Saints V Bournemouth The Preview Saturday, 1st Apr 2017 09:32 Saints take on local rivals Bournemouth as they attempt to stretch their two month unbeaten record at St Mary's. It is two months since Saints ast played a home game at St Mary's, to put that in perspective in the summer of 2015 the gap between our last home game of the 2014/15 season and the opening competitive game of 2015/16 when we took on Vitesse Arnhem at St Mary's was only two weeks longer. This is an absurd state of affairs and we now face squeezing our last 10 games into the final six weeks of the season. But this is the first game of a crucial week, we really need to get maximum points from the next two home games starting with Bournemouth today and Palace on Tuesday, get that and we will be well on the way to our fourth consecutive top ten finish. The problem is that we will have to do it without perhaps our two most influential players, Virgil Van Dijk who looks set to miss the rest of the season and Manolo Gabbiadini who at a push might make the West Brom game in a week's time but is more likely to return for the visit of Manchester City to St Mary's in a fortnight. At the back we are likely to see the debut of Martin Caceres and hopefully this will strengthen the defence, no one can fault the commitment of Yoshida and Stephens but the truth is that as a pairing they are not good enough, in the five full Premier League games they have played together they have kept only one clean sheet and conceded ten goals in the other four games. We need to shore up the back as we cannot hope to outscore the opposition in every game. Up front the loss of Manolo Gabbiadini is big but it is not terminal, Saints play in a different way these days than they did before Xmas so hopefully Shane Long or even Jay Rodriguez can slot in and do a job. Both are prove goalscorers. Bournemouth are not great travellers, they can play in only one way and whlst their swashbuckling style has to be applauded, it can often go one of two ways and it mainly goes in the way of a defeat with 9 of their 14 games having that result with 3 draws and only 2 wins, only 16 goals for and 31 against. The goals against tally is the 3rd worst in the division and tells us that this is a game that if we break them down and keep it tight at the back we can win just as we did at their place in December. They usually start games with a flourish and look to get early goals, but it is a high pressing game that they struggle to keep up as was shown in December when they scored early but faded as the game went on. Saints task therefore is clear, give them nothing early doors and take the game too them on the break, draw them out and then use the pace of Redmond and Long and the guile of Tadic to break them down. Three points today will set us up nicely for this trio of games that will define whether we spent the rest of the season hanging on for a top ten place or challenge West Brom for 8th. It is testimony to the squad Saints have built up that even without Van Dijk and Gabbiadini we are still far stronger as a squad than we were three years ago and still up there in the top ten, it bodes well for next season. The only question remaining for today is whether Claude Puel has learn't his lesson from the first half of the season, the lesson that he has to take on board is tht you have to get wins under your belt first and foremost before rotating, yes he will have to rest players during this week, but he should not try and second guess games, play your strongest team today and get the three points done and dusted, then you can consider resting players.
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