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Southampton at West Ham United The Preview

It was a mixed bag of results in the Premier League on Saturday froma Saints perspective, but they still have the chance to pull off the bottom with a win over the Hammers but it is going to be a tough ask.

Saints could be out of the bottom three this weekend, but it is highly unlikely unless the Hammers are hammered at the London stadium followed by Everton getting a pasting of their own against hopefully a revitalised Spurs on Monday night.

But truth is we have to start getting a winning run together and quickly or face being cast adrift at the bottom.

The injury issues in central defence are well documented, but we still have a squad good enough to cope, but they need to find the form they showed at Chelsea and the spirit and never say die attitude they displayed against Spurs in the last game.

We are a different proposition than we were under Nathan Jones and have become hard to beat under Ruben Selles, but now we have to turn some good draws into wins.

The Hammers go into this game in worse form than us, their last 6 games have seen 3 draws, just 1 win and 2 defeats for 6 points whereas we have won 2, drawn 2 and also lost just 2, they are a side that don't score many, so far just 24, only a single goal more than we have notched, but they concede much less than us with just 34 conceded compared to our 46.

That total is only bettered by 5 other teams in the Premier League and they are a force to be reckoned with defensively.

Our job is simple, keep it tight as we did at Chelsea and take our chances when they come, if we can do that we can turn the atmosphere toxic at the London Stadium and that is the key to this game.

This may sound familiar, I have said it before a few years ago, back then it went pear shaped quite quicky and we were dead and buried by half time, we cannot afford to do that this time.

It is a time for a few players to step up to the plate, utilise the pace of the likes of Sulemana & Charley Alcatraz and I have a feeling that this might be the game that Tall Paul plays a part.

It's going to be tense it is going to be nervous, but if we go down it won't be because of this game, but the stupid points dropped under Nathan Jones to the likes of Wolves, Forest & Fulham, games that we took nothing from and if we had taken just 3 points as we should have done, we would be out of the bottom 3 already.

Time for everyone to be kicking in the same direction tomorrow, players and fans alike.

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