Southampton At Wolverhampton Wanderers The Preview Friday, 8th Nov 2024 09:10 For the second week running there have been no bones made about things, even more so than last week's game against Everton, this game is a six pointer as the two bottom teams in the Premier League meet up. The big question for Saints fans is whether this is a "Must Win" or Mustn't Lose" game for their team, on one hand this is a very winnable game, but on the other perhaps the first priority is to make sure that it is Wolves and not us who sit bottom of the Premier League as we go into the International break and that means taking at least a point. In terms of what side Russell Martin will put out, I would not expect many changes from last week.
The cynics will say that as long as he is fit, all Russell Martin sides are Jack Stephens plus 10 others and although I think this will be the case on Saturday at Molyneaux, there was a sign against Everton that Martin is flexible. I foresee only 2 possible changes to the side that started against Everton, the first is whether Adam Lallana is fit enough to start, against the Toffee's he was the outstanding player for Saints and showed just what his experience can bring to the team, but at half time he was withdrawn feeling a groin strain. So is he fit to start this week and if so should we start him or hold him back for the second half, my feeling is that Joe Aribo will start and that Lallana will be held in reserve, I would of course prefer him to start, but with questions around his ability to get past half time, I think Aribo will replace him and I am not too concerned about this, I think the ex Rangers man has done a decent enough job this season and that he is offers cover to enable Mateus Fernandes to get forward more.
The only other change I can see other than this is whether the manager drops Jack Stephens and it is a brave man who puts his money on this happening. But he did take Captain Jack off for the last 10 minutes of the Everton game bringing on Yuri Sugawara and that paid dividends as the Japanese right back surged forward to create the goal for Adam Armstrong, this is something that you do not get from Stephens and in his short time here Sugawara has shown his attacking abilities, both in getting forward and creating chances, but also in scoring them with a well taken consolation goal at Brentford. Going forward, most Saints fans would think that the team is better with both Sugawara & KWP as the wide men, but we all know that the manager doesn't think like that, however against Everton he did show that he does have some flexibility, there was a change in how we applied the possession football game and also as mentioned the tactical change in replacing Stephens with Sugawara helped change the game and perhaps our season.
But I think Martin will be cautious in this game and go for the same side as last week with only the potential switch of Lallana for Aribo, even if that means Tyler Dibling starts on the bench for the second week running, Dibling is indeed a talent and there will be a clamour for his starting every game, but he is only young, he has to be used with some sort of management, otherwise he will burn himself out and also be susceptible to injury, I think Dibling can be a key man in this game, if we can keep things tight first half and then press them in the second. The hope is that after last week's win, that we can go into this game with confidence, we have got past the Psychological barrier of getting that first win and we have finally fine tuned the possession football game (hopefully !) whilst the likes of Wolves and Ipswich are where they are because they have done the same things and will carry on having to do so, we have the advantage that our downfall was mainly down to the draconian application of the possession football tactics, rather than our players abilities. A look back at the first 9 games showed continual errors due to passing around at the back too much, something had to change and although he is not out of the woods yet in terms of job security, Russell Martin did finally show some flexibility and that could augur well.
So back to the opening question, is this Must Win or Mustn't Lose ? The answer is both, we must firstly keep things tight and not give Wolves a chance to stir up the home crowd and then we can start to impose ourselves on the game. Wolves record at home is not great, they lost their opening 4 fixtures and drew their 5th last week's 2-2 draw against Crystal Palace, their supporters will point to the fact that 4 of those games were against Chelsea who won 6-2, Newcastle who won 2-1 and then Liverpool and Manchester City who both won by the same score. They will use that to claim that their position is false and when they get to play the likes of Southampton that things will change, but that didn't happen against a Palace side who had lost 3 of their games on the road ahead of their trip to Molyneux.
In those games Wolves played a possession game along the back line that verged on suicidal, especially in the Liverpool game where only poor finishing by the visitors saved them a drubbing, but there were also lessons to be learned up the other end, Liverpool themselves were awful at the back themselves and could have paid a price but for Wolves own finishing. The message to Russell Martin is therefore clear, don't give away goals and create our own chances, football after all is a simple game, that is unless you choose to make it complicated and that has been our managers problem this season. All Photos Via Reuters Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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