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Southampton V Manchester City The Preview

The arrival of Manchester City at St Mary's highlights everything that is wrong with the Premier League and how if things are not sorted out soon , it will become a League for the armchair fan and tourist.

I cannot see much hope in the game against Manchester City this evening on two counts, firstly for Saints chances of getting even a point out of the game and secondly for the game in England in general.

In the respect of the latter the Premier League is becoming more polarised virtually by the week, with the have nots not just content with spending big, but also blatantly ignoring the rules that apply to clubs that they breach without a single thought.

This leaves me losing interest in the Premier League and the situation where clubs like Saints are merely cannon fodder in games such as these and almost feel grateful for a defeat by 4 goals.

That is the situation going into this game, most Saints fans will go to St Mary's just hoping that this is merely a defeat and not a rout, we have to sit back and hope our rivals down the bottom don't gain ground on us.

This is a situation that is played out amongst the fans of 13 other clubs in the Premier League and the greed of the so called big 7 is killing the game in England.

In the meantime we have to take on Manchester City without our leading scorer and also arguably our two best central defenders in Mohammed Salisu & Armel Bella Kotchap.

Kotchap looks unlikely to play with his shoulder injury whilst Salisu strangely has an injury, but no one seems to be saying what it is.

That leaves Ruben Selles having to mend and make do in the back four.

Personally I would play a back line of Maitland-Niles at right back, Bednarek & Caleta-Car in the centre and Walker Peters on the left.

We need pace and we haven't go it in the centre so we need to have it on the flanks and I feel Maitland-Niles has more of it than Romain Perraud.

After that we have to dig in and defend and just pray that sitting back suits us better than it does when teams do that to us.

We will be chasing shadows and although some Saints fans might take a bizarre pleasure in watching City's high earners running rings around us and will appreciate the football, I won't be one of them.

Perhaps these will be one of those great days at St Mary's that we sometimes have, when a big club comes and is humbled, but the truth is that is happening less and less in the Premier League, City come knowing the Premier League title is slipping away from them, they cannot afford anymore slip ups.

There is no point in this game getting toxic in the stands, we are putting out the bare bones in defence we are facing a side that is better than us in all respects, indeed City could probably put out a second XI who could beat us comfortably, that is why football is dying for those who actually go to watch their clubs and the game is now all about money and that means TV rights sold across the World.

Fingers crossed for this evening, that is about all we can do, yes we beat City in the Carabao Cup, but they say lighting doesn't strike twice.

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