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Saints V West Ham United The Preview

This is a game that needs every Saints supporter to rally round the team and create an atmosphere that is conducive to us winning football games.

The first thing that is needed tomorrow is for Saints fans to rally around the flag, normally this should be a happy period for football supporters of a club in a cup final, the flags should be out, the Wembley scarves and smiles on everyones faces.

Yet that is not the case, too many people have got something to moan about and whilst it is understandable why they are feeling a little peeved, the fact is that moaning is not going to change anything.

So we have to go with what we have got, we have won games of football in the Premier League in the last few years with worse defences than the one we are putting out now, so Armageddon is not in sight just yet.

Claude Puel though has to show the reasons why we employed him, there is no excuse now for rotation, we have only got 3 games to play in the next month, it is all about putting out our best side and getting it playing with momentum, with confidence and with a swagger.

If we can get the first two sorted then the third will follow.

Yes we are weak in the centre of defence but in all other positions we have options and quality.

So the job of Puel is to try and cut out the lapses in concentration that blighted us again at Swansea.

One of those options might be to play Ryan Bertrand in the centre of defence, I am sorry but for me the Yoshida and Stephens partnership is not good enough, the Japanese Internationals is a decent stop gap but isnot consistent enough to play too many games without an arror, he is also not a leader of men and needs someone alongside him to take charge and marshall him.

Jack Stephens needs someone to do just that himself and it is not Yoshida.

Therefore would like to see Bertrand add pace, experience and leadership in the centre of the defence, if we do that and have Yoshida alongside him with Soares and McQueen as full backs then that is not the worst side in the Premier League.

After all we kept Leicester quiet after van Dijk went off, so our defence is not all that bad, but some of our fans conveniently forget that.,

We then need to keep it solid in front of them Romeu, Clasie and Davis, then it is about attack.

We now have that forward that so many wanted, we have attacking options we now have to use them, Shane Long is on fire, use him and keep him scoring, start Redmond and Boufal on either side of him and suddenly we have a trio that can create and score goals.

I think that Gabbiadini should start on the bench and then come on in the second half with Dusan Tadic also offering options with Josh Sims.

No that is not a bad side it has quality all it needs is the true 12th man, the crowd to get behind them.

I don't care about what went on in the Europa League or the transfer window or whose fault it is, I just care about what comes next, it is always about what comes next, three straight wins now and things will change drastically.

So are you a supporter or merely a fan, look it up !!!!!!!!

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