Saints take on Athletico Bilbao in their final pre season friendly before the start of the Premier League season six days later, read what Dan thinks of the game ahead here.
On Sunday Saints will play La Liga side, Athletic Club Bilbao in their final game of pre-season before the Premier League kicks off at home to Watford next Saturday.
Bilbao are likely to be the biggest test of Southampton’s pre-season fixtures as they’re the only fellow competitors of this season’s Europa League and have a high-quality squad.
Just like Saints, they qualified straight through to the competition’s group stage, finishing one place higher of fifth than Southampton in Spain’s top-flight.
The last time Southampton faced Bilbao was in 2010 when the two competed in the Markus Liebherr Cup, a pre-season tournament at St.Mary’s in honour of the great man that Bilbao won.
There are definitely similarities between the two clubs, both have red and white stripes on their home shirts, both are based in port cities and they both also pride themselves on bringing through young talent instead of spending big money on players in the transfer market.
My Prediction: I enjoyed the match against Espanyol on Wednesday and thought we played well and were unlucky to not win the match. Hopefully the team will have improved in training on that performance on Wednesday evening and us fans will get an idea towards what the starting line-up will look like against Watford. I think we can finish pre-season unbeaten but Bilbao are a very good side so I think the score will be 2-2.
Key Player: For me Pierre Højbjerg impressed lots when he played in the second half against Espanyol but needs to prove that he can be Wanyama’s replacement. Let’s be honest he’s the most exciting player that we’ve bought so far, he’s got the biggest price tag and has come from a huge club. Pierre has the opportunity to be our key player this season but needs to cement a frequent place in the starting eleven by impressing the manager.