Saints are in Israel for their longest ever trip for a competitive match, can they make it a victorious journey.

Claude Puel is taking a big gamble in leaving a quartet of his players back in England for the visit to Israel, Charlie Austin, Ryan Bertrand, Steven Davis and José Fonte have all been left behind as Puel looks to manage his squad with a trip to Leicester looming on Sunday.

Some Saints supporters would say this is madness, but the French manager sees it differently and believes that he needs to look at the abilities of certain players to be able to play two games in so short a period sand use them sparingly.

Certainly there is method in his madness, but there will be a backlash if Saints don't at least take a point from the long trip down to Be'er Sheba.

Puel seems confident though that his squad is big enough in quality to be able to cope without these key players, although in the case of Charlie Austin it will leave us very short on attacking options.

But it is a game that Saints can and should get something out of, with due respect to Be'er Sheva they are probably not a team who would fare well in the Premier League, the best yardstick we have in this respect is that Celtic knocked them out of the Champions League, with a 5-2 win in Scotland, although they went down 2-0 in Israel to make it a close tie.

This being the case Saints should be confident of a result although given Be'er Sheba's impressive record since they moved to their new stadium draw might be as good as we can get.

But overall Saints fans need to have faith in Claude Puel to get things right most of the time, of course there will always be hiccups, but we have to remember that football is always moving forward and we have to move with the times, we are used to playing our best side ll of the time, but that is not the European way where it is more squad based.

Exciting times for Saints lets enjoy them.

Photo: Action Images

Fordy added 10:22 - Sep 29 Think it makes sense to leave Austin behind. We will probably have to soak up a lot of pressure over there and it is probably more suited to Long trying to hit them on the break.A draw would be a good result for us tonight so I think it is a case of trying to keep things very tight rather than trying to create too many chances.
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Jesus_02 added 10:46 - Sep 29 A draw would be a great result, they beat Milan away after all and have good experience of European football. If we can win our home games we can win the group
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perazi added 11:05 - Sep 29 A great occasion for the Club and supporters - a far flung contest in a country of wildly different culture. Starting lineup will be fascinating; let's hope for a positive result and well done the Manager so far...I doubted both his system and the strength of the squad but so far his nous, temperament and tactical decisions bode well.
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the_saint added 12:26 - Sep 29 Think a very wise move by claud protecting Austin and Ryan with their injury record and fonte and Davis no Spring chickens long way to travel and play also give youngsters a chance to stake a claim for first team esp hesketh well done puel (really starting to like this guy) and coyr
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darthvader added 12:52 - Sep 29 The pace of long Redmond and Tadic we can counter attack in numbers
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ItchenNorth added 12:59 - Sep 29 The league has to be priority for Saints, so a wise move by Puel to leave a few key players behind this time round. The Europa League group stages is in many ways similar to that of the early rounds of the EFL Cup. The quality is not that great so; play a few of the fringe players, trust in the assembled squad and build it up gradually throughout the competition.
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davepid added 13:30 - Sep 29 A long journey to Israel but, seven years today exactly , we were beaten by Bristol Rovers and remained bottom of league 1. Morgan, lalanna, Lambert and Davis all played in that game . Five managers and two chairmen later we march on. COYR.
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