Saints take on the Cherries and Alan Pardew finds himself with a dilemma.

On Saturday it could be said that Saints were injury ravaged, Rickie Lambert was not fit to play in any capacity, Adam Lallana could only manage a little cameo off the bench and both Schneiderlin and Puncheon were touch and go.

So what does the Saints manager do for the visit of AFC Bournemouth, under normal circumstances he would be tempted to rest perhaps all of the four, but with the opening day being somewhat of a damp squid he will now have to consider giving them more of a role than he would have quite liked to risk.

Personally I would say that the League has to be the priority, I would assess the fitness of all four and then consider other options, with a long season ahead Pardew has to look at two important points, firstly he cannot risk further injury, but secondly and more importantly he has to start finding out how good his back up players are and what he can expect from them when he needs to call on them.

This cup tie is the ideal situation to do just that, I would use the opportunity to bring in Danny Seabourne in place of Jaidi, also putting Ryan Dickson in to his proper position at left back, in midfield I would use both Holmes and Mills out wide and bring in Wotton in the centre depending on how near to fitness Schneiderlin actually is.

Up front I would stay with the front two of Connolly & Barnard with the team lining up as follows.

Davis

Butterfield, Seabourne, Fonte, Dickson.

Mills, Wotton, Hammond, Holmes

Connolly, Barnard.

That would of course allow us the luxury of a very strong bench, Bialkowski, Lallana, Schneiderlin, Puncheon, Chamberlain, with perhaps even Lambert and of course a second central defender, either Jaidi or Martin.

Saints fans have faith in Alan Pardew, so now is the time he has to show them that Saturday was a blip and that he can make the right selections at the right times, a defeat to Bournemouth wont be pleasant, but as mentioned the more important business is the league, Pardew cannot afford to get off to a bad start as he did last year, he has to use the squad to the full extent and that means not playing key players through injury as well as showing the fringe players that there is scope for them to force their way into the side if they show that they can do a job.

After Saturday when several players did not perform, the squad needs to be sent the message that there is no room for passengers and this Carling Cup tie is just the game to do that.

This game in many ways is like the rest of our league season, on paper we have a strong squad, even if we do rest our so called star men, we should still be good enough to compete and win, Saturday was worrying because of the way we performed, tonight is a good opportunity to rectify that and show that it was a blip, a chancce for the manager to show he has what it takes tacticly and a chance for the players to show that they are fully behind their manager.

Bournemouth will be no push overs, we should not underestimate them, they have a squad that gives 100% for their manager and that being the case are able to punch above their weight, as of yet I havent really seen that from a Saints side, even last season, the quality of players like Lambert enables to win a big chunk of games, however last term we lost or drew too many we could of and should have won, we had the players, but they just lacked something on that day, we saw that again on Saturday, its time that we didnt.          

Photo: Action Images

youngr added 21:15 - Aug 10 It's damp squib, not squid. Squib is an old term for a sort of firework, hence why a damp one is a bit of a disappointment. Otherwise agree with the bulk of this article.
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