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Saints V Brentford The Preview

Saints are looking to get back to winning ways in front of a packed stadium of empty seats when they take on Brentford this evening at St Mary's, can they have another good League Cup run, in what is our best chance of glory this season.

Ralph hasenhuttl has already intimated that after a pre season interrupted by an International break just before it kicked off that he will be looking to play a strong side and progress in the competition.

This is music to the ears of Saints supporters who are hoping for another good cup run this season perhaps matching reaching the final as we did 4 seasons ago.

There are likely to be a few tweaks to the side that played at palace on Saturday, I expect Fraser Forster to be given a run out in goal and I would not be surprised to see Moussa Djenepo start and Michael Obafemi to feature as well.

At the back I would think Jannik Vestergaard might be given a run out, with Ralph still seemingly unsure who his best 2 out of 3 is in the centre of defence.

Brentford of course came very close to being a Premier League club themselves last season, they were in the driving seat at the end but blew up and had to make do with the play off's losing the final to West London rivals Fulham.

This season they might not be the force they were, top scorer last season Ollie Watkins has already departed to Aston Villa for £28 million and his 25 League goals will be hard to replace, an opening day defeat at Birmingham saw them fail to score.

So Saints will go into this game with confidence and manager Ralph Hasenhuttl is looking to get his squad back up to speed, with only one friendly in the short break between the end of last season and the beginning of this, the team looked a little disjointed at Palace and the manager will be looking for them to shake off the cobwebs.

If Saints win they will face the winners of West Brom or Harrogate, so the incentive is there to do well in this competition.

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