Saints fans will arrive at St Mary's this evening wondering what sort of team will Mauricio Pellegrino will put out after Sunday's changes and lack of substitutions till late on.
If Mauricio Pellegrino was prioritising tonight's game against Leicester when he picked his team to take on Arsenal on Sunday, he seems to have a strange set of perspectives.
The big surprise was that neither of our big summer signings played any part in the game, the manager not including either Wesly Hoedt or Mario Lemina in the starting line up was a shock, but the fact that neither, especially Lemina played any part in the game was nothing short of poor management as the side was dead on its feet in the final 20 minutes and ultimately Lemina playing no part could be considered the biggest single factor as to why we did not hang on for a win.
The team selection on Sunday seemed to suggest that there is an issue in the Saints camp, after all if you asked any Saints fan who the team should have included, both before and after the game, then 99.9% would all have mentioned Mario Lemina's name.
After a month out Lemina returned off the bench against Everton and seemed to suffer no reactions to his injured ankle, he followed that up with a full game at Manchester City where he looked his usual self, if that tired him a little you could understand why he was again on the bench for the trip to Bournemouth, but only 16 minutes off the bench there, meant that he should have been fit and raring to go against the Gunners.
But the sight of Lemina warming up during the second half was heartening, but despite seemingly endless jogs up the touchline he was not brought onto the pitch and that ultimately cost us big time.
Likewise Hoedt, he is young and fit and would be one of the first players in the squad ready and able to managed three games in six days, but no, he was dropped again for Yoshida, I have nothing against the Japanese central defender despite what some would say apart from the fact that Hoedt is a better player and that is why I found the team selection strange, just as Van Dijk and Hoedt seemed to beforming a decent partnership it was ripped apart. Apart from this Hoedt would appear to have been a better fit against the Gunners in that he can carry a ball and pass it and as we found, that was attributes we could have well done with to relieve pressue albeit temporarily.
That could also be attributed to our failure to hang on the win, look at the Arsenal goal and how Giroud peels off, loses his man and has a free header, I leave it to you do decide who was marking him.
Likewise the inclusion of Jack Stephens, Stephens had a great game, but his selection was completely out of the blue, he had not played a single minute of first team football in 3 months, Jeremy Pied had played well at Bournemouth, this is not a dig at Stephens who as i state played very well, but I can't fathom the managers decision given that the player had been ignored for so long a period, it was almost as if he did it to keep the player happy rather than any other reason.
Football is a tough game at Premier League level,there is no room for drops in standards even for brief moents they get punished.
So whilst I could see what Pellegrino was doing to a degree against the Gunners, his failure to make changes in the final 20 minutes of this game cost us dearly and could continue to do so this evening.
Charlie Austin played all but the last 4 minutes, he was shattered, will he be 100% recovered for tonight, given his injury track record it is a well known fact that his appearances have to be managed, it is not just the ability to be able to play a full 90 minutes, but with Charlie the damage playing him too much can do to his body, he has to be used sparingly at times, on Sunday he had done his job, asking him to chase down the Arsenal defence in the final 20 minutes was poor management, especially when our main form of attack is a breakaway and with all due respect, no one would put much money on Charlie in a sprint from the half way line.
So the worrying thing on Sunday was that Pellegrino appeared to have forgotten a few of the things that he had learned in the previous weeks, he regressed to the first third of the season where his tactics and team selections were not working.
The big question though is whether the manager is trying to win a power battle in the dressing room, the three highest transfer fee's for the club all started the game on the bench on Sunday, is there an issue between them and the manager ?
Certainly Boufal's gestures when he scored his wonder goal against West Brom indicated that he was unhappy, although since then he has figured more, but whispers are that both Lemina and Hoedt have had differences with Pellegrino and perhaps there benching on Sunday was the manager wielding his power.
It would be easy to draw these conclusions, Hoedt cannot be happy with the way he has been in and out of the team of late, he can consider himself to be one of our better performers when he has played and the slip against Bournemouth was his only error of this kind so far, if I was him I would be unhappy.
Likwise Lemina, before his injury he was in line for the player of the year award, his limited time since his return showed just as good form and did not suggest any injury, yet he played no part on Sunday in a game where we were getting overun in midfield.
Pellegrino was not pro active at any point and to be blunt he was not even reactive, Arsene Wenger made several key changes, taking off a defender for an attacker and the final one rescued a point for him, we did not react to any of them, our first change was like for like Boufal on for Redmond, by this stage we were under the cosh and camped on our own penalty box.
The game was crying out for Lemina or even Steven Davis, but there was no sign of the former and ironically only a sign of the latter as he waited to come on and had a grandstand view of the Arsenal equaliser from the technical area.
I would say there wasn't a Saints supporter in the ground who could not see what our problem was and who did not know what we should have done, certainly the pundits knew, so why didn't Mauricio Pellegrino make the required changes when they were needed.
He is a respected footballing brain, surely he could see, there must have been a reason that we the fans don't know about, injury would be the first and as mentioned there has been no suggestion of that so it must be something else.
Perhaps Mauricio Pellegrino is right in what he is doing if there are divisions in the dressing room, however his job is still to get results and having made a point and benched players, he should have then used them to achieve what his job is and that is win a game of football.
Perhaps I have read this wrongly, perhaps years of "issues" at Saints have clouded my judgement, perhaps it is ust me who thinks that Wesley Hoedt and Mario Lemina are the best players for their position at this football club, whatever it is, three days later I just can't put my finger on what happened on Sunday both with the team selection and the substitutions or lack of them.
Hopefully tonight we do not pay the price with a tired team out there especially in key positions where the likes of Charlie Austin are indispensable at the moment.