Ronald Koeman has confirmed that he is fighting on both fronts to bring glory to Southampton Football Club this season.

Ronald Koeman hinted that he will be putting out a strong side against Crystal Palace by saying on the club's official website that he will not be treating the FA Cup any differently than a League game.

However although he will put out a strong side as he did in both games against Ipswich and in the Capital One Cup earlier in the season Im sure the Dutchman will be aware that he will have to mix and match a little to keep some players fresh whilst resting others.

Some clubs have prioritised the league over the cup for the past decade or so but Koeman confirmed that this is not the case with him.

“My focus is for every game — it’s not about the Premier League or the League Cup or the FA Cup,” he told Southampton’s official YouTube channel.

“We won’t [make] a lot of changes, and we can’t do that because we don’t have a lot of players.”

“At the moment, we have 17 or 18 players [available] and, of them, five or six are Under-21s,” confirmed the manager.

“They (Saints’ injured trio) are doing well, but they need time. When they got the injuries we said it’d be about three or four weeks, so that means there’s another two weeks from now until they’ll normally be back to play.

“But it’s great to have young players and to give them the opportunity to play in the first team because that’s a great feeling when the team is doing well.

“Of course, we’d like to have all of our players available and maybe we will in two weeks’ time, but not for this Saturday. We won at Ipswich and Newcastle without those players, so we can beat Crystal Palace as well.”

So Koeman will play a strong team against the Eagles, but will that be the case for Palace who are still in relegation danger and sit only four points above the drop zone, the irony in the Premier league is that it is the lower teams who cannot afford to look to the cup for respite, in times gone by a team in Palace's position might have looked to the FA Cup to kick start the season, but now they cant take that risk, Saints miss out on the Champions League and they lose big money, but it is still not as fiancially crippling as relegation.

Indeed Man Utd apart all of Saints rivals for a top four spot will play far more games than us in princible, but that won't be the same for Palace who will be looking to make sure they are still a Premier club at the end of the season.

Read more at http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/article/20150122-ronald-koeman-pre-crystal-palace

Photo: Action Images

TimSaint added 11:09 - Jan 23 The fans have placed equal emphasis on the league and cup as well, with yet another sell out at St Marys. Yes the prices have been set to encourage fans and perhaps families, but we are certainly voting with our feet !!! :-)
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