x

Saints Need To Beat A Big Six Club

Under Ronald Koeman Saints would regularly shock the so called Big Six sides, but since his departure they have failed to register a single win over one of these sides in the Premier League.

The past two seasons have not been great, no one would argue against that, they have been ones of turmoil even though in the first a 8th finish in the Premier League and a League Cup final lost in the final minute showed that the season was not as bad statistically as it was sometimes on the pitch.

But in those two seasons we have failed to beat a Big six side and that is a sad statistic.

Out of the 25 Premier League games played against the Big Six we have lost 19 and drawn only 6 up to and including the defeat to Liverpool a couple of weeks ago.

Ironically we have fared better in the cups in that time, winning at Liverpool and Arsenal in the League cup as well as beating Liverpool at home, but in the League it's a different story altogether.

We have come close, we almost beat Arsenal last December with a late Olivier Giroud header, highlighting our lapses in concentration and perhaps being a real turning point, if we had held on and won that game perhaps that might have provided the spark to gain confidence and change the course of the season, but instead it saw only a big decline.

This pattern has to change, yes football in the Premier League has moved on even in the two years since Koeman left, more and more money has poured in and most of it isn't really helping the other 14 clubs in the Premier league who merely see increased TV money revenue pushing up prices for mediocre players.

So on Sunday against Chelsea we really could do with beating them for a number of reasons.

Firstly we could obviously do with the points, secondly we need to show our own supporters not only that we can still beat the big six but we can beat anyone, we need to start to restore the confidence not only in the players but the supporters and this would be a good way to do it.

We need to put in a performance even if we ultimately lose.

Sadly those outside the Big Six are now becoming canon fodder, victories against them by the rest of us minnions are becoming rarer and rarer unless one of them is in meltdown as Manchester United seem to be at the moment.

Saints need to puta smile back on the face of their fans, Ronald Koeman managed a win against all of them in his final season in charge and that sparked our season into life with 5 of those wins coming in the second half of the season after Arsenal were destroyed at St Mary's on Boxing Day.

These wins turned what could have been an average season into a great one and we now need to try and find the same inner strength that Ronald Koeman found in his players.

What to read next: