Saints At Hull City The Preview Friday, 31st Oct 2014 11:10 Saints travel to Humberside looking to repeat last season's victory over Hull City Tigers or whatever their Chairman is trying to call them this week. Saints go to Hull City in confident mood given that since drawing with West Brom in the second game of the season they have won 8 out of 9 of the games they have played, I will say that again, "8 out of the 9 games played", that total includes the 3 Capital One Cup wins, but 5 wins out of the 6 Premier league games played is a tremendous record and a testament to the work Ronald Koeman has done since becoming manager. Now we travel to Hull City for what will be a tough game with the Tigers having made a steady start to their season sitting 10th with 11 points, like Saints they themselves have only lost twice in their nine games but conversely they have only won two games, meaning that they are pretty much the draw specialists of the division, only Sunderland and Arsenal matching their five games tied. That record is reflected in their goals for and against column with exactly the same conceded as scored, the only Premier team to boast that record. This gives a clue as to where their strengths lie and given that 4 of those 13 goals let in were against Man City just over a month ago, they are a team who keeps it tight at the back and build from there. So this like the Stoke game is going to be a toughie for Saints, Hull will not give us a chance to get in behind them, the main battle will be in the midfield and therefore I would expect Koeman to put out a similar midfield to the one he played midweek up at Stoke,using the combative talents of Wanyama rather than the skills of Cork. But I do expect a couple of changes in the side from the Cup win, Plastic Bertrand will return to the back four as will Toby Aldermoor and this should, with respect to both Florin Gardos and Matt Targett who put in solid displays midweek, give us a better balance at the back. Other than that I expect Shane Long to keep his place in the side, his display midweek deserves it, but with Sadio Mane suffering an ankle injury that may or may not allow him to travel, I would think that Ronald Koeman will not rsk him even if he does pass muster. The Dutchman will know that Long returning to his own club and with the benefit of scoring his first goal on Wednesday will be raring to go and will perhaps be a key man, this is a measure of where the Saints squad is at the moment, we can lose a player of the quality of Mane out of the side and have another of the proven Premier experience of Long to step into his shoes, it is this that has enabled us to have our fine start to the season rather than dropping points as we did last year because we had a starting XI and not much more than that. So one key man for me will be Shane Long for those reasons, another will of course be Dusan Tadic and i think he will be the difference between the two sides, if anyone can open up Tadic then it will be him and if he can get the balls into Pelle and indeed Long that is what will change the game our way. It will be a gritty game as it usually is up there and we will need to dig in at times as we had to against Stoke, the form book says that we should win it, but it also says that Hull are likely to draw it, given that we are due a draw my gut instinct is telling me that the laws of probablility are that this game looks a likely candidate, although Saints form is such that these days you never discount a Saints victory. This is the first of three key games where we have the chance to really get some points on the board and go into a difficult run up to Christmas in fine form.
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