Dan looks at just how important beating West Bromwich Albion is for Saints if they are to keep in the top half of the table.

After Wednesday night’s dismal result, Saints need to bounce back from their 1-4 home defeat to Tottenham as another festive Premier League clash will soon be upon them when the host West Bromwich Albion.

West Brom have been one of the Premier League’s surprise packages this season as they were backed as relegation candidates at the beginning of the season but they’ve actually kept a consistent place in the top half of the table and have reached as high a place as 7th! Now they sit below Saints in the table but a good result for them on Saturday would see them go above us.

With a team of players with a good height advantage, they’re threatening at set pieces, scoring plenty of headers, and have the new and improved talent of Solomon Rondon leading their attack.

Rondon has been a real worry for teams in the Premier League this season as the Venezuelan striker has changed his game since last season and has improved heavily. A battle between him and Virgil van Dijk should prove to be entertaining.

I’ve said this on twitter (dhargravessfc if you want to follow me), we have to forget the Spurs result as soon as possible, like we forgot the Crystal Palace result because if we dwell on it too much then our form and consistency will drop.

My main point in this rant is that we have three very important games coming up in January:

Norwich away in the FA Cup 3rd Round, Liverpool at home in the semi-final of the EFL Cup and Liverpool away in the semi-final of the EFL Cup. Us fans said at the beginning of the season that we want silverware and that the league won’t be as much a priority because of its high quality and difficulty this year with the top six pretty much already decided.

A dip in form could mean that we won’t be at the level we should be for these games when they are the most important to our season. We can beat Liverpool, we should beat Norwich but we aren’t going to get the results we want if we don’t start finding consistency and that needs to start with three points against West Brom.

Prediction: It will be tough but I think our home advantage should give us the edge. I’m expecting a close game so I’ll call a 2-1 win for the Saints but really I would like to start seeing us win comfortably by two or three goals, not a scrappy win by just the one goal.

Photo: Action Images

ItchenNorth added 10:34 - Dec 31 Fancy Saints for the win today. Nothing to spectacular though as this may take the boards eye off the need for strengthening up top in January !
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