seriously, if we do and win tonight then we have a great home draw with Bolton that gives us a good chance of a last eight place and then we are only one game away from a semi final at Wembley and that cant be bad.