Paulo Gazzaniga looks likely to face Aston Villa at home on Wednesday evening in the third coincidence for him this week.
With Artur Boruc being injured for six weeks and Kelvin Davis also carrying a knock of undetermined severity it looks likely that Paulo Gazzaniga will start against Aston Villa at St Mary's on Wednesday eveing in the third coincidence for him this week.
The first coincidence was that his appearance as a second half substitute at Stamford Bridge came exactly a year to the day to his last appearance for the club, that being in a 1-0 defeat up at Liverpool.
The second coincidence is that when Saints supporters turned over their Saints calendars yesterday morning, who should be one of the two featured players for December but Gazza himself and now he will have the third coincidence in that his Premier League debut for Saints came against Aston Villa at home last season and Saints fans will coincidentally enough be hoping for a repeat of that 4-1 drubbing of the Midland's club.
But before Gazza takes his place in the line up on Wednesday, Saints supporters need to be aware of just what they need to do to help the young keeper and at the same time help the team, presuambly every Saints fan going to the game wants the same thing, ie a Saints win, therefore getting on Gazzaniga's back will not help our cause, if he makes an error or looks shaky then the thing to do is show support, not barrack him or greet every cross caught or shot stopped with an ironic cheer.
Of course there will be those who will cite the old chestnut of "Im entitled to my opinion" yes of course they are, but we are Saints supporters not Saints opinioners, "support" the players and have your opinion afterwards.
But there are many reasons why we should back Gazza, firstly is that he is a decent goalkeeper who was thrown to the wolves last season, when he made his debut the team had conceded 14 goals in only 4 games and he was plunged into a relegation six pointer against Villa and played a big part in the win, after that he put in some decent performances, indeed in his 9 games played, Saints won 3, drew 3 and lost 3 for a total of 12 points, now that is a decent ratio of points per game, 1.33 as opposed to the seasons average of 1.07.
His 14 goals conceded isnt brilliant, but it has to be put into context, it was 1.55 goals per game and over the season we let in 60 which is 1.58 per game, given that his run started with us at rock bottom and came at a desperate time for Saints, Gazzaniga who bluntly didnt have the experience for the situation he found himself in did not let the side down.
But some already are starting to condemn him before he has pulled on the gloves on Wednesday, last season they made no exceptions for the fact he was thrown in at the deep end, they only remember his errors and in some cases the perceived errors, not the good work he did in matches and because of that they are sharpening their knives in readiness for him to drop his first cross or not look convincing in stopping a shot, to them i say why bother going on Wednesday you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem, if you arent going to support our players, all of our players then why bother going, the place to slag them off is the pub or on internet message boards, not in an important game of football where the points are vital to what we are trying to achieve at a club.
This seems to be a worrying trend at Saints in the past few years, Guly, Danny Fox, even Artur Boruc a year ago all came in for horrendous abuse from their own so called supporters, they weren't the only ones playing badly, but they were the only ones to be subjected to disgusting abuse whilst they were actually trying to help the team earn points.
So now is the time to take a long hard look at ourselves and realise that barrracking players does no good for the team, if Paulo Gazzaniga is selected we should support him and give him the chance to show what he can do, in some respects their is a parrallel to be drawn with Artur Boruc, his first games for the club ended in controversy with supporters abusing him in his first home game, yet he was strong enough to come back and show that he wa sup to the job and win over most of those critics.
Now Paulo Gazzaniga has returned to action exactly a year since his first performance, he is a year older and has more experience and coaching under his belt, he is now better equipped to deal with the situation as he showed at Stamford Bridge where he could not be faulted for the two goals he conceded and marshalled a defence that was falling to bits in front of him.
Last season Paulo Gazzaniga played a big part in kick starting Saints season and ultimately helping us to enough points to avoid relegation therefore allowing us to be in the Premier this season and make the start we have done, we have never really thanked him for that, perhaps Wednesday night would be as good a time as any !